January 22, 2011

  • Who do you follow?

    I was thinking of starting this sermon with a game of follow the leader of Simon says.  But I didn’t much like those games when I was young so I decided it was a bad plan.  The problem with follow the leader was the leader usually thought of things to do that most of the rest of us couldn’t do just to make us feel left out.  And Simon says was based on the premise that you could get people to follow your command if you got them used to you speaking in behalf to Simon.  Like most childhood games there is something to be learned from these games based on following someone else.  It is important who you choose to be leader if you are going to play the game.  If we are honest, we all have leaders, people whose lives we seek to mimic.  Some people remain our leaders for a lifetime and some leaders we follow only for a season. 

     

    Sometimes we try to follow someone who is not at all like us, they have different gifts, talents, body shapes, and we still try to be like them.  All we end up doing is embarrassing ourselves and feeling bad about ourselves.  We cannot be anything other than what we were created to be.  I had coworkers who decided their daughter was going to be an Olympic caliber gymnast.  They were both short, large boned people.  There was a pretty good chance their daughter was going to be a short, large boned person also.  They enrolled her in tumbling classes about the same time she was learning to walk and had in gymnastics classes as soon as she was old enough to be admitted.  She always struggled with the classes and never seemed to me to be enjoying them much.  Her parents couldn’t give up on the dream and kept pushing her to keep working on being a gymnast.  Finally, one of the instructors they hired for her sat them all down and told the girl, if she enjoyed the activity, she should continue but she would never be a competitive gymnast.  The parents were angry and the girl was so relieved.  No amount of work was going to change her basic body structure into that of a gymnast.  In her case it was her parents’ dream, but sometimes we desire to be something we cannot be also.  Picking the wrong leader only frustrates us and causes us to appear foolish.  Picking the right leader allows us to use the gifts, talents, and positive qualities that are ours.  We need to be very aware and honest about what our gifts, talents, and positive qualities are if we are to pick the right leader.  We want to find the leader that will show us how to make the most of who we are and what we have.  If we want to win the game we need to choose a leader that will challenge us without defeating or humiliating us.

     

    The game of Simon says also has a great lesson for us in choosing our leader.  I don’t know how Simon got to be the one who tells everyone what to do.  My research says the origins are in ancient Rome and the original Simon was Cicero, an influential philosopher and government leader and somehow Cicero became Simon.  I suppose it doesn’t matter why the person in charge is called Simon but I do find it curious since it is not a name associated with power as far as I know.  The person who leads the group isn’t Simon; they just channel Simon for the group.  They yell out commands and the group is only supposed to do the commands that begin with “Simon says…”  The point of the game is to trick people into doing the commands the leader shouts out that aren’t from Simon or to trick the people into not following the commands that do come from Simon.  The leader will usually call out several commands authored by Simon and then shout out a command of their own.  People get so used to following the command of the leader that they just do whatever is called out.  Or, the leader makes lots of commands of their own and then slips in a command from Simon.  The people get so used to ignoring the commands of the leader that they miss the command from Simon.  We do this same thing with our spiritual leaders today.  Only the spiritual leader isn’t channeling Simon, they are channeling God.  The people get so used to the spiritual leader telling them what God wants them to do that they miss when the leader is no longer speaking for God and have started telling the people what they want them to do.  The people have lost track of what God is telling them to do and are now letting the spiritual leader tell them what to do.  We need to listen carefully so we can be sure we are following God and not the leader.  It is also true there are some spiritual leaders we rarely here say anything from God and then we miss when they do say something God would tell us to do.  We don’t do what God would have us to do because we ignored someone we have dismissed as not ever speaking for God.

     

    Who you follow is critically to getting where we want to go.  Do not follow someone who does not recognize your gifts and talents nor someone who is going to confuse you about who they are speaking for when they lead.  It is clear to me, we want to follow God because God gave us our gifts and talents and God only speaks for God and never tries to deceive us.  Amen.