By Cathy Hird

This week, I am telling a traditional story that is, in part, about choosing your leadership style. I will base my version on the way a man we know as Matthew wrote it.

At the height of the Roman Empire, a time of oppression and economic injustice, a man sees the need for a new pattern for his society. He bathes in the Jordan River, washing free of the system that oppresses his people. He rises from the water to seek a new way. As he rises, he has a vision that God has chosen him for the work of societal renewal.

Sensing new power and responsibility, the man named Jesus retreats from the centre of his society to spend time alone in the wilderness, to reflect on what kind of leader he will be.

By the end of this solitary time, Jesus is hungry. There is a whisper in his ear: "You can feed yourself; just turn the stones into bread."

Jesus has been hungry before, and he knows that the poor are hungry all the time. Looking at the stones, perhaps Jesus thinks about the rich who feed themselves while paying their labourers a pittance. He remembers the way the rich build bigger and bigger barns to store their excess produce while the people scrounge for bread. The land needs a leader who will move them toward justice and sharing.

Jesus turns aside from the temptation to use his power for himself. He says, "People shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." God's law included forgiving debts and freeing slaves, showing love to neighbour and stranger. Jesus chooses to be a leader who moves his people closer to those laws, toward a just community.

Jesus looks toward Jerusalem, the centre of power in his land. He knows the temple is there, and this time the whisper in his ear says that he could climb to its pinnacle and jump because God would send angels to catch him; he is too important to lose.

The people, especially the Galileans among whom Jesus grew up, desperately want a god-inspired soldier to lead then. Jesus could have raised an army to lead against the Roman army in no time. But the legions are strong and brutal, responding to the slightest sign of rebellion with bloodshed and crucifixion. Turning to war and violence would be like jumping off the temple and expecting angels to catch him.

Instead, Jesus will call together an alternative community, a group who will live God's way of love and justice in the midst of the world. Instead of heading to the temple, Jesus turns toward rural Galilee to begin to draw together a community of followers, a fellowship of healing and sharing. He will not be a soldier.

The whisperer is not done. The voice says that all the kingdoms of the world could belong to Jesus if only he bows down to him.

Jesus has seen many of the leaders turn from God to ideas that become idols. The rich seek wealth. The temple leadership bow to Rome. And even the righteous Pharisees make rules that serve themselves. Times have changed, and the Pharisees do have to interpret rules that were written hundreds of years earlier when the land was settled, but Jesus has seen the way some manipulate the laws to their own advantage, to line their own pockets.

As leader, Jesus could say, "Look at me." Some of the people he heals will say, "Look at his power and his love." But Jesus says that the one who has power must be the servant of all. The one who is at the top must put themselves at the bottom. The way to lead is to serve. "Only worship God," he says. "Attend to God, and to each other, not to me."

People today use Jesus' words and actions to support many different patterns of leadership. What the stories of Jesus show is the power of service to others. His kind of leader does not serve herself or himself but looks after the outcast, the poor. His way opens a path for others to prosper.

Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister and writer living near Walters Falls.