I want you to take a minute to think about your favorite superhero. Maybe you imagined some strong force, fighting valiantly to save the day. Maybe they fly or have special powers or supernatural abilities no one else could hope for. Or they just somehow accomplish amazing things. I’m guessing the person you pictured didn’t look like this. Let’s be honest, most of us have a specific idea of what a great leader looks like, and it isn’t a small, weak, wimpy kind of guy, right?
If you don’t recognize him, this is the main character of the movie Captain America. It’s a really interesting movie- a scientist designs a special serum that will make people stronger. The scientist wants to try the serum on this guy- Steve Rogers, who is a weak, sickly guy who really wants to fight in the army. The serum has actually been used once before on another person, and that guy actually became like a villain because the serum makes a person’s personality stronger just like it makes their physical strength more pronounced. The scientists’ goal is to pick a “nice” guy this time around in the hopes that his “niceness” will get stronger with the serum. He encourages Steve that, “A strong man who has known power his whole life does not realize its value, but a weak man knows the value of strength and knows compassion. I hope you will stay who you are… a good man.”
I think this is the best scene in the movie. I love this movie because it reminds me that being a great leader is about so much more than looking strong, or seeming perfect- it’s about sacrificing. We all naturally pick the strongest person to follow. But don’t we really want someone we can actually trust as a leader? Someone who is willing to lay his life down for his followers as they do for him? This is why I love the God I serve. My mind goes to Matthew 20:28 which says “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus didn’t lead by putting everyone else down or making himself important. He led by laying his life down in our place. He was great because he was willing to be nothing. He took on all of our badness and gave up his life for us in spite of them. I will take that kind of leader any day.
I am not the strongest, loudest, or most impressive person, and not even remotely superhero-like, but somehow God also chose me. I am personally so glad that he chooses us based not on our appearances, or physical strength, or test scores, or anything we usually look at. He came to show us a new way of leadership that says if you choose to follow me I can make you great. When we chose to follow him he makes us completely new and completes us in any way we lack. 1 Corinthians 1:27-31 says that “God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things- and the things that are not- to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before him.… Therefore it is written, ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.’ ”
God chose the non-superhero’s of the world because he is strong in anything that we are not, he’s even better then magical serum! He is someone who uses his ability specifically to help those he leads. That’s the leader I serve- Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, and in doing so, became the ultimate super-hero.