Follow Our Leaders?

According to today’s reading from Hebrews, we are to: “Obey your leaders and defer to them,
for they keep watch over you and will have to give an account…”  St. Paul wrote this foolishness!? Actually, he did not. 

According to Marcus Borg in his wonderfully written book “Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written” (2012):  “We do not know who wrote it.  In the 200s, an early Christian theologian named Origen said that its author ‘was known only to God.’  In the centuries since, there have been guesses.  Around the year 400, Augustine and Jerome suggested it was written by Paul, and thus it has sometimes been called the 14th letter of Paul…”

Back then, following the leader(s) made sense to those wanting communities to accept a certain theology.  For example, according to Borg, “For Hebrews, Jesus is not only the great high priest, but also the sacrifice.  What he sacrificed was his life.  Moreover, his sacrifice rendered temple sacrifice unnecessary.  His death was the ‘once for all’ sacrifice for sin...”  With the temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. it was critical for Jews - believing Jesus to be the Christ - to adopt this theology, i.e., Jesus was the new “temple.”   

So, here we are on this Saturday of February 7, 2015 wondering if we should follow our leaders.   Careful judgment should be used when making this decision.  After all, the only accounting we will need to give is the one we eventually will give to God for all we have done and for all we have failed to do. 

We are sheep, but only to our shepherd, Jesus.  Otherwise, we must watch our leaders rather than having them watch over us.

Deacon David Pierce