the seed of humility

Last Saturday I had the privilege of facilitating a discussion on church leadership for four Pentecostal pastors near the town of Cradock.  Our primary text was the parable of the sower and the seed (Mark 4:3-9).  In my own preparation for the session, I noted especially the description of the seed.  The seed, which Jesus later tells the disciples is the word, "falls" to four environments.  Three of those environments are not conducive to "bearing fruit" (4:7,8); the seed is eaten by birds in one; scorched by the sun in another; choked by thorns in a third.  Only in a fourth does it find "good soil" in which it yields "thirty, sixty, a hundredfold" (4:8).  Yet whether to the good or to the bad, the seed "fell".  I suggested that the "falling" of the word described the life of Jesus himself, the Word of God which came down from heaven to dwell among mortals.  Such a falling was a "humbling", an obedience to the love of God even to death on the cross (Php 2:8).  As the seed was eaten, burned, and choked, so the Son was crucified.  And just as Jesus humbled himself, so leaders in the church are called to humble themselves whether the environment is "favorable or unfavorable" (2 Tim 4:2).

In response, one pastor shared a story from his work in the correctional services of South Africa (most pastors we know are bi-vocational).  He said that he was talking to an inmate who said that you "can't be soft or people are just going to walk right over you."  The pastor then shared with us that, while he was contemplating this inmate's advice, "I remembered what it says in the Bible, that 'he was led like a sheep to the slaughter', that he did not even 'open his mouth'" (see Isa 53:7; Acts 8:32).  The pastor believes that this is the way for leaders in the way of Jesus.

It is important to acknowledge the predicament of people suffering injustice and those whose vulnerability is exposed in a place like prison.  It is important to remember that calls to bear abuse without a word can sound like an affirmation of injustice in the ears of those who bear the brunt of that injustice.  It is also important to remember, however, that if leaders did abide by the humility of Jesus, our world would not suffer the injustice it now does.  In spite of its circumstances, the world needs disciples who will take up the cross after Jesus, whose lives will point the world back to the self-giving love for which it was created.

-Joe