Give God Your "Unruly Heart" for Lent

We saw the play, “The Prom,” recently at the College of Southern Maryland (CSM).  My son Brady was in the ensemble. He’s always loved to sing and act.  He hadn’t been in a play since seventh grade (2019).  He had the lead role in the eighth-grade play, “Annie,” but COVID cancelled it.  I always thought that loss was hard on him.  He turned his attention to baseball, playing for North Point (his high school) and for another travel team.  He even dabbled with playing baseball in college, but it never quite worked out.  That was a disappointment at the time.  But, in hindsight, I’m not sure it was supposed to. I think God may have something else in store for Brady…

My email address is al_can_dance.  I chose it years ago when I was first learning ballroom dancing during graduate school. I took dance classes during graduate school and for quite a few years afterward. I danced in some showcases; we even did a choreographed dance routine at our wedding.  I have fallen out of practice with dancing in recent years, nevertheless my email identity endures.  

 

Honestly, I never thought I was that great at ballroom dancing, but I liked the structure of ballroom dancing as opposed to freestyle where it seemed you made it up as you go.  My body didn’t seem to want to do that – ever.  Given I now know I am autistic, I guess there was a physiological reason why it was always so hard to just “get up and dance.”  The fact that I don’t consume alcohol excessively at parties might also play into the equation.  

 

But now there’s now a worthy heir to the can_dance mantra in the Ward family: Brady can dance!  

My son Brady  in the CSM production of "The Prom"

I knew that my son had been working hard the past few months to prepare for the play.  He had commented not long after rehearsals started in January that he had to learn to dance.  He seemed to have a bit of trepidation at first, but he spent lots of hours practicing in our family room.  He’d get a little conscientious when people paid attention to him for too long.  I came down the stairs once while he was practicing in the family room.  He looked up and said, “Hi dad,” then went back to what he was doing.  I kept walking and let him do his thing.  

 

Let’s just say I became quite familiar with many of the songs in the play long before we saw it.  (I had also seen a movie version of “The Prom” before.). Brady would rehearse the moves over and over again. He would play the soundtrack on his phone incessantly wherever he went.  He would watch YouTube videos of other productions of “The Prom.” But I have to say, all that hard work paid off!  He looked genuinely happy be on the stage again after a long hiatus.

 

Last fall was challenging for Brady.  In his first semester of college, he started out taking Engineering classes.  It was arough first semester.  Engineering just doesn’t fit who Brady truly is,   He tried baseball.  While he loves the game and comes alive on the field, I think even his passion for baseball pales to what I saw on stage the other night. Singing and dancing clearly brings Brady alive.    

After the show.

 I think Brady might be finding his way to following the sage advice of Howard Thurman, who said: 

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

 

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It seems somehow fitting that Brady, who as a young adult is discovering more about who he is, was in a play that focuses so much on “coming out” before the world.  [CAUTION: Plot spoilers ahead…] 

The story focuses a lesbian high school student named Emma Nolan, who is coming to terms with her genuine self in the conservative state of Indiana.  Her partner, Alyssa Greene, is the daughter of the school’s PTA leader, who clearly has traditional views on homosexuality.  Mrs. Greene works to keep Emma from attending prom, and when that fails, manages to get the whole event cancelled.   Later, when her efforts are thwarted through legal action and the prom is reinstated, Mrs. Greene organizes an effort to move the event to a new venue and make sure everyone knows – everyone, that is, except Emma.  She ends up humiliated when she shows up in her prom dress to an empty gym.  Not even Alyssa is there.  In the end, even Emma’s partner went along with the switch. 

 

In “The Prom” we see the furor that’s caused in a small town in the Midwest when one LGBTQ person simply wants to attend prom with the person she loves and with her fellow students.  So much so that the story goes national, attracting the attention of some actors in New York.  They at first see this cause as something they can get behind to help rebuild their reputations and help their struggling careers.  However, by the end of the play, they come to see beyond themselves and their own self-interests and help Emma have the Prom she deserves. 

 

There comes a point in the second act where Emma can’t hide who she is any longer.  The actors want her to go on TV to tell her story.  But Emma can’t do that.  She will tell her story to the world – but she will do it her way.  She does so by singing a beautiful song called “Unruly Heart.”

 

Some hearts can conform

Fitting the norm

Flaunting their love for all to see

I tried to change

Thinking how easy life could be

I just kept on failing

I guess that was a sign

That there wasn’t much hope 

For this unruly heart of mine

Then you came along

And right or wrong

Feelings began to overflow

We had to hide

Thinking no one else could know

And not having you near me

Was where I drew the line

So, I had to conceal

This poor unruly heart of mine

And though I don’t know how or when

But somehow, I learned to see

No matter what the world might say

This heart is the best part of me! So

So, fears, all in the past

Fading so fast

I won’t stay hidden anymore

I’m who I am 

And I think that’s worth fighting for

And nobody out there ever gets to define

That life I’m meant to lead

With this unruly heart of mine. 

 

Like Emma, I think Brady is discovering who he genuinely is.  I think maybe Engineering was something of a False Self (discussed below) for him.  I get the sense he was doing what he felt like others (his parents) wanted him to do or what some of his friends from high school were doing.  But those topics just don’t fit my son.  

What any parent wants most want for their child is for them to be and become the person God made them to be.  

Brady is clearly good at acting—and dancing.  He comes alive when he does it.  It’s wonderful to witness.  I was so proud of my boy when I saw him doing something that brings a smile to his face.   

 

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Of course, Brady isn’t the only one who’s been coming to terms with who he is.  I think we all find ourselves wearing masks in our lives that we need to take off.  My last blog post was about how I have been hiding from the world who I truly am and have begun unmasking.   

Unmasking

When I heard “Unruly Heart” the song lyrics spoke to me.  I felt like it was no coincidence that I was sitting in that auditorium at CSM.  I feel like God used the plot of “The Prom” to speak to me.  (I don’t recall the movie version impacting me the same way.) When I heard “Unruly Heart” I thought of my own journey of unmasking, of perhaps for the first time, being truly honest (genuine) about who God has made me to be, which I shared about in my last article.

 

I’m convinced that, risky and vulnerable as it can feel  to reveal it, we conceal our “unruly hearts” from each other at our own peril.  The world tells us there’s a certain orthodox way of being and we feel pressure to conform to it.  We experience shame – feeling that we ourselves are defective or unworthy or wrong – when we perceive we’re different from “normal.”  We learn to mask our differences  – to do what we think others want us to do to be socially accepted. We even try to conceal who we are from God – as if that’s possible. 

 

I think the plot of “The Prom” is a great Lenten metaphor.  Emma gradually unmasks who she truly is to the world.  For Christ-followers, the Lenten season is all about bringing who we truly are before God – without apology.  It’s a liturgical season that leads up to Easter where God beckons us to intentionally focus on confronting and ruthlessly eliminating those people and things from our lives that make us want to cover up our true identity – as a uniquely created beloved child of God.   

 

“The Prom” makes it clear that Emma’s choice to unmask wasn’t easy – and neither is it an easy choice for Christians to make during Lent, or any other season.  It’s easier to stay hidden – or to unmask only in controlled or “safe” contexts.  Our culture encourages us to hide behind all sorts of masks.  Everyone is doing it, so why shouldn't we be just like everyone else?  "Conceal... don't feel," right?

In "The Prom," Emma’s girlfriend Alyssa wanted to go that route.  She wanted to keep their relationship masked  – you know, "just between them." She didn’t trust what would happen if “the world” found out about them.  She tries to make Emma understand why she's doing this when she sings about what it’s like to be “Alyssa Greene.” 

While Emma understands Alyssa's concerns as well as anyone, she's also hurt when her partner makes this choice.  She decides to break up with Alyssa .  In one of the song lyrics at the end of the first act, Emma laments that – at the end of the day – “the night belonged to them.”  

But as the second act unfolds,  Emma reaches a point where she realizes she can no longer hide her identify with integrity.  She decides to tell the whole world (or at least the millions who view her song on the Internet) who she is.  Her choice to share her truth impacts others for the good.  They begin to share with her their own similar stories to the song lyrics of “Unruly Heart.”

 

I hope the same might be true for Christ followers during Lent that was true for Emma in “The Prom” – that as we share our truths, it would make others feel safe to share theirs.

 

Not long before he died, Howard Thurman gave the commencement address at Spelman College. During that address he speaks of the Sound of the Genuine.  In that speech, Thurman said:

 

“Now if I hear the Sound of the Genuine in Me, and if you hear the Sound of the Genuine in You, it is possible for me to go down in me and come up in you. So that when I look at myself through your eyes having made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall that separates and divides will disappear and we will become one because the sound of the genuine makes the same music.”

 

I interpret this to mean that when the Genuine in Me meets the Genuine in You (or, we could say, the Genuine in the Other) is when Genuine Encounter between souls becomes possible – and when we can experience our deepest connection (or union) with God.

 

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Another term theologians and therapists use for masking is the False Self.  There are messages we tell ourselves about who we are – or that others have told us – that wound us at the core of our being.  They become imprinted on our soul.   Over the years, we internalize them, to the point where we believe they define who we are.  So, we create a False Self to avoid the pain of these core wounds.

 

We might create this False Self when we are young to protect us and help us survive toxic family situations, or for a host of other reasons. So,  the False Self isn’t necessarily a Bad Self; it serves a purpose in our development.  However, there comes a point where, if we are to thrive as God intended (John 10:10), the False Self must give way to the Genuine Self.  We tend to cling to the False Self long after it has served its purpose because we fear what will happen when the truth is revealed: What will others think??  Will they be able to handle the Genuine Me?

 

Letting go of the False Self parallels walking the Threefold Way – discussed in my previous article.  Stripping away the False Self (purgation) before God and one another is not easy – but it must be done to allow God’s light to shine upon places that have long been shrouded in darkness (illumination).  In the Light of Christ, we begin to see ourselves differently.  The False Self slowly loses its grip on us, our connection to God deepens (union) and the Genuine Self begins to emerge.

 

Like Emma in “The Prom,” we have to reach a point where the fear of what will happen to us if we stay hidden surpasses our fear of revealing our Genuine Selves to the world.  

 

As Howard Thurman reminds us, what the worlds needs most is the “fully alive” versions of ourselves – i.e., the Genuine in You and the Genuine in Me having Genuine Encounters with each other and with God. And friends, as Emma Noland realized, that’s something worth fighting for.  

 

During the season of Lent, God invites all of us who follow Jesus to come out – to name and claim who we are and whose we are.  With that said, You – and only You – can decide when and to whom you reveal your Genuine Self.  Nobody out there can force you.  In the end, it’s up to you.

 

You get to decide the life you’re meant to lead with that unruly – God-given – heart of yours.

Unmasking Before God

Are you old enough to remember the classic Hanna Barbara “Scooby Doo” cartoons?  

Or maybe you’re a bit older and your introduction to Scooby and the “Mystery Incorporated” Gang was the more recent movie adaptations?  (They were so bad that they were good, right?  Maybe not…). 

Mystery Incorporated unmasks the villain!

As most of us probably know, at the end of every Scooby Doo episode or movie, there is always the scene where someone in the Gang (often it was Freddy) would say, “And now let’s see who this villain really is.”  Then they would pull off a mask and all would seem astonished at who was underneath. Although by that time, the Gang had figured it out, so they could explain to the viewers the devious plot that had unfolded over the past half-hour (or stretched out to nearly two hours for over-the-top movie adaptations.)

 

I’ve been thinking about Scooby’ and the Gang a lot as Lent approaches this year.  I’ve been doing quite a bit of unmasking in my own life.  I’ve been engaged in therapy for over a year,  and through that process I have learned that I have autism.  While I don’t have a formal diagnosis (at least not yet), I’ve come to recognize that I am in fact “on the spectrum.”  (Often Autism Spectrum Difference, or ASD,  is self-diagnosed.) 

 

I am curious how people that have known me a long time who are reading this receive this news?  Are you surprised?  Or have you always known there was "something different" about me?  (Honestly, this is kind of how I have felt after my diagnosis.)   Whatever your reaction,  I disclose this in hopes of being transparent and giving you better insight into who I am—and because I think there’s power in bringing things into the light. Maybe me doing so will give others courage to bring who they truly are into the light. 

 

I don't mean to make it sound like this has been easy for me.  I admit that receiving an ASD diagnosis at 53 was, in some ways, unexpected.  Honestly, I’ve wrestled with accepting it because it challenges me to face up to my limitations once and for all.  But at the same time, it’s been somewhat liberating to realize this about myself. This is a fundamental part of how God has created me.  As I hinted at earlier, having a diagnosis has helped me to better understand some things that have always been true about me and made me feel different from most people—and not always in a good way.  There has been shame—hat feeling that who I am was somehow  "wrong."

I also realize that while this diagnosis does give me an explanation for things I do—it is not an excuse for any of the negative impacts my behavior might have on others.  

 

As part of my journey of discovery, my therapist recommended a book called Unmasking Autism by Devon Price.  It was an enlightening read!  Hearing the stories of others with an ASD diagnosis, and what life has been like for them helped to illuminate – and validate – my own experiences.  

* 

As the book title suggests, the author stresses the importance of unmasking.  The theory is that we learn to mask aspects of our personality to be socially accepted as “normal.”  While all of us may mask some aspects of ourselves in certain situations, this behavior is particularly prevalent among neurodiverse individuals. We initially don the mask for many reasons, whether it be to be accepted socially, or professionally, or romantically.  In a world that tends to view neurotypical behaviors and mindsets as orthodox, masking can be a survival strategy for a neurodivergent individual. But sometimes we continue to wear the mask long after the need for it is gone.  I think that description rings true to my experience. 

 

 *********************

In an online sermon from 2011, Rector Adam Thomas observed that Moses did something similar to what I’ve been doing when he encounters God in the form of a mysterious Burning Bush early in the Old Testament book of Exodus.  Only instead of removing facial covering, Moses removes feet covering.  The Scripture tells us that upon approaching the bush, a voice called out to Moses saying: “take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.”—Exodus 3:5.  It’s only after the shoes come off that God begins to speak in more detail about what he is calling Moses to do – namely go to Pharaoh and demand that he let God’s people go.  

 

Adam Thomas observes that, like Moses, “We wear these invisible costumes and affix invisible masks to our faces in order to set up buffers between ourselves and other people. If other people get too close, then they might impel us to change, to see the world differently than we desire, to remove ourselves from the centers of our existence. Our costumes are our first line of defense to remain the people we’ve always told ourselves we want to be. The trouble is that the costumes also disguise us from ourselves. And so, we stumble into God’s presence wearing carefully crafted costumes and masks that create barriers between us and everything that is not us. And just as God commands Moses to remove his shoes, God tells us to take off the costume.”

 

And so, like the climax of a Scooby Doo episode, through therapy and lived experience, I’ve been learning to remove the mask(s) I’ve worn for a long time.  But here’s the thing, I find this kind of mask doesn’t come off all at once.  

 

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As I have been thinking about this gradual process of unmasking, C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia came to mind.  In “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” Eustace Scrubb is a reluctant participant in the adventure.  He’s the disinterested, lazy, self-centered cousin of Edmund and Lucy Pevensie (two of the rulers of Narnia).  In essence Eustace is a royal pain to the rest of the crew of the of The Dawn Treader.  And as the ship gets further and further away from Narnia his attitude only gets worse and worse.  

 

The Dawn Treader eventually comes ashore after weathering a brutal storm. One day, to avoid a day of labor repairing the ship, Eustace sneaks away from the ship and in the course of events he stumbles onto a hoard of treasure, which he promptly falls asleep upon.  Unfortunately, despite all the academic books he’s read, Eustace has never read about dragons.  So, he’s unaware that he who falls asleep on a dragon’s hoard is himself transformed into a dragon.  In fact, he doesn’t even realize he’s taken on this hideous form until he sees his own reflection and reacts in horror at what he sees. 

 

Toward the end of the story, Eustace returns to the Dawn Treader – as a human.  He tells the story of what happened to Edmund and Lucy.  He recounts how after he realized what he had become a Lion came to him and told him to undress.  He began stripping off layer after layer, only to find another layer of dragon scales underneath. No matter how many layers he removed himself, he could not escape the dragon’s form.  it was only when he allowed the Lion (who is Aslan, the Christ-like figure in Narnia) to undress him that the dragon scales finally fall off and he becomes who he truly was all along.  Here’s how he describes the experience to his cousins:

 

The very first tear [the Lion] made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart… Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was, lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been.

 

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I wrote the first draft of this reflection on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent 2025.  For centuries, the season of Lent has been a time when followers of Christ intentionally focus on undressing (or unmasking) before God.  

 

Like Moses, and like Eustace Scrubb, we realize that we can only truly encounter God — and encounter what theologian Howard Thurman describes as “the genuine” in another person – when we ourselves allow our unique, unapologetically, unmasked, undressed genuine selves to be seen.  

 

The classic Threefold Way is often discussed during Lent.  It calls Christ-followers to journey toward the heart of God.  It consists of three movements:  purgation, illumination, and union.  Purgation can be likened to unmasking or undressing,  as we remove whatever prevents us from bringing who we truly are into God’s presence – warts and all  From that place of vulnerability we are ready to receive illumination, as God reveals more of who God is to our genuine Self, which in turn leads to an ever-deepening state of union with God.

We have a Prayer Garden at our church that my son created for his Eagle Scout project.  It occurred to me recently that its design resembles the Threefold Way in how it's built.  

When Brady envisioned his project, he wanted there to be a path off the sidewalk that runs along busy thoroughfare in our community. That way, one has to choose to leave the "busy road" to enter the garden.  There's a symbolic stepping off the main road to reach this peaceful place on our church's front lawn.   I see purgation in the choice to leave the sidewalk and step onto the Narrow Path to enter the Garden and focus on God for a time.  After one exits the sidewalk, they walk down the stone walkway toward the center of the Garden where there are two benches, an Angel statue,  and a stone Cross, which in encircled by evenly spaced stones with words inscribed that include the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:19–21) and the tenants of the Scout Law – some of which overlap.  Walking this Narrow Path makes me think of illumination, as we intentionally move further down the Path and the center of the Garden comes into clearer focus.   To me, reaching the Center of the Garden represents union, where we can simply sit on a bench in God's Presence or perhaps kneel at the foot of the Cross.  

There is a QR code on a nearby tree offering prayer resources and more information about our Church for any who may be curious.  But, to be clear, the point isn't evangelism, as much as it is to simply welcome people in our neighborhood onto our property in a non-threatening way.  There's no expectation of anything in return.   Simply an opportunity to draw closer to God—which is the essence of Lent, and really of the Christ-life in general. 

The Lenten Journey: The Prayer Garden at Good Shepherd United Methodist Church
Waldorf, MD

Purgation: Leaving the sidewalk

Illumination: Walking the path.

Union: Reaching the Center. 

Although it's a helpful image for beginning to think about the Threefold Way, like many models, I think it oversimplifies our real spiritual journey to imagine it as a straight line.  We inevitably ebb and flow in our journey toward God, moving closer at times, drifting further away at others.  

In my experience, the journey to God is really more of a spiraling path, which Christ followers from the earilest days have symbolized with Labyrinths.  (They borrowed from non-Christian traditions in doing so; e.g., in Greek mythology the Minotaur lived in a labyrinth.)

The Labyrinth: The Real-Life Threefold Way

This spiraling nature of the spiritual journey is part of why it’s common to revisit the Threefold Path each year during Lent.  As we embark on the Lenten journey, we are like our friend Eustace Scrubb removing another layer of scales in the  dragon's lait.  We seek to bring our true Self before God, but we need help to get there—and even with God’s help, I find “scale removal “ is typically not one-and-done.  Transformation is itself a cyclical journey.  We purge away a layer, then receive illumination from God  leading to deeper awareness (union) of what still needs to be purged away, leading once again to purgation, and so on.  

The challenge for Christ followers during Lent is to be like Mystery Incorporated at the end of a Scooby Doo episode when it comes to our spiritual journey.  We too need to unmask the villain!  And that requires us realizing that the worse Villain of all often lives within us.  It is that Villain who robs us of the abundant life (zoe) we’re meant to live in Christ—John 10:10.  

 

Now I want to be clear.  We need to be shrewd and discerning about how and when we unmask, and before whom we undress.  But having said that, I’m convinced that the world gains little from us continuing to hide who we truly are from one another – and from God (as if we could do that if we tried).  The journey is not easy; it’s not without risk, but it’s what God calls us to do. 

 

I pray for us that this year’s journey to the Cross is one of shedding another layer of scales and moving closer to the true Human that God has created each one of us to be. 

The Heart of Leadership

 

For the past month at my church we’ve been doing a preaching series called, The Heart of Leadership.  Each week, the message focused on a different aspect of what I’ll call “Godly” or God-ordained leadership.   

It’s been quiet on the writing front for me lately.  However, particularly as we’re coming down the homestretch of a contentious—and extremely consequential—election cycle, it seemed like the content from this series was worth summarizing and sharing with a broader audience. 

 

The Table below gives an overview of the content of the entire five-week series.  The links in the second column connect to the YouTube stream of each service.  Since many readers likely do not want to listen to the whole church service, I included a timestamp beneath the link that lists the approximate start time of the sermon on the recording. I also created a narrative summary of each message, which is included after the table. I’ve tried to do the speaker (referenced herein as “Rev. Laurie”, a.k.a., my wife )  justice, but the content is based on the notes I took, which is my interpretation of what I heard.   

 

Table. The Heart of Leadership series overview. Characteristics of God-ordained leaders.

 

Date	Message Title Timestamp on YouTube	God-ordained Leaders...	Scripture(s)
9/29	Be Careful What You Ask For 49:20	Point people beyond themselves but to the things of God and protect the welfare of those under their care.	1 Samuel 8:1-9
10/6	True Vision 45:00	Help people “let go” of the past to free them and allow them to move toward the future God desires.	Numbers 14:1–10
10/13	Worthy of Trust 36:30	Prove themselves shrewd in dealing with the world and worthy of trust in small matters, so they can be entrusted with larger ones.	Luke 16:1–12
10/20	Building Connection 44:44	Connect with others and shepherd a diverse flock (community) unifying them around common goals for the common good of all.	John 10:2–4 Romans 16:7–8
10/27	Peacemaking 45:45	Guide people beyond lack of violence toward the presence of God—the source of ultimate peace.	Ephesians 4:1–6

 

The first message presented an example of someone who wasn’t an ideal leader—King Saul.  After the death of Joshua, a series of Judges ruled Israel, which is a loose confederacy of 12 tribes at this time.  (The book of Judges chronicles their stories.)  Samuel is the “Last Judge,” and he is now old.  His heirs are corrupt and deemed unworthy to lead.  Therefore, the question now before the people is: Who will be our next leader?   

 

Enter Saul—from the tribe of Benjamin—see 1 Samuel 9.  Now, this guy apparently was quite charismatic.  The Scriptures emphasize that he’s handsome.  No doubt he cuts quite a profile in his suit of armor.  He has all the qualities that humans think they want in a leader. And he’s clearly the Israelite people’s choice, which they make clear to Samuel when they say they want a King to rule over them—so they can be like the other nations that surround them—1 Samuel 8:5–6.  

 

The problem is that Saul isn’t God’s choice.  Nevertheless, God tells Samuel to give the people their wish and anoint Saul as King.  God says: They aren’t rejecting you, Samuel; they are rejecting me—1 Samuel 8:7.  If one continues reading the story told in 1 Samuel, one sees that Saul struggles as a leader.  In fact, God eventually commands Samuel to replace him—with King David. (Read the story of David’s anointing by Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:1–13.)  David has to battle the jealous, rejected, deposed King Saul before he can assert his rule.

 

Now, unlike Saul, David wasn’t the “obvious” choice to be a leader.  In fact, he’s the youngest of eight of Jesse’s sons.  His family considers it so unlikely that he would be the  “chosen one” that he isn’t even in the room initially when Samuel comes to visit.  He’s an afterthought, out tending the sheep.  But wonder of wonders, David, the youngest son, is in fact the one that God has chosen.  

 

As God reminds Samuel: The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart—1 Samuel 16:7. Although the stories in 1 and 2 Samuel reveal that David is far from perfect, he is also described as a man after God’s own heart—1 Samuel 13:14.  He possesses the inward qualities of leadership that are the best indicators of God-ordained leadership.[1]  

 

The takeaway from this message was that the people’s choice is not always God’s choice.  We must exercise discernment when choosing a leader—which requires us to look beyond exterior qualities to try and understand the inner life of the individual.  We should choose leaders who will rule less like Kings and more like Judges (shofets), who will point us beyond themselves to the things of God, and who will seek the welfare of those who put their trust in them. 

 

After setting the stage with King Saul, the following four weeks focused on qualities of God-ordained leaders.  We first considered how true leaders are visionaries who help people “lay down” whatever holds them back from moving toward the future.  We focused on a story from Numbers, where the Israelites, on the cusp of entering the Promised Land, learn (from spies sent to investigate) that the land they are entering was already occupied and that they will have to fight to take possession of the land.  Upon learning this, all the people became fearful and anxious. They want to “turn back” to Egypt…  

 

Well, not quite all the people… Moses and Aaron, both seasoned leaders, are troubled by the people’s outcry to “go back.”  They “fall on their face” before God to seek discernment.   Meanwhile, younger visionaries like Joshua, and Caleb speak against the prevailing sentiments of fear.  They insist that there is no turning back!  They assert that the land they are about to enter is “exceedingly good” and they implore the people to let go of their past and trust God to provide what they need to move forward into a new future. The people, however, remain skeptical.

 

In this message, Rev. Laurie also talked about the Jewish practice of tashlich, which involves casting breadcrumbs in water on Rosh Hashanah.  The brushing of breadcrumbs from one’s garments into water (where they dissolve) symbolizes a “laying down” of the sins that burden them as they prepare for the day of atonement on Yom Kippur.   She asked us to think about what we needed to let go of as individuals—and as a community—to allow us to move forward less encumbered into the future God has for us.  

 

The next week’s message focused on how leaders prove themselves to be trustworthy.  We considered the wisdom contained in Jesus’s parable of the dishonest manager.  Like the middle manager facing loss of his job in this story, a leader must be shrewd, wise to the ways of the world, and able to navigate the challenges of living faithfully in a world that bombards us with messages that tell us to focus on ourselves and turn away from God.  Even under intense pressure, God-ordained leaders trust in God’s unwavering reality.  (There are four lights!) They prove themselves “faithful in small things” every day, and over time, people entrust them with bigger and bigger roles and responsibilities.    

 

The following week, we discussed how we entrust leaders as connectors.  Good leaders are gatekeepers—but they don’t use the gate to regulate who’s in or who’s out of the flock.  No, in fact, as Jesus says of himself, they are the gate.   Rev. Laurie described how shepherds in the time of Jesus would literally lay their bodies in the entrance to the sheep pin to protect the flock from intruders. The shepherd protects those under his (or her) care.  They welcome members from multiple flocks into the sheep pin.  They connect with one another—and with other flocks—and celebrate the diversity of sheep within the sheep pin.  The flock knows the shepherd’s voice and can distinguish it from other voices that compete for their attention.  Good leaders celebrate their diverse flock and unify them behind common goals to work toward the common good of all.

 

In the final week of the series, the focus was on leaders as peacemakers.  In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “blessed are the peacemakers.”   What does it mean to be a “peacemaker” in a world where one news headline after another promotes the paucity of peace on our planet?  Well, here’s the secret: The media feeds on the absence of peace.  From their perspective, peace is boring—not newsworthy, and yet how deeply our souls long for it.  True leaders grasp this reality and guide followers  toward God’s peace—the “peace that was meant to be.”  They point us beyond the absence of violence to the very heart of God.  

 

Well, that’s my take on The Heart of Leadership series. Does one of these qualities stand out to you?   I don’t think this list of leadership qualities is exhaustive.  What other qualities do you look for in a God-ordained leader?  Maybe it’s a good topic to pray about before you vote on November 5.  Maybe you could find some friends and have a dialogue about this?   We can learn much from our conversations with others when we take time to genuinely listen to them.  

 

As Howard Thurman reminds us in The Sound of the Genuine: Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if you hear the sound of the genuine in you, it is possible for me to go down in me and come up in you. So that when I look at myself through your eyes having made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall that separates and divides will disappear and we will become one because the sound of the genuine makes the same music.

 

Leadership is an important topic for all of us to think about.  The choices we make for those who lead us have lasting consequences.  I pray for discernment as we (in America) cast our votes on November 5, and as we move forward toward the “future with hope” that God promises to give us. 

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[1] For context, the last several paragraphs go beyond the scope of the first message, which focused on 1 Samuel 8:1–9.