Who is my leader?
1 Samuel 8, John 17:20-26
by Owen Rogers
Decisions
Recently, through reading and meditation, I’ve been putting together scriptures that clearly state the nature of our relationship with God and with one another. Mind-boggling revelation which is life-transforming once it is thoroughly embedded in my heart. It isn’t thoroughly embedded yet but it’s getting there.
I was brought up on decisions for Christ. There were conversion decisions and Lordship decisions. I still believe in the need to make decisions to follow Christ and keep following and to make him Lord over all the various parts of our lives. We have to be intentional about our commitments and follow through with action.
These days I believe that all such decisions are Lordship decisions because they are decisions to make Christ our Lord, to follow him as our one, supreme leader in all of life. A commitment to Christ is total commitment – all of self for all of time, all our words, thoughts and actions, our occupations, our relationships – everything is under him.
This is not for individual people only but just as true for us together – the group, the family, the body, the church. Before you assume that this is a particularly New Testament understanding, let me show you that God wanted the nation of Israel to commit to living under his Lordship.
Leaders of Israel
In this week’s set of readings we have met Samuel, Saul and David, three leaders of Israel. Samuel was primarily a spiritual leader, a prophet who mediated God’s rule of the nation. The other two were kings who were supposed to do likewise but who were also political leaders and, especially Saul, had their own agendas as well.
Samuel learned to hear God’s voice and obey God’s instructions at a young age. He went on to become very tuned to God and able to lead God’s people just the way God wanted him to. The people were not nearly as close to God as Samuel. They were happy to have Samuel lead them but when they saw that Samuel’s sons weren’t following in their father’s footsteps, and they could see no one to lead them when Samuel was dead, they decided that they would be better off changing the leadership structure of the nation and going for a king. They modelled their ideas on the surrounding nations disregarding the fact that they were supposed to be distinct.
Samuel knew this was a not a good idea but God told him not to take the call for a king personally. The people were not rejecting Samuel but God as Lord. They wanted a monarchy, not a theocracy. Even though Samuel told them what a king would mean for them – he emphasised the negatives – they still wanted to go ahead. So God gave them what they wanted. It was God’s plan B; they’d rejected his plan A. But the man God picked out for them looked to be a pretty good candidate – he was tall, impressive, humble and religious.
And indeed, Saul did a pretty good job initially. But then his flaws began to show. Saul had an impulse for doing things his own way instead of God’s way (1 Samuel 13:1-15; 15:10). The record shows that, despite being humble and religious, Saul did not have the relationship with God that Samuel had.
And then David came along. Saul was quite pleased to have David around at first – David was very useful to him – but, when it became clear that God was behind David’s success, Saul let jealousy get the better of him. In time God set David up to succeed Saul. It took a while but it was good training for David who, to his credit, insisted on everything being done God’s way.
As king, David did do a better job than Saul, mostly because David had a closer relationship with God. David’s impulse was to trust God in every situation. He saw himself as God’s agent so, while he was king, God was in charge again – at least most of the time.
We meet David’s son Solomon in the coming week’s readings. Solomon was a great king too. But as great as David and Solomon were, the kings of Israel were God’s B plan, not what he considered best. They remind us that sometimes God gives us what we ask for even though it’s not his best plan for us. But if we keep close to God, we’ll usually know the right things to ask for. Thank God he always gives us what we need, but not always what we want.
Leaders in the Church
It’s my belief that the church today is still wrestling with this issue of leadership and we have to ask, are we operating with God’s A plan? Some churches have leaders like Israel’s kings: strong men as capable of leading badly as they are of leading well. Churches like ours have built accountability into our structures in the hope of curbing bad leaders. Of course our leaders are human too and just as capable of stuffing up. We just have corporate responsibility rather than individual responsibility.
And you thought the Presbyterian Church was democratic!
Which brings us to the life-changing vision that I mentioned at the start. The answer to all this lies in our understanding of who we are – what the scholars call our ecclesiology. Only with a proper understanding of the nature of the church can we get to grips with God’s plan for leadership.
When you exchanged your life for Jesus’ life you were changed more than we generally realise. The change is huge. Now that we are in Christ we share the divine nature, which means that we have close and immediate relationship with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This indeed is the game-changer. Because we share the divine nature we are as close to God as Jesus, Father and Holy Spirit are to one another. And we are that close to one another. This is what Jesus asked for in his prayer in John 17. We have the same connectedness with one another that Father, Son and Spirit have with one another.
Individually we expect to hear from God and to obey his directions. What about collectively? How are Jesus’ people to be led? How does the head direct the body? The group is led the same as all the individual members: by the Holy Spirit.
Christ himself is Prophet, Priest and King. He is our leader; we are all his followers, none more so than others. The trouble with people is we’re not perfect. We won’t live this perfectly until we get to heaven. For now, as Paul says life is like the picture we get by looking through mottled glass – there’s distortion.
The trouble with human leaders is they aren’t perfect. No matter how hard they try, the self always intrudes to some extent. A leader who is not accountable to anyone else can easily drift off on a tangent, and many have.
Putting it into action
What does this mean for parish organisation?
Do we still have leaders? It seems that we do. This is one constant throughout church history. The role is that of mediating God’s rule to the people, helping the people to interpret God’s will, organising the work of ministry and energising and channelling the energies of the people in the work of God. Also the leader encourages the spiritual life of the people and the development of that life, that is growth in discipleship. We are called to different roles in the body and leadership is one of them. However, leadership in the church is not bossiness and never control. To use Paul’s analogy, we are like different parts of a human body, but none of us is the head.
What does this mean for worship?
For one thing, don’t try to tell me you’re not spiritual. You’re spiritual by nature. Don’t tell yourself that I or anyone else has a better connection with God than you do. We may use it more but that doesn’t excuse you. We are all spiritual beings having a human experience.
But we live in between times. Christ changed everything when he died on the cross and was raised to life. He brought many people into the kingdom of God; under God’s Lordship; under the Holy Spirit’s leadership. Life in God is now. But we’re still living on this earth in human bodies and we’re limited by the confines of our existence. When Christ returns our limitations will be removed, but that hasn’t happened yet. We live in the “now but not yet”.
So that is why Paul tells us to put off the old nature and put on the new. Ephesians 4:17-26, 5:1,2.
In order to be in on God’s Plan A we need a collective commitment to living under the Lordship of Christ. We are the body controlled by Christ the head. In fact part of the leader’s role is to keep Christ Lord of the church. Whenever the life of God comes through in this world it is beautiful. Our oneness with God and with one another is here and it’s real, so let’s keep developing it because this is God’s intention – God’s ideal – and it is beautiful.