What does it mean to have a “crisis of leadership”? This could be expressed differently in a variety of scenarios…in a workplace, in a family, in a friendship group, in the church. I am an amateur, emphasis on amateur, honeybee keeper. I have been fascinated with bees since I was a little girl, standing at the observation hives in the Agriculture/Horticulture building at the Minnesota State Fair. It was always a highlight of the fair to try to see if I could find the queen in the hive with the little colored mark on her back. About 10 years ago I took the Beekeeping in Northern Climates course at the University of Minnesota. I love to learn new things but had no idea how much there was to learn. 

In reading the text for this Sunday from Matthew 9 and 10, I was struck by my own “crisis of leadership” with one of my hives last summer. If a hive makes it through the winter in our northern climates, the task is to divide them and then to add a new queen to the split. This is to keep them from swarming and to get two hives from one. However, last spring, one of the hives that made it through the winter was weak and did not have many bees. I looked and looked for a queen, as you cannot put a new queen in a hive with another queen, even if she is weak. The rest of the bees in the hive would defend her and kill the new queen, despite her “crisis of leadership”.

We are early in the season of Pentecost and have returned to the stories that help frame Jesus’ early ministry. Before Matthew 9 and 10, Jesus had called his disciples, performed some miracles, and preached a very long sermon on a mountainside in Galilee. Then he went out to “all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness.” (9:35)

Matthew doesn’t wait long to tell us what Jesus found, and it is clear this is not a small sample size. Jesus went to ALL the cities and towns, encountering crowds everywhere he went. He was moved to compassion for those he was encountering, people struggling in the world and searching for the kind of healing that he was offering. These were a variety of people, but all living in a crisis of leadership. 

Jesus speaks boldly to his disciples about what lay ahead: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (10:37-38). He then goes on to send out his disciples into the world as he so clearly saw it -  one with a vacuum of the kind of leadership that he was sent to address. Jesus gave his disciples authority to bring a different kind of leadership into the world. To bring a leadership of compassion: curing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing those with skin disease, casting out demons, not only to alleviate suffering but to restore people to community. But Jesus called for more than seeing and healing the physical needs of those they would encounter. The kind of healing that Jesus brings to the world is a healing of wholeness-physical, social and spiritual.  Seeing the needs of those you encounter and meeting those needs with compassion is the promise of the power of Jesus. 

After searching unsuccessfully for the queen in my weak hive of honeybees last spring, I concluded that that their vacuum of leadership needed to be addressed.  They might have been able to make a new queen, but that would have taken a while and make it hard for the hive to make enough honey to get through the next winter.

I took a leap of faith and purchased a new queen to add to the hive. It was a leap of faith.

With the new queen, the hive not only flourished but made it through this last winter and was ready to split this spring. 

Jesus promised the disciples that what he was sending them out to do, to address the vacuum of compassionate leadership, would not be easy. It is no easier now than it was then.  The additional 10:9-23 paint a pretty stark picture about of the hostility we can expect in response. With the clear-sightedness of Jesus, we can recognize the vacuum of compassionate leadership in our world now, and those who are exploiting it for their own power and profit. 

We must not turn away from the harshness of this reality, nor from the suffering of nature and neighbors that results from this vacuum.

However, Jesus is clear-eyed not just about the vacuum and those who exploit it.  Most essentially, he is clear-eyed about being sent to address it, to enter the vacuum.  This is the Good News of the Kingdom of Heaven coming, where all will flourish in a community of healing and welcome.  There he is, in the center of the Good News, enabling his hive (that would be us!) to make the honey of hope.

For us.  For all creation. 

God knows we need a taste of that sweetness now, at the tip of our fingers, and on the tip of our tongues.