Servant Leadership in the Bible
Jesus demonstrates servant leadership to his disciples
One Saturday morning when I was a teen, I found myself knee-deep in bat guano in the belfry of our little church in West Chester, Ohio.
This was not as odious as it sounds, but it involved a lot of shoveling, bagging and hauling out many years’ accumulation. There was dust, and yes, joking, as Dad and his sons cleaned out the steeple in preparation for our church’s 100th anniversary service in 1969.
Dad was president of the trustees that year, and it was his style of leadership to tackle the messy tasks that nobody wanted to do. He thought his sons should participate. His point was that we lead best by serving others. Where did he get such a crazy notion? He must’ve been paying attention when he heard about a scene from the gospel of Mark where two of his disciples, brothers James and John, came to ask Jesus for a special favor. According to Matthew it was their mother who put them up to it. But Mark, with his typically dim view of the disciples, tells us they approached him all on their own: “Teacher, we want for you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” (Mk. 10:35)
Jesus was too smart to make any promises before he heard exactly what they wanted. “What do you want me to do for you?” (v. 36)
They promptly answered, with breathtaking chutzpah, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” (v. 37)
Just a small ask, the top two spots in Jesus’ kingdom, right after him, of course!
Jesus demurred. “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I shall be baptized with?” (v. 38)
They assured him that they were up to the task.
Jesus, of course, was speaking of the cup of suffering that he would come to drink in the garden of Gethsemane. And the baptism by fire he would endure during his interrogation, torture, rejection and agonizing death on the cross. They hadn’t a clue what they were asking.
Jesus hints to them that they would indeed share his cup and his baptism as his followers, but that the seating arrangement in his kingdom was not his to assign: “It is for those for whom it has been prepared.” (v. 40)
When the other disciples got wind of their audacious request they were irked. Jesus called them all together for a “teachable moment.”
“You know that among the Gentiles [non-Jews] those whom they recognize as their great rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must become slave of all. For the Son of Man [he refers here to himself] came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mk. 10:41b-45)
This is a very different model of leadership!
It stood everything they believed about leadership on its head.
I think it still does, another example of how we are still trying to catch up to the vision of Jesus, even centuries later.
The kind of leadership Jesus proposes is the kind of leadership that he embodies, pouring himself out for the sake of the world.
Another example from Jesus’ later life spells this out for us with added force. It’s John’s gospel that relates for us this scene from Jesus’ later life (perhaps even the same John who with his brother made that earlier audacious request). As they sat down one evening to eat that meal that his friends would one day remember as their last supper with him, he startled them by taking off his outer robe, tying a towel around his waist and, one by one, washing their feet. Peter, for one, was horrified, protesting that his master must never wash his feet. Jesus insisted.
Palestine is often dry and dusty, unless it rains, when the dirt turns into mud. Having no paved roads in those days and wearing open sandals held on by a strap, travelers’ feet were always dirty by the end of a day of walking. It was in a host’s best interest to see that his guests’ feet were washed before they got dust or mud all over the couches on which they reclined when having dinner. So, as a sign of hospitality, a well-to-do host usually had a servant wash his guests’ feet in a basin and dry them before dinner.
The feet were considered the most shameful part of the body. In fact, to this day in the Middle East if you want to insult someone, you sit in such a way as to show him or her the soles of your feet! So it fell to the lowest slave in the household to wash guests’ feet.
Jesus, dumbfounded his friends by performing the job of the lowest slave. When he was done he asked them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord–and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set for you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.” (John 13:12b-15)
Leadership in the Christian community is distinguished by service to others. As Jesus stooped to conquer our hearts, so we lead by serving others. My Dad was right on track, as he and his sons cleaned out the belfry at West Chester United Presbyterian Church. He knew by then that I felt called to be a pastor, and he wanted me to know that it doesn’t hurt a pastor to get his (or her) hands dirty now and then. We lead best by serving others.
One of my mentors in ministry, the Rev. Jane Krauss Jackson, helped teach me the corollary to this example. After I had spent an entire week as a seminary intern cleaning up the library of the Portland Avenue Presbyterian Church, she asked me why I had done it. No one had asked me to. I told her I didn’t mind. It seemed like a good servant thing to do, and the task was certainly not beneath me.
She heartily agreed, but she said that she had noticed something about herself that might be pertinent. She said, “I have found that if I do a host of tedious tasks by myself around the church, I find myself getting resentful and feeling as if no one appreciates me. I will do any thankless task around the church–if I do it alongside others.”
Servant leadership is not making a doormat of yourself. It’s shoveling bat guano, if it comes to that, alongside other volunteers. It’s filling meal bags for the homeless, with others. It’s writing letters to your elected representative about hunger or gun violence or other issues with fellow parishioners. It’s washing dishes after a potluck with members of the Fellowship Committee or filling tiny communion cups with the Worship Team or collecting furniture for refugees with Mission volunteers.
The German reformer Martin Luther captured well the paradox of service when he said, “The Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.” (“On Christian Liberty”)
Being in Christ frees us from worldly conventions and constraints. It gives us an inner freedom that liberates us no matter how confining our circumstances are. Being in Christ binds us to one another in innumerable ways. It comes with many strings attached, to seek the genuine well-being of others. We are radically free, radically bound.
Perhaps Jesus identified with the “ebed Yahweh,” or Servant of God as described in Isaiah of the exile. In what Bible scholars have come to call the “Suffering Servant Songs,” the prophet lays out for us a strikingly different vision of leadership than that usually envisioned by the world. For instance,
“Here is my servant, whom I have chosen,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.” (Isa. 42:1-4)
The precise identity of this servant of God is hotly debated among Bible scholars. Could it be Israel as a people? Could it be the prophet himself, or possibly King Cyrus, the Babylonian ruler who permitted some Jews to return to rebuild their homeland? Maybe it refers to a righteous remnant within Israel?
Any of those identities are possible; all are also problematic.
It may be that Jesus came to identify himself with the Suffering Servant of God. We certainly know that the early church did.
Robert Greenleaf, a Quaker and a business consultant, wrote the classic modern book, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitmate Power and Greatness. With a surprisingly thorough touch, Greenleaf fleshed out for people today the alternate model of leadership Jesus embodied. He contended that servant leadership can be expressed in business and education, among foundations, churches and other
for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
How might servant leadership be characterized?
Greenleaf sketched out that servant leadership begins with the initiative of a single individual who has a dream for a different kind of leadership. She is willing to devote a great deal of time and energy toward listening to and attempting to understand the people she hopes to lead. It’s interesting how often Jesus asked people, “What would you like me to do for you?” and “Do you want to be healed?” and then waited for their answers.
A servant leader is willing to take time at the outset of a challenge to withdraw for a while, as Jesus did at the beginning of his public ministry, to sort through what it is that he genuinely desires and is aiming for. A servant leader works from an attitude of acceptance of and empathy toward people. He is intuitive, learning how to trust his gut and how to read the intangibles that are at work in any given situation.
A servant leader develops the gift of foresight, being increasingly able to look farther down the road than most of us are inclined to do. Such foresight, he says, is often related to faith and a willingness to share the burdens of the people one is aiming to serve. It’s also a matter of widening the doors of our perception to notice what is really going on in a given situation. It involves exercising our powers of persuasion to get others on board with the crucial tasks at hand, often one person at a time. And, he added, often one action at a time, toward the desired goal.
Unsurprisingly, this different model of leadership is reflected in some of the world’s other great religious traditions. Consider this poem, part of the eastern spiritual classic, The Tao te Ching, reportedly written by the sage Lao-tsu:
“Of the best leaders, the people do not even know they exist.
The worst leaders the people fear and hate.
The next worst they respect.
The next they love and revere.
But of the best leaders, when their work is done, the people all say, ‘We have done it ourselves.’”
This sort of leadership is a disappearing act. It is not at all absent, but it doesn’t stick around for the accolades and adulation. It is content that God’s great work of compassion is moving forward.
It is far more interested in seeing that God’s dreams for fairness and kindness are realized than in claiming the credit.
It knows the perfect freedom found in living for others.
And it discovers that being poured out for others is the way toward being filled with your own sense of purpose. As Jesus said elsewhere, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” (Lk. 9:23-24)
