Think about this for a minute! It is time to elect a world leader, and yours is the deciding vote. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates:
- Candidate A associates with crooked politicians, consults with astrologers, has had two mistresses, is severely disable, chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.
- Candidate B was kicked out of office twice, slept until noon, used opium at university, is an undiagnosed manic-depressive and drinks a bottle of whiskey every day.
- Candidate C is a decorated hero, vegetarian, doesnt smoke or drink, except for an occasional beer and has never had an extra-marital affair.
Who would you choose?
Candidate A is Fraklin D.Roosevelt. Candidate B is Winston Churchill and Candidate C is Adolf Hitler.
Sometimes the best candidate on paper is the worst leader in reality. Thank goodness Jesus did not hire a management consultancy to help him recruit his earliest disciples. On paper Peter, James and John would not have got past expressing interest in the job. Jesus recognises, however, that they had the three things necessary for Christian leadership: faith, hope and love. Not that they had it immediately. We know they constantly misunderstood Jesus and tried to sheer in other ways. They made promises they did not keep and they abandoned Jesus when the going got tough.
But they had the one thing that nearly all great leaders have in their formation: a mentor who knows that are not perfect, forgives their limitations, tells them the truth, brings them back to what they are actually on about and inspires them by what he says and how he lives.
Sometimes we think the Gospel always demand a very different lifestyle to the one we have, and sometimes it does, but today's Gospel (Luke 5:1-11) should be taken seriously, not literally. Luke tells us that the disciples 'left everything and followed him'. We know that following Jesus did not demand of Peter, for example, that he abandon his family. Luke is telling us, then, that to follow Jesus is a radical option and that we have to divest ourselves of anything that stops us serving the kingdom of God.
