December 7 Romans 15:4-13 Matthew 3:1-12

Romans 15:4-13

Matthew 3:1-12

            We could probably agree that the Pharisees and Sadducees had a memorable introduction to John the Baptist. He burst upon the scene calling for repentance. We could assume that the people who confessed their sins for their baptisms repented. He, however, didn’t provide any specificity of what people needed to do to repent.

            He singled out the Pharisees and Sadducees. As religious authority figures, they might have been stumped to identify what they were to repent.

            We know that Jesus had an ongoing clash with them. These clashes revealed to us that they did not use their power to address the daily concerns and issues confronting the people at the bottom of the economic ladder.

            The issues about power and authority in First Century Palestine did not end with the fall of the Second Temple decades later, nor did it begin with them. Misuse of power and authority has been part of human existence inherent in hierarchical relationships since humankind formed relationships, and it continues today.

            Critiquing and holding accountable the current national political leadership’s misuse of power is easy. We could spend the balance of this morning naming all the ways it continues to fail us and violate the rule of law. It is not alone, however. Misusing power also occurs in the for-profit and non-profit worlds.

            In 1970, Robert Greenleaf, a former director of management research at AT&T, offered a vision of leadership known as “servant-leader.” A great leader is a servant first.

            Servant-leader has become part of the church’s language. Its premise is consistent with scripture. Jesus said to his disciples, “You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave.” (Mat. 18:25b-27). Or the hymn in Philippians (2:6-8):

who, though he existed in the form of God,

      did not regard equality with God

      as something to be grasped,

but emptied himself,

      taking the form of a slave,

      assuming human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a human,

      he humbled himself

      and became obedient to the point of death—

                  even death on a cross.

            The United Church of Christ’s Manual on Ministry, a foundational document for all ministry in our denomination, acknowledged servant-leadership, “The Church acknowledges that its members have many diverse ministries in the world and the Church. It also recognizes a specific need for representative servant leaders ‘to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”[1]

            Personally, I’ve been comfortable with Greenleaf’s model of servant-leadership up until this past week. Leadership is servanthood. However, after reading an article about power dynamics for this sermon, I’ve reassessed my uncritical acceptance of Greenleaf’s servant-leadership model.

            Dr. Darryl Stevens, an ethicist at Lancaster Seminary, wrote A Post-Colonial Response to Servant Leadership: Reclaiming Diakonia from Greenleaf. Stevens critiqued it from cultural and racial perspectives. Though servanthood is leadership, we can’t overlook the implicit hierarchical relationship between leader and servant. Who gets accepted as a leader can’t ignore that race, class, gender, sexuality, and age[2] are factors in that recognition. That recognition undermines its basic premise to tone down assertiveness to foster cooperativeness because the fundamental hierarchical relationship does not change. Effective leadership still requires assertiveness, which can overrule cooperativeness when something needs to be done.

            The servant-leader model is binary with irreconcilable opposites. Yet, we still must contend with the idea of servanthood, which is fundamental in scripture.

            Stevens offered a different model of servanthood rooted in service, diakonia, from which we get deacon. Diakonia is one of the five foundational precepts of the church. It became an integral part of the Jesus movement in Act 6 to resolve the conflict between the Jerusalem followers and the Hellenists. Stevens, however, noted that without correction diakonia as “lowly, humble service”[3] is incomplete. It is a more complex relationship which embraces a mediator or emissary sent by the person in power, thus making diakonia a missional activity on behalf of God. Even this expansion of diakonia, however, risks the leader acting arrogantly, which at its worst can impose suffering upon people with diminished or limited power and agency.

            Stevens interpreted the servant image in the Philippian hymn by shifting it away from romanticizing servanthood and service, which is traditional, to remembering Jesus’ ministry which intervened and disrupted the power structure which subjugated the people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Diakonia, then, becomes service for liberation. Liberation, though, can’t be complete without the leader’s conscious awareness of the way their own privilege affects their decisions and actions. Stevens added two other facets, companionship and sage.

            This changes and broadens the binary model of servant-leadership into one encompassing more facets enabling a more wholistic approach to service.

Sage: Between the human system and the self, the sage would be the leader’s self-awareness.

Emissary: Between the self and the divine, the emissary would approach on God’s behalf.

Steward: Between the divine and the community, by connecting humanity within the context of God’s creation, the steward would enable systemic change.

Companion: Between community and human system, by walking beside the disadvantaged and vulnerable, the companion would empower their advocacy and agency.

Healer: Complements the four facets and connects the poles to “restore, reconcile, and repair all of our relationships: to self, to each other, to community, and to God.”[4]

            John’s message of repentance certainly applied to the Pharisees and Sadducees because their power, based upon Stevens’ model, was emissary without the other facets. We can apply it to the Church as well, particularly the way it carried out its historic global mission up until recent decades. I’ll also argue that many outreach and mission activities in our local congregations today, resemble a romanticized understanding of service and servanthood. This romanticized version risks validating our personal desire to claim our servanthood with minimal impact upon the people we seek to serve. A couple of examples. A food program that hands out bags of food rather than a food program that allows its patrons to “shop” for their food. Another would be a church donating money to causes and organizations to enable its recipients to serve the underclass. Not that any of this is wrong or not that it doesn’t matter, but is that really what Jesus meant by being a servant?

            John the Baptist called upon the Pharisees and Sadducees, as well as the people on banks of the Jordan that day, to repent. Repentance in ancient Greek is metanoia, which literally means changing one’s mind. Implicitly, repentance is to change one’s way of living. Such applies to the church today.

[1] Manual on Ministry. (2018) Page 8

[2] Darryl W. Stephens. A Post-Colonial Response to Servant Leadership: Reclaiming Diakonia from Greenleaf. Currents in Theology and Mission. April 2025. Page 12

[3] Ibid. Page 14

[4] Ibid. Page 17.