It’s hard not to be discouraged, even despairing, in an age growing in darkness. We hope that COVID-19 is conquered. It roars back. A devastating earthquake strikes Haiti yet again. Shouting matches over vaccines, masks and critical race theory fill public spaces and arouse worry about the future of our democracy. Unprecedented wildfires and floods destroy communities worldwide. Winter tornadoes devastate the Midwest. Evacuees from Afghanistan add to record numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers.
This is only a partial list of reasons to despair.
Yet Scripture wants us to hope: “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not woe! Plans to give you a future full of hope” (Jer 29:11).
How is it possible for Catholics to imagine a “future full of hope”? What kind of leadership could guide us from a dark present to a hope-filled future? What does hope require of bishops, priests and deacons and religious, parish and finance councils, or faith formation directors?
One might imagine Jesus as the best example of a leader, and that would be true. However, in this strange and troubled time, I take hope from Moses, a flawed and sinful person like us.
Moses is not born a leader; quite the contrary! He had to learn, often by failing, before becoming the man described in Deuteronomy 34:10-12: “Since then no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He had no equal in all the signs and the wonders the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh and all his servants and all his land, and for the might and the terrifying power that Moses exhibited in the sight of all Israel.”
It took Moses a long time to become this man. His first recorded action is violence: killing an Egyptian overseer (Ex 2:11-15). Even the people he ostensibly tries to help reject his leadership: “Who has appointed you ruler and judge over us?” Pharaoh seeks revenge, so Moses runs away.
Not an auspicious beginning.
When, after many years pass, God appoints him to bring His people out of slavery, Moses does everything he can to avoid God’s will. His goal is to make so many excuses that God will rethink the proposition (Exodus, chapters 3 and 4). “They will not believe me or listen to my voice.” Indeed, God becomes so fed up that He tries to kill Moses, whose wife Zipporah must intervene (Ex 4:24-26).
Once back in Egypt, Moses takes his first, tentative steps toward leadership – he listens to God, but does only the minimum required. Moses is primarily passive in this drama, making no independent decisions. God tells him what to tell Pharaoh. He does so. He witnesses the results. The cycle repeats 10 times (Exodus, chapters 5-15). Yet Moses learns the essential quality of Catholic leadership: listening to and trusting God.
Next, Moses’ experience during the first years of freedom teaches him that people frustrate the plans of those who attempt to lead them. The children of Israel “grumble” about the challenges of the desert; they long for the predictability of life in Egypt. “What shall I do with this people?” Moses says. “A little more and they will stone me.”
It takes the episode of the “golden calf” to transform Moses into a leader (Ex 32). Having ascended the mountain at God’s direction, he is alone with God for 40 days. The people become anxious. They need a leader, a god they can see. Aaron (Moses’ brother and second-in-command) creates an idol to relieve their anxiety.
Thus reassured, they party. In anger, God tells Moses to step aside so that He might slay them and raise up a new people from Moses’ descendants (Ex 32:10).
Moses only now becomes a genuine leader, by rejecting the temptation of his own glory (God’s offer to build Moses up into a people). Instead, he identifies himself with his rebellious kinspeople. He persuades God not to kill, but to forgive them. For Moses, this is the decisive moment of leadership.
Yet there is more. When Moses comes down from the mountain and sees their apostasy with his own eyes, his anger blazes. He destroys the tablets of the Law and orders those most loyal to him to go through the camp and kill the rebels. Exodus reports that 3,000 died that day.
God did not tell Moses to do this. Moses makes an independent decision. Having persuaded God not to take revenge, he realizes the situation still requires decisive action. We need not approve of the killing to take the lesson in leadership. Often old ways must decisively end for new beginnings to take root.
Moses’ initiative contrasts with Aaron’s ineptitude, one of Scripture’s many examples of negative, passive leadership. Faced with a crisis, Aaron acquiesces to the people’s wish to return to their old ways. By contrast, Moses decisively rejects their hankering for the old religion and introduces something new.
Returning to the mountain, Moses now begs that he be stricken from God’s book of life if God will not forgive the people’s sin. After this radical identification with weak and sinful people, God commissions Moses a leader: “Now, go and lead the people wither I have told you” (Ex 32:34). Leaders act decisively, but only from a loving, unbreakable bond with their people.
Were the story to end here, we would have an incomplete leadership lesson. Leadership does require strength, independence and aggressive action, sometimes contrary to the desires of followers. But this is not Moses’ only lesson in leadership. There are others:
- Moses sins, but learns from his failure (Num 20:2-12).
- Moses accepts advice from wise elders. He shares leadership with others, giving them genuine decision-making authority (Ex 18:13-27; Nm 11:10-30).
- Moses creates policies and procedures that channel governance (Leviticus and Deuteronomy).
- Moses knows that laws are lifeless and rigid without the stories that gave rise to them Therefore, he reiterates the stories that define his people, retelling the story of Exodus while summarizing the law in Deuteronomy.
- Finally, Moses surrenders his authority that others may discover their own gifts for leadership, temporarily in the case of Phinehas (Nm 25) and permanently in the case of Joshua (Dt 31:14-15; 34:9). Leadership in a settled land requires skills different from those on a march of liberation.
We live in dark times. We need leaders who can discover paths through the gloom and communicate hope. The story of Moses’ evolution through the long arc from
Exodus to Deuteronomy teaches Catholic leaders that:
- Leaders listen to and converse with God.
- Leadership can be learned. Leaders can grow in skill.
- Different situations demand different leadership.
- Leaders identify profoundly with those they lead.
- The Christian story, retold during weekly community gathering in Eucharist, grounds leadership in the past and helps leaders (and their successors) to read the signs of the times. During crises, this story communicates history and hope.
- Leaders share leadership.
- Leaders know when to let go.
Our best Catholic leaders imitate the intimate friendship of God and Moses. They grow into the leaders dark times require. “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not woe! Plans to give you a future full of hope” (Jer 29:11).
Deacon Clarke E. Cochran, PhD, serves at St. Peter Church in Charlotte.