The Importance of Contemplation for Leaders
(Warning: this is longer than usual and it may be too long to be a helpful newsletter.)
When I arrived on campus as a freshman in college, one of the first people I met was my new swim coach. As I entered his office for the first time, he looked me up and down and then cautiously approached. He asked me to lift up my shirt and then he grabbed my love handles. This may seem a bit awkward for those of you who don’t know “coach,” but it didn’t feel weird at the time. He graciously communicated to me that part of my journey as a college swimmer was going to include some weight management.
Most young swimmers can pretty much eat whatever they want without worrying about gaining weight, but for me, I’ve always been predisposed to pack on the pounds. This has meant I’ve had to work hard at managing my weight.
There is a spiritual analogy to my battle with weight gain. An oft-repeated condemnation of leaders in the Bible is the way they use their positions of power and authority to get fat. This could be a reference to literal over-eating, but I think it speaks more generally to the temptation all leaders face to use their position for self-aggrandizement – to make their “self” larger. Listen to Ezekiel’s message to them:
Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally… Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet?
“‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says to them: See, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. ~Ezekiel 34:2-4, 18-20, NIV
Ezekiel is calling the religious leaders of Israel to spiritual weight management. They are using their positions of leadership to care for their own needs and wants, to make themselves grand. However, it is worse than that. Not only are they enlarging their own selves, but they are also making it harder for those they lead to get any spiritual nourishment at all. We all know what a leader who “gets fat” looks like:
This is the leader who uses his or her authority to control others and get everyone to do what they want. Not because their way is best, but because they have to be in control.
This is the leader who needs everyone to love him/her. They are unable to lead in times of difficulty because they are immobilized by fear of what others may think or totally consumed with the pursuit of praise and affirmation.
This is the leader who thinks first about preserving their position of power. All decisions are filtered through a rubric of: “what’s best for my career.”
If I’m honest, these tendencies seem natural to me when I first notice them in myself. I often think my way is the best way. I can find myself wrestling with a decision when I know it will impact how others think of me. And, I’ve been tempted to make strategic decisions based on my desire to secure a leadership role in the future. In the moment, taking care of my “self” – or self-feeding in Ezekiel’s language – feels normal.
I know I’m not alone. I’ve heard people wrestle with this tension in spiritual direction. And, I see this same dynamic at work in the life of the apostle Peter. Peter is clearly a leader, but he has to face his own internal desire to use his leadership to protect and promote his own self. That’s why we see Jesus regularly re-orienting Peter towards this call to feed the sheep.
In John 21, Jesus reinstates Peter to a leadership role by explicitly saying to Peter: “Feed my sheep.” This means that Jesus is connecting Peter’s Good Friday denial with a self-preserving style of leadership that was embodied by Israel’s leaders of old. He is also reminding Peter that to be a leader is to make it your mission to “feed” others.
This is the calling of all Christian leadership. In whatever sphere of leadership we operate, you and I are called to feed the sheep. Peter exemplifies how challenging this call is. We see him struggle with the urge to feed himself. It’s as if he were a contestant on the Biggest Loser and we get to watch him battle with the ups and downs of spiritual weight management.
In Matthew 16, we see the degree to which Peter resists this call to feed the sheep. When Jesus explains that it is his mission to offer himself for others, Peter reacts. He is so confident that leaders are not called to this life of other-centered feeding that he rebukes Jesus.
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” ~Matthew 16:21-23, NIV
It’s easy to judge Peter, but he’s doing what most of us would have done. He is functioning from a place that prioritizes self-preservation. This is the posture that reasons: leaders are important so we must keep them safe…for the good of the organization. This belief can go to extremes. We can justify almost anything in the name of self-preservation if we think it’s good for our leadership.
Jesus knows this, so in his final words to Peter in the John 21 passage, Jesus promises that if Peter lets go of the impulse for self-preservation, then Jesus will feed him. That is, Jesus promises Peter that he will take responsibility for taking care of Peter.
Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” ~John 21:18-19
Jesus says to Peter, “feed my sheep,” and trust that I, Jesus, will take care of you. I will lead you and dress you. Only, there’s a twist. This promise to take care of Peter isn’t a promise to preserve his self. Jesus makes clear that Peter is headed towards martyrdom.
This is terrifying to me. I can’t help but wonder how Peter received it. The whole reason I struggle to heed this call to “feed Jesus’s sheep” and not myself is precisely because I’m afraid that if I don’t take care of my “self” then no one else will. Jesus exactly confirms this fear. He says, “you prioritize feeding my sheep, and I will lead you…to your death!”
How do you handle this reality as a Christian leader?
There is no guarantee that the Lord will preserve our “self.” When you and I stop feeding, defending, and preserving our “self” it is left vulnerable, and it will likely get wrecked. That means, Jesus’s promise to feed, dress, and lead us must imply something more mysterious than what we initially expect.
This is where a critical turn inward must occur. You and I must learn a new way to eat that isn’t centered on feeding our “self,” but rather is centered on nourishing our spirit in contemplation.
Earlier in the gospel of John, Jesus shows us that he is able to eat this contemplative food. After not eating literal food for a long time, he offers himself in loving conversation to a Samaritan woman at the well. When his disciples urge him to eat, he says: “I have food that you know nothing about.” This is the way he feeds others. He knows how to eat contemplatively.
Then, a couple chapters later, he promises us that we can eat in this way as well. We can feed on him:
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” ~John 6:53-58, NIV
There is mystery here; and certainly there is an allusion to the eucharist. But at the core, Jesus promises to feed us as we abide/remain in him. I take this as an invitation to find the things we most deeply need in a mysterious, prayerful relationship with our Lord. In all aspects of our life, we are invited to commune with Jesus and experience spiritual nourishment.
Contemplation is the way we feast on Jesus. It is a soul-satisfying prayer experience where the Lord gives his very self to us. It is this intimacy that nourishes us. It gives us the power to deny our cravings to self-protect, self-enhance, and self-promote. And this, in turn, frees us to give our energy to feeding others, which is to lovingly give our lives away in service to them. This is not a one-time choice. It’s a daily discipline akin to paying attention to what we eat.
On most days, I log everything I eat into an app. I track how many calories I burn on my fitness watch. I give a remarkable amount of energy to my weight management, because that’s the only way I can stay healthy.
The same is true of my spiritual leadership. If I stop paying attention, I can give myself over to the same sort of self-aggrandizing, self-preserving, and self-centered errors exemplified by Peter’s life. Even though Jesus offers me food that nourishes my spirit, I can grow tired of the disciplined practice of contemplative prayer. When that happens, I can easily turn instead to the junk food of praise from peers, the euphoria of achievement, and the self-satisfaction of getting things done.
In this way, we see a difference between weight management and the attention we must give to feeding our spirit. I am not called to carefully manage what my “self” eats (as I do with calories). Instead, I’m called to a form of self-starvation, self-denial, and even self-death. I am called to abandon all self-feeding strategies and turn instead towards Jesus for food that nourishes my spirit. This is not primarily about managing calories. It’s an invitation to a totally different way of eating through contemplation.
The irony of the spiritual life is that we are often best able to make this turn towards contemplative feasting exactly in the hardest seasons of life. It is when our “self” is suffering that we have a newfound energy to turn towards the Lord for spiritual nourishment. And as we do, we notice our external “self” shrivel, but our soul expand toward a grand spaciousness.
The example of Peter reminds us that this call to feed the sheep isn’t exactly a call to spiritual weight management. Rather, it’s an invitation to starve the self, and feed the spirit through contemplation.