What Makes a Good Leader? Sermon at the Mayor's Civic Service

In an age with a love-hate attitude to celebrity, leadership has never been more demanding than it is today. My imminent departure from Durham has exercised my own mind on what I think I have tried to be and to do as a spiritual leader in the last twelve years; my colleagues are asking the question, what is needed in the next Dean of Durham? Today, our thoughts are focused on a new Mayor of Durham who steps into this role as Chair of the County Council. I am sure I speak for all of you when I say at the outset that our prayers and good wishes are with Jan as she begins her mayoral year. We shall all want to support her mayoralty in every way we can.

On the 9th September, we shall mark the day when The Queen becomes the longest reigning English monarch, overtaking her predecessor Queen Victoria. We shall honour this remarkable achievement at a special evensong that day. I have been looking at her Coronation Service to see what hopes and expectations surrounded her when she was crowned in Westminster Abbey in 1953. Here are some of the prayers from that day.

Strengthen her, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost the Comforter; Confirm and stablish her with thy free and princely Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and government, the Spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the Spirit of knowledge and true godliness, and fill her, O Lord, with the Spirit of thy holy fear.

The Lord your God endue you with knowledge and wisdom, with majesty and with power from on high; the Lord clothe you with the robe of righteousness, and with the garments of salvation. May wisdom and knowledge be the stability of your times, and the fear of the Lord your treasure.

The Coronation rite asks many things for the Sovereign: peace in her times; stability so that her realms may flourish, a fruitful reign, the capacity to serve well and to oversee the administration of justice. These are all good aspirations for the exercise of every kind of power, prayers we can all echo for those who undertake public roles on behalf of other people. But if ask what was uppermost in the minds of those who, centuries ago, composed the coronation service, I think we would have to say: wisdom. It is a theme that runs through so many of the prayers for a young sovereign on her coronation day, because it is the secret of sound leadership, as Solomon knew when he prayed for the gift to govern his people wisely. There is nothing that so adorns a leader as his or her embrace of wisdom, or as we might say, insight and awareness, discernment, understanding, and sound judgment. These are the qualities that inculcate a sense of trust and confidence: you believe that those who possess them are in it not for themselves, not acting out of self-interest or aggrandisement, but for the sake of others. And there is nothing that so corrupts leadership and discredits it as the lack of those hard-won qualities.

By coincidence, in this year that we reach a milestone in the history of the monarchy, we also celebrate the eight hundredth anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta. Last Monday, I was in that sunny meadow at Runnymede with thousands of others to witness the ceremony that commemorated this event. Her Majesty was there, lineal successor of King John; and the Archbishop of Canterbury too, the spiritual successor of the great Archbishop Stephen Langton who, we believe, contributed to the drafting of the text. I wondered whether The Queen was thinking about her 63 years on the throne, and the nature of our constitutional monarchy whose carefully defined relationships with Parliament and the body politic go back ultimately to Magna Carta. For the checks and balances that discipline leaders, so signally lacking when an autocratic sovereign collided with recalcitrant barons, are essential to the good ordering of a modern state. It took many centuries to get there: 1215 was the start of a long journey. But we now take them for granted, not only in the monarchy but in every other aspect of public life. It comes down to the fundamental principle of our freedoms, that all of us are equal under the law, and no-one is privileged, however ancient their office or exalted their powers.

We might think these constraints, these limitations on power make it easier to lead. On the contrary. They make leadership an extraordinarily subtle art that calls for the kind of wisdom I have been speaking about: the insight and discernment that enable us to understand the gears that synchronise our roles with the complex and intricate systems and processes of our public institutions.  This is true of leaders in government; it is true of leaders in the church (take my word for it), and of leaders in every other sector of society. You, Madam, are a constitutional mayor. I am a constitutional dean. In our more sinful moments we may wish we had more power than we do. In our better hours and days, we are profoundly grateful that it is as it is. And so I come to my fundamental question. Where does it come from, this gift to be wise?

Our Old Testament reading speaks about wisdom as the gift of the Spirit, ‘a breath of the power of God, an emanation of the glory of the Almighty’. ‘She is more beautiful than the sun; against wisdom, evil does not prevail.’ The Wisdom of Solomon is one of a number of texts written to instruct those who being prepared for leadership. Wisdom in the Old Testament means many things: a shrewd knowledge of the world, the capacity to read human life and behaviour, the ability to manage oneself well and order the affairs of the institutions we are responsible for, a moral compass that is orientated towards what is good and right, and more than anything else, a reverence for God who alone is wise, in whose name we mortals exercise leadership. All this is part of wisdom’s ‘admonition to rulers’. You could sum it up like this: know your role; know what you are responsible for; know your place in how the world is ordered; know your people; know yourself. If we want to clothe wisdom in contemporary dress, the seven Nolan Principles of Public Life that people in public life sign up to nowadays do a good job: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership.

But there is one more dimension that we who lead must always remember. Our New Testament reading spells it out in a marvellous paradox. ‘Where is the one who is wise?’ asks St Paul, ‘has not god made foolish the wisdom of the world?’ So it depends on what kind of wisdom we cultivate. He tells us that it is not human wisdom or intelligence in itself that we should aspire to, nor the crude coercive force of naked power that we find so seductive. Rather it is to trace both power and wisdom back to their God-given source. Where do we find this? It is ‘Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength’.

Which is why we hold this service at the start of the each mayoral year. It is to worship and acknowledge our dependence on God from whom all good things come, among them the best gifts and virtues we aspire to. And it is to pray for our Mayor and all who lead that they may be equipped with everything they need to inhabit their office with the wisdom and justice, the compassion and humanity that will serve and build up the common good. In one of the psalms, a blessing on the city goes like this: ‘May there be no breach in the walls, no exile, no cry of distress in our streets. Happy are the people to whom such blessings fall. Happy are the people whose God is the Lord.’ Indeed so, God only wise in all places and in this place, our beloved city and county, this northern land of saints.

Durham Cathedral
At the annual civic service, 21 June 2015
Wisdom 7.22b-8.1; 1 Corinthians 1.18-25

Where Shall We find Trust?

The mayoralty of Durham has been a matter of public debate this year: not the person but the office itself. I am sure I speak for us all when I say that we value the traditions of mayoralty that affirm this city’s pride in its history. It is not for the preacher to say more. But I urge us to do what the prophet said and ‘seek the welfare of this city’, for in it lies our own welfare. This is why we hold a civic service: because we honour the mayoralty and want to pray for the new mayor, offer the civic year to God and dedicate the city’s leadership and ourselves to the service of our fellow human beings.

Any public office, be it mayor or dean, means living in two worlds: the visible role we inhabit when we put our robes on, and the human being we are underneath. In today’s New Testament reading we heard two parables that belong to the place where these personal and public worlds meet.  They tell of two people at the end of their rope, whose private struggles have become so severe that they crash through the normal restraints we impose upon our personal lives and become a public matter.  In the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, organised religion and public duty are not enough.  It is the cry of a broken man that God hears, says Jesus: ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner’.  In the parable of the widow the judge respects no-one, but her ceaseless worrying away galvanises him into action out of a wish for a quiet life.  The public world needs pressure to respond. It is not by nature altruistic. The temple religion of the Pharisee cannot take away the publican’s burden.  The judge does not want to help the desperate widow. Both needy people are an embarrassment to those in high office, as the poor often are.

The paired characters in these parables are a foil for each other: tax-collector and Pharisee, widow and judge, two victims in trouble, two establishment people who have their reward already. But these stories also show the complete trust both victims have in their institutions. They believe without hesitating that their causes will be addressed in a public place be it the temple or the law court.  The tax collector never doubts that his cry will be heard. The woman knows after a lifetime of struggle that it pays to pester authority, and that even a self-serving judge can be driven to the point where he must act.  Never mind his motives.  What matters is her belief that she will have an outcome.

Let me explore this question of trust.  Why is trust in our public institutions at such a low ebb, and when was it ever more challenging to take up public office? There is a culture of suspicion that rests heavy on all of us in public roles whether in education, the church, the judiciary, healthcare or politics.  Wherever we are, we cannot escape the mechanisms of performance targets, benchmarking, micro-management and hyper-accountability that, far from enhancing trust actually erode it.  Our love affair with rights, litigation and blame is hardly surprising.  Of course, institutions erode trust in themselves when they become compromised, heedless of their values, haughty about those with little voice or power.  There are hospitals that have been too careless about whether patients live or die. There are church leaders who have covered up for abusing clergy. There are financial institutions that exploit the poorest or have failed to honour their pledges. These are not just little local difficulties.  They are symptoms of a worrying disease that, unchecked, will corrode confidence and trust. This includes the ancient institutions that symbolise what our nation stands for: parliament, local government, the armed forces, the judiciary, the monarchy, the church.

I want to think, a trifle naïvely you may say, that our public institutions and their leaders could be more trusted, not less, to know what they are doing, act responsibly and behave ethically.  Many sign up to the seven Nolan Principles of Public Life: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and good leadership. But these altruistic, vocational ideals for public service and citizenship only flourish in a world where we trust one another. But there’s the rub, for our society feels a profound dis-ease toward institutions of all kinds. We don’t always believe that they have our best interests at heart.  We easily suspect collusion, self-interest and hidden motives. Respect for public office and those to whom we owe loyalty, what we used to call piety, is not what it once was. 

What might Christian faith have to say about this on mayoral Sunday? I believe that when there is trust in our institutions and those who hold office in them, it creates a virtuous circle where we can all flourish.  Where we act out of a real desire to serve, where we practise compassion in the face of pain and need, where duty is truthfully yet humanely exercised and where we honour the value of others, we create trust.  And trust is not just a utilitarian way of oiling the machinery of our institutions.  It is a theological virtue whether we know it or not. It is grounded in the belief that human beings have infinite worth, for we are made in the image of God. It is how God is towards us to whom he has given the stewardship of creation: he trusts us with his world, to look after it and cherish it. This is how we need to be towards one another.

Where trust fails, coercion and the abuses of power that go with it gain a foothold. That ugly trait has been elevated to a fine art in the last century or so.  Of course we need checks and balances, proper audit and intelligent accountability in public life and personal relationships.  We need them in our governance and to preserve good order. We need them to make good judgments in our ethics and religion. This is where the unjust judge fell short: he feared neither God nor man.  By contrast the widow shows a better way.  By hoping against hope, she represents those in every age who will not capitulate to despair, not give in to the idea that things can never be other than they are, not be fobbed off by the structures of power and those who wield their weapons.  She symbolises the possibility that the world can be a different place if we want it enough.

Jesus told the parable, Luke says, to help us not to lose heart. This civic service brings together people committed to promoting the wellbeing of our city and county. It affirms trust by pointing us to resources beyond our own for tasks we feel scarcely prepared or adequate for, Solomon’s wisdom we heard about in the first reading. It invites us into a journey of hope which offers a new perspective on who and what we are.  It is a journey our society needs to make if we are to be saved from ourselves. It is a journey our church needs to make, and not simply speak about from a safe distance. It is a journey for each of us to make as we look beyond our narrow worlds into a more generous vision of what God is calling us to become. This is what we ask for our new mayor today and for ourselves as we give thanks for another year and pray that even if we have to sow in tears, we may soon reap with songs of joy.

Durham Cathedral, at the Mayor's Service, 28 July 2013

1 Kings 3.3-15; Luke 18: 1-14