Called to serve

Father Themba Mafa, the principal of St Michael’s College, was watching a football match with a group of boys which included John, the head boy. Suddenly, something happened. Fr Mafa rushed towards the players, and in no time an injured boy was in the principal’s van.

John followed on foot to the administration building. As he entered the building, he met the injured boy and Fr George Hunt, a missionary from England. Other boys came and accompanied the injured player, who walked with a limp towards the hostels, his right ankle bandaged. Fr Hunt and John followed.

“Fr Mafa is an amazing man, isn’t he?” Fr Hunt said.

“What I have noticed,” John responded, “is that he is always there to give us support, and if anyone is injured or meets some misfortune, Fr Mafa is there to give a helping hand”.

“Well, he has taught me a lot,” said Fr Hunt. “When I left England, I thought I knew my Bible well until I met this African priest. The first lesson that struck me was when we all realised that Petros, the cook, was no longer coming to work on Sundays. I then noticed that Fr Mafa was preparing lunch for us and I asked him why. This was his response: ‘You know what, Fr Hunt, you may not realise that Papa Petros is a married man. He should not only have time to go to church on Sunday; he should also spend quality time with his family. I therefore thought that in order to facilitate this I should take it upon myself to prepare lunch for all of us on Sunday.’

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“The long and the short of all this,” Fr Hunt concluded, “is that we have all learned to wash one another’s feet by taking turns to prepare lunch on Sunday while Petros enjoys quality time with his family. We learned this from our servant leader, Fr Themba Mafa”.

We often think of leadership in terms of position, privilege and the exercise of power. When we occupy leadership positions we want other people to bow down to us; we may want to be feared; we want other people to notice our positions and to treat us as bosses—as kings and queens.

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We are not alone in thinking like this. The mother of the sons of Zebedee thought like that; Jesus’ disciples thought in the same way—even after spending two to three years with Jesus.

Jesus regarded the issue of leadership as such an important aspect of his teaching that he did not leave it to chance. He was at pains to teach his disciples what it meant to be a Christian leader, and in doing so he turned worldly notions of leadership upside down. For Jesus a leader was a servant. He even used the word “slave” to describe a leader: “Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10: 43-45).

Like Fr Mafa in the story, bishops, parish priests, mother superiors, ministers of state, state presidents and, yes, parents, should all be servants who serve the people over whom they have authority.

We refer to our Creator as God Almighty, but as Christians we know that the Son of God did not bring salvation to humanity by exercising power, but by serving. Jesus did not come with great choirs of angels blasting trumpets and with him shouting: “Here I am! I am the Son of God come to save you sinners from the fires of hell!” Instead, He came as the Lamb of God who paid the highest price by dying a painful, shameful and disreputable death on a cross.

On the night of the Last Supper, Jesus instituted servant leadership by washing his disciples’ feet and commanding them, and us, to do the same to one another.

The question that arises is: If this is what it means to be a leader, how can the leader make things happen? Did Jesus teach doormat leadership? Did he say as a leader you should allow everyone to despise you, spit on you and walk all over you? These are issues that need further consideration.