November 2, 2008 + What kind of leaders do we need? + Frank Alton

MP3 File

Micah 3:5-12; Matthew 23:1-12

In two days many of us will go to the polls to elect a President, some members of congress and judges, as well as to vote on local and state measures that will impact people for generations to come. That’s a pretty awesome responsibility. It may be even more awesome for people of faith, because we have some source documents that go back past the constitution to guide us. The passage we read from Micah says a very radical thing: when the leaders of the people fail, all the people suffer consequences, not just the leaders: “Hear this, you rulers: because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins.”

In the case of the U.S. even the world beyond our borders suffers the consequences of our leaders “gone bad.” It’s critical, then, that we choose leaders who are less likely to go bad. So I want to look at some criteria for leadership that Micah and Jesus offer. Of course, in a democracy our responsibility doesn’t end with an election. We also need to hold rulers accountable once they are elected. So these criteria guide both our voting and our letter writing to elected officials between elections. Both Micah and Jesus come at these criteria from the negative side – the leaders they were addressing were failing to show these qualities. We may make our evaluation from either the positive or negative side.

The first quality lifted up is humility. The conclusion of our Gospel lesson has Jesus telling the crowds, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” We have just been through eight years during which our leaders have believed that the United States needs to be a dominant and unilateral leader in the world, whether the world wants us to lead or not. That hasn’t gone so well. Today there aren’t many nations that want to follow us. Yet we have heard a lot of that same discourse recently in the campaign. Of course, some patriotic hyperbole is inevitable in a political campaign. But I believe that the message of Micah and Jesus for us at this important juncture in history is that perhaps the task for the U.S. during the next phase of our history is to begin by rejoining the world. Then, with greater humility, perhaps we can play a wiser leadership role. (Sloan Coffin 58) We could do worse than follow St. Augustine who said: “Never fight evil as if it were something that arose totally outside of you.”

Yesterday there was an interfaith service for "No on 8" down at St. John’s Cathedral. It was an inspiring service with many celebrities speaking. One man was a new celebrity – Father Geoff Farrow, the Catholic priest who came out against Proposition 8 at the end of mass at his parish in Fresno last month. He was suspended from the priesthood. He has been called courageous and he has been maligned as disobedient and scandalous. He received a standing ovation when Martin Sheen made reference to him, not even knowing he was in the room. He’d been assigned the role of offering a Catholic prayer. I expected him to make a few remarks before his prayer. But he went straight to the prayer and then sat down. He is one hero obviously not yet ready for Hollywood style stardom. He reminded me of the difference between being a hero and being a celebrity. Some people can be both, but we at least need heroes who don’t seek celebrity status for its own sake. If you choose to listen to Micah and Jesus, you might ask yourself which candidates demonstrate greater humility.

The second quality I see Micah and Jesus calling for is the ability to hold ambiguity. The leaders that Micah rebuked said: “Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us.” No ambiguity for them. Things was as clear as day: they could get away with anything because God was on their side. Some religious people hold certainty dearer than truth and prefer obedience to discernment. Too many bear out Charles Darwin’s contention that ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge (Sloan Coffin 10). In other words, the more people know, the more aware they are of what they don’t know. People who know just a little tend to come to very solid sounding conclusions. Apparently such religious folk were as abundant in Micah’s time as they clearly are in ours. Conventional religious wisdom has always stressed correct belief and right behavior, often with a wink and a nod when the behavior of the teachers fails to align with that. Jesus challenged that when he said, “Do whatever they teach you & follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” That is one of the most damning reprimands that can be given a leader.

My ability to hold ambiguity was challenged most recently by questions raised around the death of John Robert McGraham. John’s death itself wasn’t very ambiguous. To pour gasoline on someone and light a match has to be one of the most clearly inhumane acts that can be taken by a human being. But questions about his life swirl with ambiguity. On the one hand, the fact that John was homeless for so many years is a witness against our culture and against the institutions that serve this community, including the church. Homelessness is an embarrassing reality in the wealthiest country in the world, and in a city known for having the greatest disparity between rich and poor in the country. At the same time I know that it is often challenging to help the homeless. It often appears that they don’t want the help we can give. Some times it seems that they demand more than is reasonable because they won’t accept the shelters that are available or the services that are offered. And what do we do with people who have mental illness due to drugs, trauma from war or abuse? Some of those people were being abused in the institutions society had set up to care for them. So they were released. But that hasn’t worked either.

I confess to having gotten worn down by all this over my years at Immanuel. When I first came to Immanuel I wanted to help every homeless person I met. I had just lived for nine years in Mexico where there were no homeless people. Food and shelter for all are considered basic rights in Mexico. But in Mexico it is not government or non governmental institutions that take care of the homeless. Families simply don’t let family members become homeless – at least they didn’t used to. It’s complicated when our cultural family values don’t function in the same way. So I’m not as spontaneous in my response to the homeless any more. That bothers me. Elizabeth brought this home to me this past week when she asked about someone who came with a story asking for help. She expressed the dilemma we all feel when we have to decide to help a particular person. “What if this one is Jesus?” Which candidates demonstrate the need to acknowledge the complexity, live with the ambiguity, and struggle to find solutions?

Another clear criterion the prophets apply to leadership is the courage to tell the truth. The essential sin of the leadership of Israel was the fact that "the right" was for sale. One could bribe the judge for a positive personal outcome. The preacher (prophet) would mold the message around economic benefit. If you want good news, you can have it for a price. The sin of corruption is compounded all the more because the false prophet claims God’s backing. Micah on the other hand, comes with the power of God for "truth telling," the ability to resist the whims and desires of the people for words of peace and light when there is no peace and light. Micah “declared to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.” That is not the way to win friends. The truth will make God's children healthy and mature, but first it will make them angry.

It turns out that these criteria for leaders are cumulative. We have to bring humility and the ability to live with ambiguity to our courage to tell the truth. The other day I visited an encampment at Olvera Street where a group of folks are carrying out a fast of several weeks to demand that attention be given to the needs of immigrants. The idea behind the fast is to recall the historic Mayday march of 2006 that went right past Immanuel. The shout that day was, “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.” The fast is designed to move people to implement the second part of that slogan: to vote, and to hold political leaders accountable for the crisis they have created and tolerated. It was billed as “the largest hunger strike in U.S. history, calling on 1 million people to sign a pledge to vote for immigrant rights.

One of the fasters, Frank Romero, has been at Immanuel many times and I went specifically to visit him. I had decided to fast for just the one day – which felt pretty wimpy when I saw his tag that read “Day 16.” Frank told me how they had had to keep moderating their ambitious goals. They went from wanting a million signatures to believing that several thousand signatures would still be significant. They went from the idea of a hunger strike until something changed to fasting through the election. Some of the fasters, including Frank, had to either moderate or go off the fast altogether for health reasons. Some might get cynical about all that. But as I met the fasters and others working in solidarity with them, I couldn’t shake the inspiration I got from seeing their courage to tell the truth, even if nobody was listening. Which candidates demonstrate that quality?

Being compassionate people for others: “Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob… who abhor justice and pervert all equity… [and] give judgment for a bribe.” Micah's words sound very much like some of the denunciation we've heard pronounced lately upon corporate executives who have enriched themselves while the people who worked for them have their life savings erased by greed. It has been said that there is no smaller package in the world than that of a person all wrapped up in himself. The prophets – from Micah to Jesus – want to free people from their smallness and offer them a different way. In that way, love is our business; if we can’t love, we’re out of business. When Jesus talked about love, he didn’t just leave it at love for family or those like us. He pointed out that it is the person who is different that calls out for our love.

This gets to the very heart of Jesus’ teaching. Unfortunately, Jesus’ followers have had a difficult time over the millennia sticking with the heart of Jesus’ teaching. Even Peter didn’t get it right away.Remember the story of Peter and Cornelius? It started with a vision in which a sheet with profane and impure beasts came down and he was instructed to eat foods that his faith told him were profane and impure. The story ends with Peter in the house of a profane Gentile centurion named Cornelius preaching that “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean,” and then baptizing a bunch of Gentiles in the name of Jesus. What finally sunk in for Peter is, first of all, that no discrimination against any sort of repugnant person can resist the crucible of learning not to call them profane or impure. Once that happened, he realized that it was then his responsibility to build a different kind of community. Baptizing those Gentiles was considered even more blasphemous than being in their home. Peter understood that to not call anyone profane or unclean is a positive command to actually build a new community.

When we apply this criterion to the task of electing leaders, I think we have to consider two questions that keep getting asked in the current political climate. First, who are “real” Americans? And second, what is “American interest” in a particular part of the world? Micah and Jesus both ask leaders to be people for others in ways that make those the wrong questions. Real Americans and those who benefit from our policies should not be defined as those who are able to pay for the right answers or who accept the social order as it is handed to them, even if they are excluded from its benefits. Rather, those who have been excluded and unable to pay should be the very ones who help us discover a new identity characterized by being compassionate people for others.

So as Americans and as people of faith we have a tremendous responsibility to exercise on Tuesday and beyond. Let us go thoughtfully, because as the song says, “we are singing for our lives.”