Leadership style is very much in the news. President Zalensky’s brave, down to earth, chair carrying, among-the-people style contrasts with President Putin’s long table and paranoid detachment. And UK government leaders’ sense of entitlement and privileged rule breaking leaves the rest of us reeling, angry and hurt. Those, especially, who followed the rules during lockdown and were separated from loved ones cannot treat Downing Street rule breaking as insignificant. The moniker ‘Partygate’ attempts to trivialize something utterly serious which gets at the heart of how power and privilege are used and abused.
On the Thursday of Holy Week we honour ‘servant leadership’: not a 20th century invention of management gurus but the way of life and death of a 1st century leader who overturned the hierarchy, thus bringing to the centre of attention those on whom society depended and ignored simultaneously.
John’s gospel emphasizes Jesus’ heavenly pedigree, and the choices he makes in exercising his leadership: ‘Jesus knew that the Father had given him complete power; he knew that he had come from God and was going to God. So he rose from the table, took off his outer garment and tied a towel round his waist.’ John 13:3-4
Tom Colvin’s hymn puts it starkly:
Kneels at the feet of his friends,
silently washes their feet,
Master who acts as a slave to them.
Jesu, Jesu,
Fill us with Your love,
show us how to serve
The neighbours we have from You.
Washing feet is not a symbolic, religious action but a visceral act of intimate care. Jesus makes visible all the invisible ones whose back-breaking service enables society to function. He makes every human being visible and valuable. He liberates captives then and now. He models leadership for his followers.
Loving puts us on our knees,
serving as though we are slaves:
this is the way we should live with you.
Jesu, Jesu,
Fill us with Your love,
show us how to serve
The neighbours we have from You.
Foot washing God
Whose humility elevates every
Child of dust
Help us to see those we make invisible,
Even our enemies,
So that we may serve one another
as you serve.
Amen.
Stepping out of the boat... 