Detaching.
Easter isn’t over…
One of the things I have come to appreciate about the liturgical church is that, for our high church brothers and sisters, Easter isn’t just a holiday; it’s a whole season. A movement, if you will. There are 40 days of intentional preparation for Easter (Lent) and then another 40 days of intentional occupation of the Easter / Pascal season that takes us up to the feast of Pentecost. It’s called Eastertide, and we’re in it now.
As I’ve continued to ponder the deep meaning and pathos woven into the death and resurrection of Christ, two things have been on my mind lately: two stories that reveal something vital about Jesus’ idea of leadership and how he envisions its operation in the kingdom community he brings. Both stories revolve around crossing social taboos in order to establish radically different relational values.
Social Gaffe #1. All four gospels tell the story of Mary of Bethany who, just before the last supper, comes to Jesus as he sits around the table with his disciples. She opens a bottle of expensive perfume worth a year’s wages and pours it over Jesus’ feet, wiping them with her hair. It’s an act of extraordinary devotion, sacrifice, and intimacy—almost scandalously so—and it draws the ire of the disciples who complain that such a sum wasn’t given to the poor instead. Jesus, however, receives the lavish gift and honors it with an equally extraordinary declaration: “Wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” My question: Has it? Has Mary’s humble outpouring been told alongside the gospel?
Social Gaffe #2. Days later, the disciples are sitting around another table enjoying another supper, this time the Passover meal. I wonder if Mary’s brave disruption was still on their minds as Jesus becomes the disruptor this time: “So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet.” Once again, they are stunned by the social wrongness of this act that he goes on to explain: “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” My question: Have we? Have we followed Christ in this profound act of humble servanthood?
Time after time, Jesus attempted to upend the endemic social hierarchy of power and privilege with his disciples: The last will be first… To gain your life, you must lose it… Unless you humble yourself like a child… There are few issues that Jesus hammered on as consistently as this one: how the kingdom of God lies opposite our human instincts, particularly as it relates to what we call “leadership.”
Leadership has become a billion-dollar industry in our generation, and spiritual leaders peel open their wallets as fast as their marketplace colleagues to chase its allure. The appeal of leadership never seems to loose its mystique, even when it’s cloaked as “servant leadership.” Don’t misunderstand, I support servant leadership, but our capacity for self-deception is high, particularly when it comes to leaders. Charisma, influence, recognition—how easily these ostensibly good qualities get hijacked by our egos to produce a sense of validation, worthiness, and yes power. I hear its siren song too.
While power isn’t intrinsically bad, Jesus well understands its dangers: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors [servant leaders?]. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.” Thus the premise of servant leadership, yet even when we genuinely desire to follow Jesus into servanthood, we have to understand that this is not our natural instinct. Few of us realistically want to choose weakness and obscurity, to remain unrecognized and unsung. How do we manage this tension, particularly when we are legitimately called into some kind of leadership?
The mystics would say it’s simple, a single word in fact: Detachment. We view both our “successes” and our “failures” from an emotional distance and with a bit of skepticism. In other words, we don’t need acclaim, we don’t seek it, and we don’t own it if it comes. We don’t believe our own PR, and we resist other people’s tendency to place us on a pedestal (There’s not much distance between a stage and a pedestal). The more we succeed, the more we need to be intentionally forthcoming about our struggles and weaknesses. We need to consistently return to the example of Mary and Jesus, and above all, we need people in our lives to call us on our bullshit.
growing the soul
As you meditate on these two humility stories—Mary and Jesus—what catches your attention? Do you see yourself in one of the characters?
serving the world
How would the power structures of the world change—in politics, corporations, and churches—if Christians actually followed the humble lead of Jesus in their leadership?
meditation
takeaway
Jesus is about downward mobility.