The Leaders We Deserve
Rev. Dr. DeWayne L. Davis
July 21, 2024
Scripture: Jeremiah 23:1–6
As our nation prepares for the coming U.S. Presidential election this fall, we are again flooded with 24-hour political analysis and horse-race coverage. We are contending with the profound weaknesses of our democratic institutions, with scholars warning that American democracy is flawed or backsliding. We also have a situation where the two major candidates seeking the presidency are the oldest and most unpopular to seek the office, raising questions about their ability and capacity to do the job. One candidate is a convicted felon with plans for significantly altering and dismantling the government bureaucracy and was the target of an attempted assassination. We are so distracted, outraged, and entertained that we barely notice how little has been said about people’s needs. When was the last time you heard a serious conversation about poverty, the unhoused, the uninsured, the unemployed, or climate change? But this is also a time when the church has lost its voice in forecasting its values in the run-up to the election. I’m not talking about any partisan or policy issue the church may seize upon as part of the web of political interests in a pluralist democracy. I’m talking about what our faith offers for those who want to reflect on politics and policy with moral imagination and bring to bear the faith questions of love and justice in the public square. How do we consider what thus sayeth the Lord in a way that could be heard in this volatile moment?
Now, I want to be clear. Nothing in our sacred writings anticipates or speaks to a modern political system like our democracy. Nor can we expect the Bible to speak to the particular failings and challenges of a 21st-century capitalist economy. But the Bible does provide us with a theological framework and theological language with which to think about and consider leadership and governing. Specifically, the prophetic oracles, especially those of the prophet Jeremiah, permit us to think outside the confines of the conventional political discussion of leadership during a Presidential election year. We get the opportunity to think theologically, not religiously or ideologically, but theologically, reflecting on what leadership means when we consider what the character and expectations of God may be prompting us to see, imagine, or aspire to. This was Jeremiah’s prophetic task in light of Israel’s public reality of existential crisis and a failure of leadership.
In its covenant relationship with God, Israel had the obligation and responsibility as God’s partner to reflect and embody God’s hesed—God’s lovingkindness; God’s tenacious solidarity[1]—in its treatment of its people, those on the margins, and their neighbors. The people of Israel wrestled with the question of leadership, spiritual and political, as a reflection of what God expected, especially during the nation’s existential crises. The prophets repeatedly reminded them that the most critical variable by which the question of leadership and faithfulness is tested is how they tended to the welfare and well-being of the people. God called the prophet Jeremiah to make known the prophetic expectation, critique, and judgment on Israel and its leaders for the kind of leading and governing they did, warning the people that destruction and exile were imminent because they failed to lead and govern justly and righteously.
Israel is in the middle of an existential crisis with relentless prophecies of destruction and exile. The Babylonians are increasingly menacing Israel, and the people are engaged in a national conversation about, “What are we to make of the Babylonian threat?”[2] Many believed that God would not let Babylon destroy Israel. The triumph Israel had historically known and experienced created within them narratives of exceptionalism. Israel is too important to God for anything bad to happen. God promised Israel safety and prosperity; God won’t let it fail. But Jeremiah has to speak against this narrative of exceptionalism, this royal consciousness, to five failing, cowardly, complacent kings, Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, to get them to look closely at how they have failed to be the kind of leaders God called them to be. He has to get them to admit and repent of their economic exploitation, self-aggrandizement, self-justification, and the injustice and unrighteousness that prevailed under their leadership.
The failed kings were leaders who approached the national crisis using realpolitik, in which pragmatic, calculated considerations mattered more than theological values of care and justice for all the people. Their every move became an exercise in the “pursuit, possession, and application of power” with little or no regard for the needs, concerns, and interests of the people they led. They failed to live up to the very thing God commanded and expected—to tend to the welfare and well-being of the people. So, Jeremiah pronounces, “Woe.” Woe is that prophetic grief, that tip-off from the prophet that God is grieving and lamenting what they are doing. Woe to you shepherds who destroy and scatter the people, who drive people away, who do not attend to the people, who do evil things. This prophetic woe means that the current leaders will not be protected from the consequences of their failure to lead and govern with justice and righteousness. The assurance from God is that God will step in and care for the people. God will do what the so-called leaders have failed to do—tend to the welfare of the people and bring them back home. And more than that, God will find and raise new leaders who will care for the people, prosper them, and provide them with peace so they are no longer afraid or hopeless.
Those are the kind of leaders we deserve—leaders who will not discount and ignore the moral dimension of leadership. The leaders God is calling do not build themselves up by driving people away from doing justice, demonstrating neighborliness, seeking the common good, or securing the blessings of democracy for every person. We deserve leaders who will look out for the welfare and well-being of all the people.
Right now, there is so much cynicism and disappointment in our leaders in all areas of our life and culture. We can hear the despair in the political conversation, especially among the young. We are living in the “woe” era in our country. But we deserve better leaders. The failure of current political leadership does not mean we deserve what they do to us, even if we have chosen them. The demands of justice and the promise of democracy are not nullified because our leaders cannot meet the moment. The leaders God calls, the leaders we deserve, are those who will, first and foremost, care for the people. The leaders we deserve will execute justice and righteousness and do what is right and just in the land. That is the standard, regardless of the political party, religious tradition, or denomination.
But I think Jeremiah’s prophetic oracle was not just a critique of failed leadership amid the pending crisis of exile. Jeremiah prophesied a future beyond the crisis. He saw in that coming future the need for a new kind of leadership for God’s people scattered around the known world. God was looking for leaders beyond the great kings. In the cultural and religious understanding of Jeremiah’s day, separation of faith and state was not the protection that the people needed. They needed leaders who would execute justice and righteousness. Whether one was a king, a military leader, a teacher, or head of the family, God expected them to take care of those they shepherded and to execute justice and righteousness in the land. God expected leaders to gather people in the bonds of covenant and tend to the needs of the people so that they were fruitful and prosperous. So, this prophetic word comes to us in our context. Perhaps we are called to accept that the kind of leaders we need may not be found in the highest office in the land. As members of this community, each of us is a leader in our own right. Whatever our territory or sphere of influence, we are entering a period that requires us to become leaders who embrace those scattered and driven away. As Professor Eddie Glaude eloquently said, “We are the leaders we have been looking for.”[3] This prophetic oracle calls for us to prepare for the future beyond the crisis and tend to the welfare and well-being of the people.
Like many in Israel before the Babylonian disaster, some believe everything will work out. Some think our democracy has weathered worse times and will prevail beyond this crisis. There are many in our time who are in denial about the reality of the many ways that the American project has not lived up to its promise, that we have failed to secure the blessings of liberty for the many, that the old certitudes of white supremacy, male domination, and religious hegemony will fight desperately keep their power, that the voices of retrenchment to make America great again will trade in fear, hate, and violence to pit neighbor against neighbor. In God’s promise of a future beyond the crisis, there are new questions we have to answer: How do we bring people in? How do we broaden our views, imaginations, and the boundaries of our physical, spiritual, and national spaces to include the many? You, as part of this community, have the potential to expand your horizons and embrace a more inclusive perspective. How do we hold and tend to our neighbors’ needs and aspirations so we can realize “a collective good life”?[4]
Jeremiah’s prophetic words are an invitation to demonstrate our faith in the possibilities of neighborliness and beloved community in a democracy. The times call for leaders like us in this room to trust God’s promise of a future beyond the present crisis. The leaders we deserve will shepherd the people, bring us back together again for a common national purpose, address and attend to each other with equity, dignity, and compassion, and execute justice and righteousness in every corner of the land. I recall that Jesus, his disciples, and the early church rose to meet their moment with a commitment to be good shepherds who led and governed with justice and righteousness. We now, the hearers of God’s prophet to shepherd the people, are the repository of the hopes, dreams, and aspirations for a better way of life and realizing a collective good life. God is calling leaders like us to care for the welfare and well-being of the people. May it be so.
[1]Translation of hesed found in Walter Brueggemann, Virus as a Summons to Faith: Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief, and Uncertainty (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020), 32.
[2]Walter Brueggemann, Like Fire in the Bones: Listening for the Prophetic Word in Jeremiah (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 11.
[3]Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2024).
[4]Ibid.