Leaders and teams

When Richard and I preach, you will notice that we love our discussions to be two-way. When we hear from each other we get such a richer sense of what the Scripture means. We build family together by hearing and learning more about each other and how we think.

So, the first question of today. Think of a leader you admire - it could be someone famous, or just someone you know who has great leadership skills. What do you think makes them a good leader?  Here’s a few examples to get you started…

You might describe today’s passage from Luke’s gospel as Jesus’s pre-match pep talk, as football coach for his team.

Right before this passage, Jesus has been up a mountain, all night, to pray. And then he has come down, and chosen his core team: the 12 people who will journey alongside him, who will become his apostles - those who will be sent. And here are the three things we see Jesus do in this chapter:

Jesus prays.

Then Jesus picks his team.

Jesus gives the ultimate pre-match pep talk.

Jesus prays. Although I’m not going to spend too much time on this today, let’s just take notice of this. Before he does anything, Jesus spends time with God his Father - going up a mountain where he won’t be bothered.  He takes time to be refreshed for what is ahead, to remind himself of his identity as God’s loved son, and to spend time listening to what God has to say about those who God would like to be Jesus’ close team. When we listen to God, often we hear the unexpected, and the unexpected is definitely what happens next when Jesus announces his team.

Jesus picks his team.  Here’s something Nate put together this weekend. These are Match Attax cards - you collect them and swap them and put together your dream football team. Each player is rated on their various different types of skills and their net worth.] But here’s the thing about Jesus team: you could not really pick a more unlikely bunch. They are ordinary. So ordinary. They have no special education or qualifications. They’re not wealthy, they’re not famous, they have no particular mana or influence with those around them. Most of them left very little mark on church history. But still, Jesus chose them.

They don’t even have that much in common.  Take Matthew for example. He was a tax collector - a Jew levying money from fellow Jews to give to the occupying Romans. Therefore, likely to be seen as a traitor in the eyes of his fellow apostle, Simon, who was called ‘the Zealot’. As William Barclay notes: “...the Zealots were fanatical nationalists, who were sworn to assassinate every traitor and every Roman they could. I wonder this week - is it like Jesus putting together someone who adheres to government guidelines around Covid, and someone who protests at Parliament around vaccine mandates?

Then, Jesus gives the pre-match talk, part of which we heard in this morning’s reading. Not so much yet about what to do, but more about how to be: the family or team values of God’s kingdom.

Continuing with the football team, here’s a clip from a recent TV show, Ted Lasso. It’s about an American Football coach who is employed to lead an English premier league football team, Richmond FC, without any prior knowledge of football. Ted has a completely different cultural tack to what the team have been used to, and gradually Ted begins to transform the team as they learn to trust him. We see them here at half time, when they are in a draw - their first chance to win in many years…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_TJHIV5vDs

What did you notice about the difference between the team’s perspective and Ted’s perspective?

You’ll notice too that like in our passage Ted is not detailing what to do, but rather, how to think. Jesus also will get to what to do, but first he focuses on how to be. He’s talking to the disciples. And he divides his ‘family values’ into four: four blessings, and four opposing woes, or in some translations, curses. Before we go on, let’s just unpack the word woe, or curse. In our language it sounds really harsh. But the word Jesus used is actually one that in its original context was softer - one that had more compassion and was more a term of regret.

And like Ted, but on steroids, Jesus values are completely different to what is expected.

Here’s our first blessing, with its opposing woe:

Blessing 1: Blessed, or happy, are you when you are poor. Yours is the kingdom of God.

Woe 1: Woe to you who are rich, you have received all you are going to get.

Let’s get one thing straight first. Jesus isn’t saying that being poor is fabulous. He knows it sucks and we see throughout the Bible God’s preferential treatment for those who are vulnerable. One theologian I read this week says: “He is not blessing poverty in itself: that can as easily be a curse as a blessing…He is speaking of his disciples. They are poor - both spiritually and materially - and they know that are without resource. They rely on God and they must rely on him, for they have nothing of their own on which to rely.  This might be why the corresponding woe here says - you have received all you are going to get. When you have more, it’s easier to become self-reliant, and to not seek that greater intimacy that God offers.

Blessing 2: Blessed are you when you are hungry; you will be filled.

Woe 2: Woe to you who are fed now, you will be hungry.

In Matthew’s gospel where he details the same passage, he takes this further - he says blessed are you when you are hungry for righteousness.  When you hunger for justice and righteousness. Do you long for things to be made right? When you are hungry, you are making space for God within your life because you know you cannot solve the world’s problems on your own. There’s also that spiritual hunger, which is so important - that sense that we don’t have it all understood, our doubts and our fears. God honours this: seek first the kingdom of God. Ask, Seek, Knock - and the door will be opened. If you’re already satisfied, there’s no room for God to work and change and transform within you.

Blessing 3: Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Woe 3: Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn.

Jesus is not objecting to laughter. Jesus laughs a lot. ‘His whole ministry was a protest against the killjoy attitude. ‘But there is a laughter that is the expression of superficiality’. Shallow merriment. Do you laugh without seeing the hurt in the world around you?

Do you weep for the suffering you see in this world? When there is joy and righteousness and breakthrough in the midst of suffering, does it not make that joy so much sweeter?

Blessing 4: Blessed are you when people hate you and insult you because of me

Woe: Woe to you when people speak well of you

Here Jesus is talking about suffering because of him. It’s going to happen that in God’s upside down kingdom that people are not always going to like what’s going on because God’s values pose a challenge to the comfort of the status quo and systems and powers of injustice. Here’s something I read yesterday:

‘It is a danger when all men speak well of you, for this can scarcely happen apart from sacrifice of principle…A true prophet is too uncomfortable to be popular.’

Isn’t it freeing - that it’s OK that not everyone will like what you have to say? It’s normal. Rest in that normalcy. Particularly hard for me when I like to be liked.

—

I used to get hung up on using each saying as a check box for how my faith was going. But these are not entrance requirements into Jesus’ team, or into God’s family. Rather, they outline the family ‘way of life’. What is important to God. Here’s my summary of what I think Jesus is saying:

Rely on God with every fibre of your being. He cares for you. Trust him. He will give you what you need.

Leave room for God. I am more than enough for you.

See the suffering and help me bring light and life into it.

Don’t worry when it’s hard. You’re probably doing it right. See points 1 and 2.

I wonder which one of these sticks out to you today?

—

The observant of you will have noticed that there is a strange spiderweb on the floor today. As I close today, I want you to imagine that in the centre here, we have Jesus, eye to eye with the disciples, giving them today’s pep talk. We have 12 lines coming from here - one for each disciple.

From there, let’s just say that each disciple, transformed as we know they were by their friendship with Jesus, shared this invitation to friendship with Jesus and his upside down kingdom values with three other people that they in turn discipled - although we know they did much more than this. From there, each of those three new disciples discipled three more. And so on, and so on.

I’m not placing us here today at the outside of this web. I’m placing us about [here]. Because actually I want us to think about who comes after us. And we are connected as much to the centre here - tracing back to those people who were faithful to God’s call on their lives - as we are to the ones ahead of us.

In missional discipleship there is the phrase ‘slow is fast’. When you take the time to build relationship, to sit in prayer and worship, to discern what God is asking you to do in mission - these things are often slow, and involve deep small group-based relationship with a handful of people. Maybe even just three at a time.

—

I started today asking you what you thought made a good leader. For some leaders, the call for those who follow is to place themselves on a pedestal and expect others to serve them. Or to have one standard of behaviour for those they lead, and another for their own behaviour (Boris?).

But for Jesus - those disciples, and us as disciples - we are asked to love in the upside down way that Jesus himself loved. We are asked by Jesus to go and do what he does: to make disciples. And to make disciples, we have to lead. We are told we will be equipped to do the work through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So - whether or not you think yourself as a leader - know that you are. You are chosen by God. You are invited into friendship with Jesus. And you are asked to share that friendship with others. It doesn’t need to be as scary as you think it is, or mind-blowing, or revolutionary.

Margaret Mead: Never underestimate the power of a handful of committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that has. Look at the history of Christianity: from Jesus, to the twelve, outwards, and outwards and outwards, to the end of the earth. Jesus will build the church - we are promised this - the only thing we are asked to do - our Great Commission - is to go make disciples.

Let me pray

Lord God, thank you that you invite us into great intimacy and friendship with you through Jesus. We open ourselves again today to the deep friendship offered to us. As we do so, Lord God will you give us eyes and ears to see those around us who you in turn are calling into this friendship. Give us courage to be your disciples, and in turn disciple those around us, because we know and believe that the world so desperately needs to know your great love.

Amen.