Whoever would be first among you, must be slave to all.

In the diocese of Nebraska, the Lenten challenge is called 20-1-4. 20 minutes of prayer a day, one hour of worship a week, and four hours of service a month. It’s 2014, so it’s not too hard to remember. 20 minutes of prayer a day, one hour of worship a week, four hours of service a month.

praying 20 minutes a day; not that easy for me, but not impossible either. I am able to sit down and pray pretty much every day, and I often (though certainly not always) able to pray for 20 minutes. It’s a great discipline to continue working on.

Worshiping one hour a week. Check. The good news for you is that you are here, on a Wednesday. It is very likely that you do not find this particularily challenging as you have started already. The good news for Tom is that this is a short sermon, and the service won’t last an hour, so I’ll see you all on Sunday, too.  

Serving other people, for four hours a month doesn’t sound like much, but for me, it is by far the hardest to accomplish. I work at church, I work at Miller Park, and I really like my days off. With as much as I have had going on this year at Resurrection House, and here at All Saints, I have really failed in this regard. I do not serve others enough.

The Gospel reading for today is explicit. Whoever would be great among you must be your servant. We are called, while we are here on our Earthly journey, to serve others. To feed the hungry, house the homeless. To do what we can to make other people suffer less.

Serve Others, Jesus says.

At All Saints, we have many opportunities to serve others. The first Sunday of every month, All Saints sends a team to the Sienna/Francis House to literally serve food to the hungry and house people who are homeless. The Dean Fricke Pantry is a partner of All Saints, and they literally feed the hungry. We all have opportunities to serve.

I was in the car the other month, and my friend Caleb was driving. Just as we passed an exit, I noticed that there was a car on the side of the road with what looked like a flat tire, and pointed it out.  Caleb drove for about five miles to the next exit, and turned around on the freeway.

“Don’t you think they will have it fixed by the time we get there? It just looked like a flat,” I asked him.

Well, as we drove to the exit BEFORE where I saw the car, it was still there, and was in fact still there as we finally got there (having driven about fifteen miles at this point).

It turns out that there was nothing that we could do anyway, and ended up just chatting for a bit and then heading on our way. It was a flat and the jack in our car didn’t work on his, and he had someone coming with a proper jack.

As we were driving away, Caleb then told me that it is just like the parable of the vineyard, where two sons are asked to help out and one says yes, and the other no; they then do the opposite of what they said they would do. Which was God pleased with?

If your intentions don’t lead to a change in your actions, is God pleased?

I am aware that I have actively failed to serve others. I do not do enough of what Jesus is explicitly calling me to do. Every week I see the Habitat for Humanity signup sheet in the Narthex, and every week I walk by without signing up. For the last two or three weeks, there have been no names on it at all.

This is Lent; a time of year that people often give something up to improve themselves. I am going to take something on. I will be at the Habitat site this Saturday. In this Lenten season, pray. Worship. And Serve Others.