In this sermon, Anne show how Jesus both teaches and demonstrates the God-honoring, life-giving attitude toward servant leadership. She makes the point that while this attitude must undergird any of our leadership endeavors, it does not provide guidance on what it means to lead or what we should be leading toward. For that, it is helpful to understand the human experience as a combination of two axes, our capacity for meaningful action (authority) and our exposure to meaningful risk (vulnerability). The flourishing life that God invites us into is “up and to the right”: the quadrant where high authority is coupled with high risk. However, we tend to find ourselves in other quadrants, requiring strong leadership to guide us into the flourish quadrant. In particular, starting with Adam and Eve, we grasp for control (high authority/low vulnerability), including independence from God. Yet, in doing so, we not only set ourselves on a fast track towards death, we also lose the relationship with God that empowers us to take meaningful, life-giving, lasting action (suffering: low authority/high vulnerability). As High Priest, Jesus leads us out of the suffering of our own making, first by his death that breaks the power of sin that drives us to seek control and then by inviting us to confidently draw near to his throne of grace, knowing that he is intimately familiar with our suffering and is eager to empower us in our weakness (Hebrews 4:16). And we, as his royal priesthood here on earth (1 Peter 2:9) participate as Jesus leads them into the flourishing life by embodying his sympathy that invites people to draw near and receive grace and mercy from us, that they may build confidence to draw near to Jesus on his throne of grace.
