The Real Leader

Gandhi once said that he did not know if he was lead­ing the peo­ple or if they were chas­ing him. The art of pol­i­tics has to do with get­ting in front of the herd I sup­pose. Peo­ple really are not led by a top-down approach. The pyra­mid forms at the bot­tom. The first stone is not the one at the top. The top stone is indeed the last. What Jesus referred to as “worldly” has to do with the illu­sion of the pyra­mid approach to lead­ing peo­ple. That is why he washed his fol­low­ers feet, rather than sit­ting in some kingly man­ner at the Last Sup­per. Rev­o­lu­tions that last are for and about the hopes of the every­day person.

“Peo­ple vote with their feet and their pocketbooks” — as the old say­ing goes. It is true for every orga­ni­za­tion out there. The crowd deter­mines the fate of the leader in any major­ity rule sit­u­a­tion. Jesus came to turn that upside down. We rule by serv­ing. We are kings by dying pen­ni­less and aban­doned — because we did not go along with the crowd. Chris­tian­ity is a counter-movement to all social and polit­i­cal move­ments. It refuses to be hijacked by any “ism” that seeks to call it to ser­vice. It calls the haves to give; it calls the lazy to work; it opposes the injus­tices in all polit­i­cal sys­tems; it even keeps itself in a con­stant state of reform.

Pedestals become crosses. The snow at the top of the social moun­tain is really salt. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” In the end, the peas­ant has more power than the king. The peas­ant does not need a fol­low­ing, or the bless­ings of the state or the church of the day. Those liv­ing clos­est to the earth are more apt to be one with it. The great­est ship is steered by the lowly unseen rudder.

Of all the peo­ple I pity, it is the folks with faces we all rec­og­nize from var­i­ous media. They have no pri­vacy; they are praised and then ridiculed; some­times they are envied or despised to the point of being mur­dered. No, give me a life in the back­woods or the dis­tant desert com­mu­nity. If you can rec­og­nize your next door neighbor’s face, and do some­thing for him or her in the name of Christ or human­ity, then you are the real leader that rules the whole world.