Lose That You May Find (Part 4)

Thursday, Mar. 26, 2009 Posted: 11:02:01AM HKT

The god of the world, whose lieutenant elsewhere is called mammon, promises Jesus the whole world, if He would “worship” him. As Nouwen points out, among the three temptations used by the devil to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, this was the “temptation to power.” Yet the way of Jesus and of His leadership is not through the will to power. It is a rise to leadership that rather comes through taking the low place. It is the way of taking the servant’s role, the place of the child. It is through way of the servant and the child, because only through this way, can the Father lead Jesus.

It is thus not an active-tense paradigm of leading, but rather of a passive-tense paradigm of leading. It is thus a way that is not best described as leading, but rather of— being led. Right there in the desert, Jesus therefore established His whole way of leadership— servant-leadership. It was to be the way not of upward mobility, but of “downward mobility, ending on the cross. Nouwen perceptibly draws the application: “The Christian leader . . . needs to be radically poor, journeying with nothing except a staff . . . (Mark 6:8). For only through embracing the process of becoming poor in the eyes of this world order, can we discover Jesus’ “giving” style of leadership.

This is a style, which in the Gospels, Jesus calls, servant-leadership. And through it we foremost learn that the greatest need we have as leaders, is not in knowing how to lead, but in how to be led, “by allowing ourselves to be led.” So what Jesus’ reply to the devil signified was that he was further entering into his kenosis. Right there in the desert He was further emptying Himself of all his heavenly glory, that He may model trust in the Father alone. So right there, Jesus goes back in time to where Adam fell. But where the first Adam failed, the second Adam succeeded, for “he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death upon a cross.” (Phil 2:8). He lost his life that He may find it again for all mankind.

This reflection naturally infers why we must embrace the “fear of the Lord.” It should naturally empower us to realise that the grace-touched life is a life thoroughly lived out in the “fear of the Lord.” For to become a servant-leader like Jesus, we must realise that too often in this present age, “Wealth and riches prevent us from truly discerning the way of Jesus. So in reply to the devil, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 6:13, “You shall fear the Lord your God and serve only him.” Now what does it mean to “fear the Lord,” other than to worship Him alone? To fear the Lord is to reverence God. Reverence is giving God space to be God in our life. Reverence, fear, worship— it all means the same thing. To fear God means that we trust not in ourselves, but trust our entire existence into the hands of God. Reverence, the fear of the Lord, is no less or more than letting God be God! We let go and let God be God! To fear God means that we longer strive to achieve and attain, but we let go and let God lead us. We surrender to the flow of His grace.

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Rev Monte Lee-Rice
The Christian Post (Singapore) Guest Columnist