Where have all the great leaders gone?

Where have all the great leaders gone? You might notice a theme here. In the last decade or so the leadership in Australasia seems to have been lacking and we drift from one crisis to another when dealing with moral and ethical issues. And for us here in North Sydney we are off to the polls again today for a by-election. Like before we seek someone who will lead us forward into the future looking to the good of all not factional groupings only. We search, but it’s really a struggle to find likely candidates. We can read the history books and tell the myths of great leaders: Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Mother Theresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Winston Churchill, King David, Solomon. And yes, they may have had personal faults, but they were real leaders.

By contrast, Luke in this week’s gospel reading lists a rogue’s gallery of tyrants and appeasers. He begins with Caesar Tiberius, the reluctant emperor of Rome. Next he mentions Pontius Pilate, who earned a place in the Apostles’ Creed by crucifying the Messiah. Then he mentions the local leaders, including Herod, who only pretended to be from the Jewish culture, killed John, and took part in humiliating Jesus. Finally, Luke mentions the religious leaders, Annas and Caiaphas, puppet high priests who handed Jesus over to be crucified. So when Luke rattles off this list of leaders, he’s not just describing historical detail. He is cataloguing rotten leaders: dictators, pork barrel politicians, televangelists, ditzy pop celebrities and so on.

Rotten all the way from the top, the very heads of state, to the local mayors and ministers. Whenever we read the newspaper or listen to the news about MP’s and Prime Ministers, senators and presidents involved in sexual affairs and military scandals, or pop-culture celebrities trading stocks with insider information, or megachurch leaders and ministers embezzling money, we shake our cynical heads and shrug our shoulders. So what else is new? We have no faith in human leaders, and we expect them to be flawed. Maybe it has always been this way. So, we ask ourselves, where have all the great leaders gone?

Luke tells us that God speaks to John the Baptist. Through the middle of the chaos of the world, the word of God comes. We don’t get to hear what kind of word it is. However it came, it seized John and would not let him go. One day he was just John, Zechariah’s child and then we find him suddenly being a prophet. He went into the region around the Jordan, baptising people and talking about the kingdom of God. It seems that God’s word does that to people. It grabs them and shakes them. God’s word came to John, and we see its effects. It comes, it transforms, and it sends.

I have this image of John the Baptist in my mind shaking his fist and letting people know in no uncertain terms about their lifestyle being not of God. He speaks dangerous words about a social revolution. It frightens Herod enough that he has John permanently silenced. We hear the same revolutionary message from Mary, when she says “God has pulled rulers down from their thrones.” And Christians radically all over the world pray every Sunday for God to change things when we pray, “your kingdom come.”

But the kingdom of God does mean a social revolution. God brings a completely different kind of kingdom, and John is its herald. God speaks to John, and gives him a fiery message to remind us of things we’d rather not know about especially things about ourselves. John does not give a lengthy treatise on what baptism means, but clearly challenges us to, “Change our life and get clean!” He speaks to something inside of us that yearns for a fresh start.

When we look at the world through a cynical lens, and shake our heads at how terrible things are, and wonder where all the great leaders have gone, we know, deep down, that human beings are what’s wrong with the world. One only has to look at the violence against each other and our treatment of creation for which we were given stewardship to see this. As we prepare ourselves for the celebration of the Incarnation we are reminded not to waste time. Instead, we are called to turn ourselves, and turn the world into what God created us to be.

The revolution begins in you. When we are baptised and claim the name of Christian, God’s kingdom grows a little larger, and the mountains where kings and tyrants sit shrink a little lower. John the Baptiser is also John the Road-builder. He’s the foreman of a crew that includes you and I, making a straight highway for our God.