“I am your Lord and Teacher, and I have just washed your feet. You, then, should wash each other’s feet. I have set an example for you, so that you will do to one another what I have done for you”. John 13,14-15
“If one of you wants to be great, he must be the servant of the rest. And if one of you wants to be first, he must be your slave, like the Son of Man who did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life to redeem many people”. Mattthew 20,26-28.
It is like children sitting in the market place and calling to their playmates: “We piped to you and you did not dance! We wailed, and you did not mourn!” Matthew 11,16-17
By tradition and habit we are accustomed to think of a priest as a parent, a “father”. The idea is so familiar to us, that we never stop to question its validity. Scripture gives very slender support to the identification of the two notions.
Paul considered himself a father to Timothy (Phil 2,22) and reminds the Thessalonians that he treated them as a father would have done.(1 Thes 2,11) But Paul also compared himself to a mother (Gal 4,19) and his proper way of addressing the faithful is not as “children” but as “brethren”, that is: “brothers and sisters”.(1 Thes 2,1)
When Christ describes the function of his apostles he never compares it to parenthood.
He speaks of them as fishermen, (Lk 5,10) as farm hands sowing the seed, (Mt 13,3) as shepherds. (Mt 18,12) The image that returns most often in Christ’s teaching is that of the servant, the minister, “the slave whom his master has placed in charge of the other slaves to give them their food at the proper time”. (Mt 24,45)
Jesus could not have stressed the point more emphatically than by giving the example of the washing of the feet. This was the model he wanted them to keep in mind when thinking about their future ministry.
;; Christ did not demand more from his apostles than he applied to himself. Christ did not put himself forward as a parent. Nor did he ever describe himself as “father”. We may be sure this was not an unintentional omission. It was Jesus’ outspoken and conscious awareness of his own role. To the rich young man he says “Why do you call me good? Only One is good”. (Mt 10,18) To the apostles he says, “Do not call any one here on earth ‘father’ for you have only the one Father in heaven”. (Mt 23,9) Christ looked upon his own position as that of the servant who had come “not to be served but to serve”, (20,27-28) and he expected his apostles to adopt the same attitude.
The psychological school of transactional analysis has proved that in all our dealings with others we switch between three roles:
In a mature personality, each of these roles contributes its own share. We arc psychologically unbalanced if we either allow any of these roles to dominate, or suppress any of them. This means that if leaders only have a father figure, and cannot be child or adult at other times, they have warped personalities.
To put it in a different way: persons in authority are greatly mistaken if they think that they always have to act as parents. A leader’s contribution will not be complete if he or she cannot permit oneself to be also true to one’s child and adult roles.
The exaggerated stress on the parent role of leaders in society frequently causes structural changes in the community. It results in the “paternalistic” model of administration. In this model all responsibility resides with the parent figure on top. The parent dominates the decision-making process. He or she judges the health of the organization by the measure of control which he or she can exercise over the whole structure.
Paternalistic organization has the disadvantage that the whole community depends only on one person, on his or her insights and priorities, for the decisions it needs. There is no proper “feedback” or broad-based information. Subordinates will be silenced or will reduce their involvement to a minimum. A paternalistic system cannot properly face up to changing conditions or new challenges.
Christ’s way of dealing with the apostles and the other disciples was certainly not “paternalistic”. He moved and acted as one of them. He showed himself not like a father, but like a brother, “like his brothers in every way”. (Heb 2,17) Christ called himself with preference “the Son of Man”, an Aramaic expression which may freely be translated as “the common man”, “the ordinary man”, “the man like everyone else”. But Christ’s aversion to a highhanded approach did in no way minimise his authority. Christ proved in his life that it is possible to combine being the perfect leader and the perfect servant.
Christ’s maturity of character is revealed in the natural way in which he could act as a child. Christ liked to be with children. (Lk 18,15-17) When the sinful woman washed his feet, he allowed her to do so and he expressed to Simon how much he appreciated such symbols of affection. This is a trait of the child role, (Lk 7,44-47) Christ compared himself and John the Baptist to children playing in the market place. (Mt 11,16-17) At the return of the seventy-two disciples he exulted with the joy of a child. (Lk 10,17)
Psychologists tell us that such features in Christ’s character made him an admirable leader of people. By being spontaneous and happy, inquisitive and responsive as children are, those in authority can achieve much more with their subjects than by the fatherly approach which comes from above.
Paul tells Timothy that he should admonish old men in the community as if he were a son speaking to his father. (1 Tim 5,1)
The adult role, rather than the parent role, is the psychological personality adopted most frequently by Christ.
When the Roman centurion argued out his belief in Christ’s power, Christ praised him for this insight. (Mt 8,5-13) Talking to the messengers of John the Baptist Jesus appealed to their reason, (Mt 11,4) as he often did in his preaching. (Jn 10,31-38) Jesus convinced Thomas of the reality of his resurrection not by coercion, but by showing the wounds in his hands . (Jn 20,27)
The gospel has recorded many sermons of Jesus. If we study them we find that he did not normally speak in a condescending or paternalistic tone. In fact, Jesus conversed with the disciples of Emmaus for a whole day (Lk 24,27) and they just considered him an ordinary person. If Jesus had a distinctive style of paternalistic lecturing and preaching, they would have recognised him by it.
The father image of ecclesiastical leaders can so easily force them into into a pattern of action that is contrary to the gospel. The “servant” model of the ministry allows much more scope for interaction from the leader. As Christ himself, the person in authority should not be afraid to act normally: to allow his “child”, his “adult” or “parent” personalities to take over as the situation demands. The responsibility of an older brother or sister expresses the relationship much better than that of a parent. At any rate, a conception which we may have of our leadership role in which we could not naturally wash the feet of those entrusted to us, cannot be right in the light of the gospel.