Rev. Douglas J. Early: Sermons from Queen Anne Presbyterian Church
Rev. Douglas J. Early: Sermons from Queen Anne Presbyterian Church
"No Fuhrer" / Barmen 4
Recorded on Sunday, July 20, 2025. Scripture cited: Matthew 20:20-28; 1 Corinthians 4:1-2.
A good friend of mine, a while back, was the director of housing for the Archdiocese of Seattle. And one day he called me up and he said, "Doug, what is it with you Presbyterians? Don't you priests have any authority? Any power?" First of all, he called me priest because he's Catholic and that's what I would be in his system. So he says, "What is it?" And I'm like, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Well, when I'm doing a project that involves land that's a part of a Catholic church, if I need an answer or need something, I just call the priest and he says yes or no and that's it." He said, "Lately I've been dealing with this property that's part of a Presbyterian church. And every time I call up the priest and ask him a question, he says, 'Oh, I'll talk to my committee about that." He's like, "What's the deal? Don't you have any power?" And I chuckled because the truth is, "No," I don't. In a lot of respects within our congregation, within our denomination, pastors don't have power; or, they don't have any more power than anyone else in the congregation. I don't have the authority to make unilateral decisions.
Rev. Early:The founder of what is now Presbyterianism was essentially Jean Calvin. John Calvin. A French man who what got kicked out of France, had to start his church in Geneva, Switzerland. Calvin had a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of human beings. For human beings, Calvin felt that the more power was concentrated, the more it corrupts. And therefore, when he set about to establish a structure for a church, he diversified the leadership, both within each congregation and within the denomination as a whole. So both in theory and in practice, no one person in the Presbyterian church makes significant decisions on their own; at every step along the way, majority rules. Even at the national level, a majority of all the presbyteries in the United States have to vote in favor for any change to be made to our Constitution.
Rev. Early:For any of us who are familiar with this organizational structure and the decision-making process in the Presbyterian denomination, it will not likely be much of a surprise to know that Presbyterians had a very significant influence on the design and practices of the government of the United States. Two-thirds of the framers of the Constitution came from Calvinist backgrounds. Two-thirds! And one-third of the signers of the Constitution were specifically Presbyterian. One member of the British Parliament of the time, Horace Walpole, even said in Parliament in England, "Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson, and there's an end of it." A major focus for the design of the system of government in the U.S. was very much from Calvin's theology that the more power is concentrated, the more it corrupts. And so there should be a diversity.
Rev. Early:Calvin did not come up with this on his own. Perhaps the greatest influence for him was from our gospel passage for this morning. The setup for Jesus's teaching in this context is almost comical in its buildup. One of the moms of the 12 apostles asks Jesus for an extremely prestigious and powerful position, actually two positions, for both of her sons ("Mom, knock it off"). When Jesus sets up his kingdom, mom wants James and John to have special privileges, special positions. So Jesus asks, "What do you want?" She tells him what she would like. And his eventual response, in itself, reveals his own, even his own, limitation of power: Verse 23, "To sit at my right or left is not for me to grant (Remember, this is Jesus talking) That's not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father." And then the story continues. When the ten, the other apostles, heard about what mom and her sons had done, they were indignant with the two brothers. And, of course, the humor continues here because they're so upset because they probably wanted those same positions and the others got there first to ask! But from wherever their indignation arises, it leads to Jesus proclaiming his most forceful teaching on power and leadership for his followers. In verse 25, he says, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them." The Greek words that are used here by Matthew for how Jesus described secular leadership heightens the domineering approach of secular leaders. Both words have the same prefix attached to them that emphasizes a kind of hyper version of both situations. So Dale Bruner comments that the prefix used makes them both "arrogant" verbs. These are very arrogant approaches to leadership that are taken by the secular leadership. Jesus continues, verse 26, "This should not be so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. And whoever wants to be first must be your slave."
Rev. Early:The two most prominent guiding descriptions for Christian leaders are "servant" and "slave." And this is for leadership, those who want to be great. Notice that Jesus doesn't discourage a desire for greatness. He just completely redefines what greatness means. "Whoever wants to become great among you," he doesn't stop there and say, "Well, you're already wrong if you want to be great." No, "Whoever wants to be great among you, that's fine. But know that it means you must be a servant. And whoever wants to be first must be your slave." And it's not something that Jesus merely preached. It is what he lived. And he emphasizes this at the very end, "Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (verse 28). Jesus, who was God in the flesh, gave his very life to serve all of humanity.
Rev. Early:Dale Bruner writes, "So seriously does Jesus take the way that we work that he uses his death to motivate it. This illustrates the importance of ethics in the New Testament." And Eberhardt Bush elaborates on Jesus' leadership ethic: "We should note carefully that Jesus in the text does not abstractly contrast powerfulness with lowliness. Jesus opposes this secular understanding of powerfulness with another greatness and powerfulness. In this other powerfulness, people are able to and actually do, as a matter of course, what rulers with all their capacity are not able to do, to carry out the office of servant. Christian leaders do not do this by submitting dumbly and blindly carrying out the commands of other people without contradiction. Serving is the actual form of their powerfulness. It is their form of freedom. They do it responsibly without shifting their responsibility over to the one in charge. They do it after the model of their Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Son of Man, superior to all the powerful, and who came without laying that power aside, but demonstrating what it truly is to serve. By doing that, he frees us. He frees us to follow him and to share in his freedom so that we, like him, can serve." Again, the focus is on service.
Rev. Early:We heard Paul affirm this ethic in his letter to the Corinthians, "So then people ought to regard us as servants of Christ, as those entrusted with the things of God. And now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful in their service" (1 Corinthians 4:1-2). This is the leadership ideal for all followers of Christ, service in whatever form.
Rev. Early:This was the leadership ideal set out in the Declaration of Barmen in 1930s Germany. The fourth declaration begins by quoting Jesus, in our gospel text. Specifically, again, verses 25 and 26, "Jesus called them together. You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. And whoever wants to be first must be your slave." That's how the fourth declaration opens. And then in their own words, they continue, "The various offices in the church do not establish a dominion of some over others. On the contrary, they are for the exercise of the one ministry entrusted to and enjoined upon the whole congregation." The text, the Declaration of Barmen, continues in the theological understanding that the entire church has one mission. All of us together have one mission, to love God and to love others as God has loved us. Every member, every single one of us has a part in this mission. And whatever part we have, our status is the same - we are servants. We are all servants of Christ for the benefit of all.
Rev. Early:Barman then adds a very crucial note, "We reject the false doctrine as though the church apart from this ministry could, and were permitted to, give itself or allow to be given to it, special leaders vested with ruling powers." That phrase, that designation, "special leaders," is very significant. In the German, the word they used was "Fuhrer." We reject that we would be given a "Fuhrer" or that we would create our own. Eberhard Busch explains why this word was used specifically, "Thesis four expressly uses the term Fuhrer, which at the time had been moved to the foreground with such great splendor by Adolf Hitler. They choose this word and reject it. Fuhrer means that everyone else behind and beneath him constitute the mass of people who have passed-on their responsibility to this leader. They've abdicated their responsibility. They are not liable for whatever they do or have done in obedience to the Fuhrer. Indeed, obedience is regarded as a virtue, even if in their obedience they may have been murderers. They do not make use of their own rationality, but rather act and proceed along their way under the widespread slogan of the day, 'Fuhrer command, we follow you." The German church was declaring that statement at the time, "Fuhrer, you command, we will do." Eberhard continues, "This was totally compatible with the worldview of the then Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, who viewed all of humanity as divided into two groups by nature, into a small elite of those who are to lead and the mass of those who are to implement the will of the elite."
Rev. Early:This same worldview drives the proponents of white Christian nationalism in the United States today. More and more power is being concentrated into the hands of one man and one role, President Trump. And everyone else is expected to obey, even if the executive orders are unethical or illegal. And just like in Nazi Germany in the 30s and 40s, today in the US, enough people are willing to obey that millions of people are suffering and millions of people will die as a direct result of Trump's orders.
Rev. Early:We know, now, the horrors of the Holocaust under Hitler, six million Jewish human beings, killed! Millions more whom the nationalists considered impure. What many here in the US are failing to realize and to respond to is the truth that Trump is killing as many or more than Hitler through his Executive Orders. Just from eliminating USAID alone, just from that alone, at least 8 million people will die in the next five years. And that's the most conservative estimate! The estimate is between 8 million and 19 million, just from eliminating USAID alone. The programs previously funded through USAID have kept detailed records of their services; and, therefore, researchers can quite accurately forecast how many people will suffer and die without that help. The budget for all of USAID together averaged less than one half of 1% of the federal budget. Even worse, the whole budget together amounts to about one quarter of the increase that has been given to ICE in this last budget. A minimum of 8 million people will die as a direct result of an order from our president. And that doesn't even take into account the cuts that are going to happen because of the budget that was just passed, the deportations to horrific locations that are occurring, or how many people will die in the concentration camps Trump is building around the country.
Rev. Early:This is only happening because enough people in our country are willing to let it happen. There are too many people who feel that, "as long as it's not impacting me directly, it's not my problem;" or, "there's nothing I can do about it, it's not my job." Our scriptures from Jesus and our declaration from our sisters and brothers in Barmen remind us as the church that we are called to better than that. Together, we are called to serve one another and our neighbors, whomever they may be, with the same love and service as Jesus Christ served the world. We are not to mimic the current culture of powerful leaders oppressing others for their own gain. As the church, we are called to be a counterculture, through an ethic of service. Every one of us has an important part in that mission, our mission together. And whatever happens to any of us or any of our neighbors is our problem. It is our job.
Rev. Early:The beauty and the encouraging news here is that this is who you are. This is who you are. I see it all the time. I have seen you at work in each other's lives and in caring for those around us. Everywhere I look, I see you all in service together. Our little group won't counter the entire culture of the U.S. I doubt that someday they're going to show in the history books, "Because of Queen Anne Presbyterian Church, the entire nation changed its approach to life!" But you know what? We do have influence of good here where we live, amongst each other and amongst our neighbors. And I really want us to hear that. I want you to hear that. We can't do anything about the big nationwide, worldwide problems. But we're not called to. We are called to care for one another and care for our neighbors in the way that Jesus Christ cared for us. And I see that in you all the time; and I hope you see that in yourself so that you know that you are having an impact for good. Greatness does not lie in concentrating power like a Fuhrer. Greatness lies in serving together like Christ, and I see that in you. Thanks be to God.