Power, Influence & Authority

1. Leader or Bully?

I wonder whose leadership style you most admire: King Solomon or the son who succeeded him, Rehoboam? King Richard the Lion Heart or Elizabeth 1. Among the world's movers & shakers today there may be some that you think of as strong leaders and some that you might feel are bullies.

I recall a discussion early in my ministry when we tried to tease out the themes of Power, Influence and Authority as they apply to ministers. We have power to apply the constitution, the authority to preach and preside at communion and the opportunity to influence people by the way we serve and the preaching and teaching we offer.

Our readings today are filled with references to these themes. When Amos used the plumbline of God’s standards to judge Israel, Amaziah the Priest at Bethel told him to go back to his day job. After all what authority did he have? None, other than the call of God to be his spokesman, at a pivotal time.

So did Amos have Power, Influence or Authority? And what about Amaziah, the priest? He had a publicly recognised office which conferred status. But what influence did he exert , how did he use his power, what real moral authority did he have?

In the Gospel reading for today we see King Herod behaving as a bully rather than a leader. He was motivated by anger, by fear of losing face, manipulated by those around him and colluding in the coercion & control of his neice and step daughter who tradition has called Salome.

Does it matter how a statesman or woman behaves in their private life? For John the Baptist the fact that Herod took his brother’s wife as his own wife was unacceptable. He spoke out and paid a heavy price.

So, was Herod a leader or a bully? Did he exercise power, influence or authority? I have a couple of books on leadership on my shelf. One I read several years ago was by the mayor of New York who responded to the 9/11 event - Rudi Guiliani. At the time I was greatly impressed but Guiliani has been disgraced and his book would read very differently now. Another book is by former MUFC Manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, but is his the kind of leadership we would want in the Church, or even in civil society.

Today’s reading touches upon similar territory. Herod Antipas, gives in to pressure and goes against his conscience.

In 1963, psychologist Stanley Milgram researched how far people would go to obey an authority figure, rather than their conscience. Participants thought the that the experiment was to test the effect of punishment on learning. They had to flick a switch on a machine whenever a person in a another room got a question wrong. They wrongly thought that this would give that person an electric shock.Strangely, not only did they all comply when told to press the switch they believed delivered the lowest voltage, but most also obeyed when instructed to press the highest voltage switch, which was supposed to give a severe shock, despite believing that this would cause suffering. Many participants protested or seemed distressed during the experiment. Yet despite believing what they were doing was wrong, they gave in to pressure to conform.

Our Gospel story poses an interesting question: who was to blame for the Baptist’s death? Many would say Herodias, the instigator of the crime. She had a grudge against John after he’d publicly condemned her adulterous marriage to Herod Antipas, the brother of her ex-husband.

What about Herod’s stepdaughter, Salome? If she hadn’t obeyed her mother’s wicked instructions, John would not have been executed. She apparently relished her involvement in the scheme, rushing back to Herod to demand John’s head “at once” and adding the gruesome request that it be delivered on a platter. But was she the victim of coercion & control?

Herod was the poweful tetrarch, ruler of Galilee. Mark calls him “king”, as if to emphasise the irony of such a powerful man apparently being manipulated by a young girl. So entranced was he by her dancing that he promised her anything she wanted up to half of his kingdom. Herod seems powerless to resist her demand for the head of John the Baptist, and feared losing face. He knew John was “a righteous and holy man”, but Herod still had him executed. He deserved to have a troubled conscience.

Milgram, was prompted to carry out his research by the trial of SS officer Adolf Eichmann, whose defence was that in killing Jews he had simply been following orders. Herod probably justified his actions in a similar way, telling himself that he had no choice. In reality, Herod, Herodias and her daughter were all culpable for John’s death because each could have stopped this tragedy from happening.

2. Authority or Upstart?

There’s a question running through today’s readings: Who has real authority and who is an upstart? In Ephesian 1:3-4 St Paul speaks about the authority of God in Christ which permeates the whole Universe. Everything in the Cosmos is included under God’s authority. Jews and Gentiles fall within God’s authority and plan. In the resurrection of Jesus, God acts to ‘gather up all things in Him”. (Eph 2: 15). And in Psalm 85 we have a vision of a world reconciled to God and at harmony with itself.

I wonder what lessons we draw from these themes concerning the life of the Church in relation to the wider world, and our mission in today’s society? What is the right balance of power, authority and influence that the Church should try to exert? And what about us as individual Christians and Christian families? How do we influence our families, our friends and our neighbours?

3. Peeling the onions.

Just like an onion has many layers so the ideas of power, authority and influence each have very many layers of meaning. Power, for example can mean the brute power of muscle and might, or the gentle power of self sacrificing love, epitomised by Jesus. Authority can be the stern authority of a learned judge backed by the strong arm of the law, or the moral authority of the Dalai Lama. There is the authority of status & wealth or scientific knowledge, epitomised by Professor Chris Whitty. Influence has been described as our legacy. Irvin Yalom describes how we leave a ripple effect of influence behind, so that our influence is passed on in ever widening circles starting with those we love and through them to others.

CONCLUSION: The Baptist points to Jesus.

The role of John the Baptist is to point to Jesus. Something of the balance he exhibits between power, authority & influence forms part of his role as forerunner. Jesus perfectly balanced these 3 dimensions of leadership. In Him we see Divine Authority expressed in servanthood, Cosmic power expressed in self-emptying love and a redeeming, sanctifying, influence revealed on the Cross. For Christians, Jesus is the plumbline against which all leadership and service is to be measured.