The Essence of Jesus-like Leadership

UV 2895/10000 The Essence of Jesus-Like Leadership
Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.
Matthew 21 v 5
If the King of Kings, to whom even one of the last surviving monarchs of the contemporary world, Queen Elizabeth II could bow to, could use an ass to ride triumphally into Jerusalem, the spiritual capital of the world, He can use an ass like you and me. Jesus could have commandeered a white steed to ride into Jerusalem to announce His kingdom on earth but the fact that He deliberately chose to ride a donkey that had never been ridden before points to His extreme humility. From His birth till His death and resurrection, He divested Himself of all trappings of earthly power and pomp.
Instead of us going to the King, the King Himself comes to us. Jesus asks us to only emulate two of His many great qualities- humility and gentleness. He did use His kingly authority to overturn the tables of the money lenders in the temple. Likewise, we too need to use our God-given authority to over turn the love of the world and the love of money in ourselves and others, so that our whole being is dedicated to the worship of the Lord. If we only imitate Jesus in terms of His humility and gentleness, absence of any need for any external trappings of power and authority, we would have understood the essence of godly leadership. We do not need the paraphernalia of power but only the Paraclete- the Holy Spirit to give us the sense of direction and leading we need.
Humility and gentleness or meekness is not a virtue of leadership that comes to us naturally but a supernatural grace of Christ. It comes from the quiet assurance that our identity, security and destiny comes from Christ even as Christ knew that His identity, security and destiny came from the Father. But along with the meekness, we also need the undercurrent of firmness, forcefulness, zeal and the confidence to assert on matters of right relationship with the Lord and the need for holiness or reverence in a place of worship. Meek but assertive is a perfect but paradoxical paradigm of leadership behaviour.
Prateep V Philip