From the Pulpit: Follow Me

With the world transfixed on Rome and the election of a new pope, the Very Rev. Andrew McGowen said the Gospel has some real lessons about real leadership.

McGowan, the dean and president of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University, contrasted the accounts of Peter’s profession of love for Jesus, and Paul’s conversion. “Do you love me?” Jesus asked Peter three times. How we answer says a lot about what leadership looks like, he said:

“The gospel, though, is not ecclesiastical tourism. The gospel is not placing a bet on who’s gonna win in the conclave next week, or thinking that we should have costumes that have a bit more red in them here because of all those gorgeous colors on Netflix, right?

The gospel is not about the institutions that foster the life of the church, or the people who had them inevitable and important as they may be. The gospel is about the faithful witness that Peter and Paul exhibited as Jesus followers. The gospel is about what [Pope] Francis was willing to say, unflinchingly, whether or not it made him popular with Roman Catholics or with others.

In this moment of great challenge that we face, the call to all of us is an urgent one. Jesus offers to meet every one of us by the lake now, every one of us, and we may recognize him. And he’ll ask each of us, “Do you love me?” again and again. And when the point has got through, and we understand that because he’s risen, his love is more powerful than death and even more powerful than our own death. He says now, as he did then, follow me.”