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[Music] The Leadership Style of Jesus, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the second reading,

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the Gospel according to John, the thirteenth chapter, beginning the reading at the verse numbered one. "Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father,

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having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And during supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel.

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Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, 'Do you know what I have done to you?

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You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I, then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master,

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nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.' And may the same God who inspired these words incline our hearts to the understanding of them. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. It is a hard thing to lead. A long time ago, Lord Byron, in his epic poem, Child, Herald, Pilgrimage, and specifically in the third canto at the 45th stanza, wrote these words,

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'He who ascends to mountaintops shall find the loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow. He who surpasses or subdues mankind must look down on the hate of those below.' It is a hard thing to lead. The New York Times magazine last Sunday had as its cover story

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the details concerning the astonishing number of chief executive officers of major American corporations that are either being fired or are retiring from their jobs early, unable to sustain themselves in the face of the repeated attacks visited upon them. Time identified five reasons for this.

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Growing inflation, a desire for increased profits, more lateral nobility within the business community, the disappearance of the so-called company man, and more aggressive stockholders. But you can sum all of these things by saying that to lead is a hard thing. Everywhere, in the business community, in the professional community, in the educational community,

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in your fraternity or your sorority, in any association of which you are a part or others are a part, it is a hard thing to bear the burden of leadership. I ask you then to turn with me tonight to consider the leadership style of the greatest leader that history has ever known.

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I say that without hesitation or fear of successful defeat. Jesus had the same strength that would belong to a military leader, and yet he had the tenderness which drew little children to him. He had awesome powers of concentration, and yet a gentleness which appealed to women.

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His authority is beyond our ability to imagine, and yet he was quite comfortable with the meek and the lowly at heart. His purity was absolute. He was without blemish. And yet he could move with magnificent ease amongst the most depraved of sinners.

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There was, missing in him, no element of moral worth, and all things coalesced in him in a blend of such loveliness that, masked against his life, every other life is somehow discordant. No other personality in history has gained the allegiance of so many.

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Gautama, Confucius, Zoroaster, Mohammed, none of them can claim followers from Antarctica to Alaska, from Cleveland to the Canary Islands, Turks, Swabs, Japanese, Teutons, Indians, all.

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He holds a position of honor within the Hindu pantheon. He is the most highly regarded in the tradition of Islam, and every sect, no matter how strange, must deal in some way with this one whose power is above the century.

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He is the leader of all leaders. It seems to me, then, that when we think of what a hard thing it is to lead, we must inevitably think of him. Now, you may say to me tonight,

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"Well, that's fine for those who want to lead, but I have no personal leadership aspirations." And that is all well and good, and I would not try to suggest to you that you ought to pursue a walk in life which you have found to be different

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from your gifts and talents, although I would suggest that you are probably in a very small minority. I read about a man who was filling out the page in his daughter's college application which was supposed to be completed by the parents.

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One of the questions on the page was, "Does your son or daughter have leadership abilities?" He wrote, "No, my daughter does not have leadership abilities, but she is a wonderful follower."

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Three weeks later, he received a letter from the college to which the application was sent advising him that his daughter had been accepted. And then this comment was added, "You will be interested in knowing that our freshman class now consists of 509 leaders and one follower."

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Most of us understand ourselves to have leadership potential, but that may not be you. You may understand yourself to have followership potential. If that is so, it is still to your benefit to contemplate the leadership style of Jesus,

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for as you learn more about leadership at its best, you will become a more significant and a more valuable follower. And if even this line of argument does not appeal to you, I would suggest that any study of any dimension of the life of our Lord Christ

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is a blessing to our hearts and to our souls. So I invite you tonight, whether you see yourself as a leader or follower or do not know it, to think with me about the leadership style of Jesus. First I would ask you to notice this.

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Jesus was a witness to his disciples. Now the worth of a witness is to be determined by how much the witness tells the truth. Jesus always told the truth. The first characteristic of his leadership was this.

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He always teased the truth. One of the most interesting questions in New Testament interpretation is the question of how much the problems of the early church influenced what was written into the pages of the New Testament.

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn't sit down to write their Gospels like they were writing a PhD dissertation. They wrote them as an act of ministry and love and encouragement and support to the early church of which they were a part.

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Now that early church was knowing intense persecution and suffering. It is only natural, therefore, that the Gospel writers would have included in the text of their Gospels many of Jesus' words that had to do with the suffering and persecution which come upon any sincere Christian, the words of Jesus about the cost of discipleship.

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Many such words are recorded in Scripture. Jesus says, "With the same baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized. If you would be my disciple, take up your cross daily and follow me. In the world you will have tribulation.

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As the world has hated me, so the world will hate you. I send you out as sheep into the midst of wolves." Again and again, this note of the cost of discipleship is founded. I would suggest that it is founded so often that it is untrue to suggest

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that all of these references are there simply because of the needs of the early church. Now this is too basic a strand in the teaching ministry of Jesus. Jesus was anxious that his disciples know the truth. They signed on to be his disciples at the time when he was riding a wave of popularity.

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He was honored and esteemed by all the people, and to be close to him was to occupy a place of privilege. And the disciples assumed that place with great joy, and they thought of the dreams and the victories and the rank and sitting at his right hand or left hand,

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and the kingdoms that were going to be theirs. But Jesus thought always to shatter these illusions. He always spoke to them the truth of what it means and what price you will pay to be his disciples. There is an organization in America called the Consultation on the Advancement of Small Colleges.

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Many small schools across the country belong to it. The organization produces papers for the benefits of small colleges and occasionally conducts conferences for various representatives of college communities. In honor of their 25th anniversary, they had a conference this last summer in Houston, Texas,

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to which they invited 227 college and university presidents and their wives or husbands. And they brought in speakers from across the country, and I was privileged to be one of them. I spoke to these leaders in the field of education every day for six days. That was a great joy.

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But a greater joy was to sit in on all of their other meetings and to listen to all of the others who addressed them. When it came to leadership, the note that was most often struck by these leaders of leaders was the note of truth. One man said, "The good leader can have no secret agenda." A woman said, "The leader's book must always be open."

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And I particularly liked the phrase of Fred Harris, who was the chancellor of Wesleyan University in West Virginia. He said, "The mark of a good leader is communication with consistency and candor." What every one of these people were saying was this. Truthfulness is the foundation on which good leadership is built.

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That's true of every relationship, of course. The family that is without truth, the marriage that is without truth, the organization or the office that is without truth, the fraternity or the sorority or the team that is without an honest relationship cannot have inner strength and resilience. It is a contradiction in terms to talk about a stable fellowship of liars.

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This is the reason the Church has never agreed with Benjamin Franklin's dictum that honesty is the best policy. The Church does not look upon honesty as a policy. The Church looks upon honesty as the set of the Christian soul. We are to love the truth and seek the truth and obey the truth and tell the truth and sing unto the truth.

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And Jesus did. He told his disciples of the suffering that would be theirs. He spoke the truth into the teeth of the Pharisees. He addressed the Sadducees with consistent honesty.

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Even when Pontius Pilate offered him escape from the cross if he would only lie, he refused that invitation and told the truth all the way to the cross. One of the reasons that women and men across history have followed Jesus as they do is that he has always told and always tells the truth. Now a second characteristic of his leadership style was this. He was a friend of those he loved.

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He was a friend of those he led. He said, "I do not call you servant. I call you friend." It's always been an interesting thing to me that this personal relationship which existed between Jesus and his disciples, which has such vast importance in the history of the world, is related to us in Scripture in terms of a series of very intimate informalities.

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We find the conversations between Jesus and the disciples being recorded. We know how sometimes they criticized him or questioned him. "Do you know how much irritation you're giving to the Pharisees?" Peter on one occasion rebuked him and they argued it.

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And Jesus always responded to them just as personally as they spoke to him. To each one individually, "Peter, I am praying for you lest you be attached away." When Judas came up to him in the Garden of Gethsemane to kiss him and so identify him for a rest, Jesus said, "Friend, why are you here?" When you study the gospel narrative, you find that Jesus spent much more time with his companions than he did with the crowd.

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There is no record that he ever called "congresses" or "conferences." But there's much recording about those long walks beside the Tree of Galilee or underneath olive branches or sitting about the fire at the end of a day, a long and tiring day, sharing the deep things that only friends can share. I was interested in my persuasive speaking class two weeks ago, three weeks ago, to hear one of our senior students give a speech with regard to backpacking

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and say that he thought backpacking was one of the best ways in which to open communication between people. He said, "I never had a really close conversational relationship with my own brother until we backpacked together." Well, there's a very real sense in which this experience of Jesus with his disciples was a three-year backpacking hike. But what I'm talking about tonight is not true only in the context of the woods.

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It's true anyway. The leader is close to, cares about, a friend of those who lead. We might put it this way. There are three basic kinds of leaders. There's the Christmas tree type. This is the fellow who sees himself as a star at the top of the tree and all the other nuts just hang on the branches down below.

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And then there's the balloon salesman type. You've been to the circus and you've seen the guy that lets all the balloons fly high and wide, but he holds all the strings. And then there's the juggler type. And the juggler is the man who can keep all the balls moving because of style and grace and balance and practice and timing.

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The very attributes that one discovers in a real friend. Style and grace and balance and timing. Please turn your cassette to the other side. Christ's faith in God his Father is an amazing thing when read in the scriptures. But I am more amazed by the faith he showed in his disciples.

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He called them to a righteousness which exceeded that of the best church members of the day, the Pharisees. He said, "Fear not, little flock. God will be with you." He said, "I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." And at the end of that meal he said, "You are those who have stayed with me through all my trials."

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And when he prayed his great high priestly prayer, for whom did he pray it? "Father, I pray for thee. I do not pray for the world. I pray for thee. Father, keep them in thy name." They were his friends. Every year it is my joy to speak on the campuses of various seminaries across our country, usually but not always about preaching.

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One question always comes up in the time of discussion. Some bright-eyed, bushy-tailed seminarian says, "Is preaching more important than pastoral duties?" My answer to that question is always the same. Preaching is not more important than pastoral duties.

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Preaching is impossible without pastoral duties. When any man stands in a pulpit, high and lifted up, with the word of God before him, and the people of God around him, and the Holy Spirit of God prayed down upon him, that man cannot speak words of relevance and meaning if he does not know those to whom he speaks.

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He must be their pastor. He must be their friend if he is going to apply to them the faith once for all delivered to the saints. The 19 of you students who sat down with me throughout the course of the last five days and shared deeply and personally, I know there were times, particularly at late hours, when you sensed my bone weariness. But I said to you then, and I'll say it to you now, that the moment I have no time for you,

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the moment I am lacking in my love for you, that moment, any worth or power in this pulpit is gone. There must be the closest before there can be the true preaching of the word. Ezekiel had to speak with the people of God until he was overwhelmed with their suffering. And then and only then did God let him speak.

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Jesus said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." To lead is a hard thing. That's because to lead is to love, and loving is always costly. Now the third principle in Jesus' leadership style was that he came to his disciples as a servant. He waited upon them.

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Back in the year 1870, the Roman Catholic Church decided for the first time to announce as an official doctrine of the Church the infallibility of the Pope. This move was fought by many Roman Catholics, and one of those who was particularly aggressive and outspoken was a distinguished Roman Catholic British statesman named Lord Acton. And in the course of that debate, he said these words, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power to corrupt absolutely."

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Lord Acton's dictum is, of course, one of the most quoted of the statements out of yesterday. What he is saying is this. Power tends to make a person arrogant, and when arrogance becomes a part of a leader, the effect of his or her leadership is vastly diminished and possibly altogether lost. Whenever I think of this, I think of Victor Hugo's great novel Les Miserables.

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It's the story of a man named Jean Valjean who's an escaped criminal. And after he's escaped, in his long life he's very successful. He develops a very large business. He gathers many friends. He has a fine family. He is reverenced and loved by all who know him. And then one day he discovers that Jean Valjean has been found and brought before the court for trial.

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Now, he knows this isn't Jean Valjean. He is Jean Valjean. And he is immediately confronted with the question, should he give up his safety and his security and his success to go to the aid of this man who has been mistakenly arrested instead of him? This man, incidentally, was already a criminal on other charges.

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Should he go to this man's help, or should he remain in the anonymity which was his and with all the comfort which was his? He knew what he should do, but he didn't know if he could do it. He decides not to do it. And at the moment when he decides not to go to the aid of the other man, Victor Hugo, the author of the story, inserts into the narrative one of the grandest lines he ever wrote.

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These are the words. "Just then." That is, at the moment when he decided not to go to the other man's aid. "Just then he heard an internal burst of laughter." It was the laughter of his own soul. His soul knew he was a convict. His soul knew he was a criminal. And because his soul knew it, he knew it. And though he might pretend to the world that he was other than that,

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inside there was this chiding, condemning, smeary burst of laughter. Every leader needs that. Every leader needs to hear the laughter of his own soul reminding him of what he really is. Every leader needs to be called by his soul to service. To service as Jesus served. When someone follows you, that's a great gift. The way in which you repay them for that gift is by your service.

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I have been reading the scripture passage which I read to you tonight about Jesus watching the disciples speak for 40 years now. And I never read it that I am not odd that the only begotten Son of God, the Alpha and the Omega, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, would get down on his knees and wash the dusty feet of his disciples. You, excuse me. But we make a mistake if we think this is the only example of service in Jesus' ministry.

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Why, at the very beginning of that ministry, the first sermon he ever preached in the synagogue at Capernaum, he built that sermon on a passage from Isaiah 61 which concerned the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of the Jubilee, when the poor were blessed, when the downtrodden were ministered to, when by the law of God and the law of the land, all those who were in places of lack of privilege were blessed with abundance.

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Jesus announced that as the touchstone of his ministry, and throughout every day of the ministry which was his, he gave himself to the poor and the needy and the diseased and the despised. They called him the friend of publicans and sinners, and he was, but he was more than that. He was also their servant. Service is the mark of the great leader.

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Dwight Eisenhower, who led the Allies in the Second World War, said on one occasion, "You cannot push a piece of string. You can only pull it." Pushing is the way of power. Pulling is the way of service. Last year we had on our campus Mr. Wayne Alderson, the founder of the value of the person.

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Here is a man who is distinguished for his ability to serve. In the foundry in which he labored, he went out every day and worked beside his men until they came to understand that he knew their lives because he labored with them. So powerful is the influence of this man's life that last September they published a book about his life called "Stronger Than Steel."

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Within one month it was through its first printing. Within two months it was through its second printing. Within three months it was through its third printing. It is now in its fourth printing. Why? Because he walked what he talked. He followed the admonition of Jesus, "Let the greatest among you be the servant of all."

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And one last thought. Jesus, with regard to his disciples in his leadership, was always a teacher. He educated and motivated those he led. It's interesting to notice that Jesus took the initiative in teaching.

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He was always pursuing his disciples and offering to them the words of truth which were his. I think it's interesting to observe also that Jesus' most profound teachings were not delivered to the crowd, but rather to the company of his closest followers. His words about prayer, his words about his relationship to his Father, were always delivered in that smaller context.

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You know, he used parables that described God in shocking and astonishing ways. As a man, for example, who was in bed with his children and wouldn't get out when a needy neighbor came to the door. Or he described God as a crooked judge who wouldn't render a decision until a woman just persisted and persisted and persisted until he yielded to her attention. But those kinds of extreme illustrations he didn't give to the crowd.

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He gave those only to his disciples. His teaching, you see, was intimate and profound with those who were close. And the other aspect of his teaching which I think is especially important to notice in Idas is, Jesus understood that nothing can happen through you until it has happened to you.

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That is, in the experience we gain something we can never learn in any other way. Idas in Philadelphia, speaking at a convention in one of the major hotels there, this was a good number of years ago now, and they had a display in the lobby of a waterbed. Now this is when waterbeds were brand new. Most people hadn't heard of them.

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And the sign beside it said that you were supposed to stretch out in the bed and try it to see how you liked it. Of course, nobody did. I mean, the kind of distinguished people who walk back and forth in the lobby of a major hotel in a great city are not about to bounce up and down on a waterbed. They'd walk by and pat it and give it a little push and read the literature, but that was about all.

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I was standing talking on the house phone in the hotel when a pack of Cub Scouts came thundering through the door. And they were led by a fat little chubby kid. I always noticed those kids first. And he took one look at that waterbed and charged with a howl the whole way across the lobby and leaped into the air and landed on it. That bed never had a shock like that before. It responded like a trampoline.

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Those were the days when the waterbed didn't have those sections inside so there was much more bounce to each ounce. The people who saw this laughed. We were all amused. But as I contemplated what I'd seen, it was brought home to me that in that one minute, that little fat kid knew a lot more about waterbeds than I did. And I'd been walking by patting and prodding the thing all week long.

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He could talk about it because he's a hymnic. Nothing happens through you until it's happened to you. That's the reason Jesus sent out his disciples on testing missions. In Matthew's hand he gets them all together and he sends them out in pairs. It's a kind of a dry run.

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Now he says, "Don't take on things that are too hard for you. Stay away from the Gentiles and the Samaritans." And so you'll have some help on what you're going to preach. I want you to preach on this text. "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." And remember as you go out that my power is with you. You can cleanse and heal and you can drive out demons.

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So don't hesitate to call upon that power. Now as to how much money you should take, leave it all at home. And as far as clothing is concerned, travel very light. And as to where you're going to stay, stay with the worthiest people in town and mind your manner.

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Salute a house when you enter and cast your blessing upon it when you leave. And, well, if they don't receive you in a given area, just take the dust of the place off your feet and forget about it and go on. I want you to be as wise as serpents but as harmless as doves. And if you're arrested, and you probably will be arrested, don't be afraid about what you're to say.

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Remember the things that I taught you and God will bring those words to your lips. And if you're anxious, the very hairs of your head have been numbered by God. And he sends you out now, not to wage peace, but to wage war. And you're going to take up your cross and follow me.

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But even if you lose your life, you're going to save it. And I will bless you and my Father will bless you in all of it. And so they went out having been instructed, two by two. And they came back later and they said, "Master, you should have been there."

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It was just the way he said it would be. And Jesus said, "When you were out there doing it, I saw you knock Satan from heaven to hell." He gave his disciples the three G's.

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He gave them growth by allowing them to adventure. He gave them gratitude. He offered them something they could carry with them and they were grateful for it. And he gave them the privilege of glorifying God by standing over against the enemies of God.

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This, then, is the leadership style of Jesus. To tell the truth, to be a friend, to serve humbly, and to keep. And as a result of his leadership, Peter, a loud-mouthed, sweating fisherman, was turned into the Prince of Apostles.

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Mary Magdalene, a prostitute, was turned into a princess of the faith. Zacchaeus, a crooked businessman, became a servant of the Lord. We're taught today that we're determined by our past. Dim memories we can't even recall, our racial unconsciousness,

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the environment about us directs us in the course that we shall follow. Jesus said the opposite. He said we are not determined by our past. We're determined by our future.

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The ideals that you have, the hopes that live in you, the spiritual forces to which you lay claim, following me as leader, that is what makes change. That is what makes new.

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And he did that in Lydia and Paul, and Monica and Augustine, and Wesley and Mary Fletcher, and Gladys Alward and Kagawa, and ten thousand times ten thousand we cannot begin to name. The greatness of Jesus Christ would mean very little or nothing to us

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if he could not lead us in turn into that same greatness. But he did, and he does, and it's the greatest delight of his life. That's the reason people have followed him. As you walk about this campus, I pray for you every day.

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I do not pray that your intellect will become greater, or that your will will become stronger, or that your knowledge will become more vast. I pray that you will follow Christ,

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and that others in turn will follow you if you will follow true human. [END] [Music}