On this Passion Sunday, Jesus is calmly aware of the events that await him. The one who walks toward death assures us that in dying we will be reborn, that “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life”.  He is confident that God is with him: “It is for this reason that I have come to this hour.”

Even as He is approaching the end, Jesus reminds his disciples what is left for them to do after He leaves. “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”

When I was growing up, serving Jesus seemed like a pretty easy thing to do.  He boiled it down into two very easy steps – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and to “Love your neighbor as yourself”.  Or as we often repeated in Boy Scouts, “To help other people at all times”.

This seemed pretty simple at the time.  I was involved with almost every club in high school so I stayed pretty busy.  Whether it was a food drive for this club or that club, setting up visitation program at our local nursing home, or painting houses for those that couldn’t afford it, I seemed to stay pretty busy serving others.  Looking back though, I think that it might have been for the wrong reasons.

I remember being told that extracurricular activities were great for college applications.  And I had been pushed from a very early age to make sure that I got into a good school so that I might receive a good education.  I was an excellent student in class, and less so when taking standardized tests.  And in the end, it didn’t help.  It did not get me any more scholarships.  It didn’t open any new doors.  It didn’t help me at all.  Like I said, the wrong reasons.

In college, I quit helping others almost completely.  For one, I was not prepared for college when I went.  I was not ready for the level of work.  I was not ready for the independence.  I had too much freedom and the wrong things to spend it on.  And second, I was burned out from all the ‘serving’ I had done in high school.  Though that was more of an excuse than anything.

I began to live a very selfish life.  It was about what I wanted, how I felt.  I found a lot of things that made me feel good in the moment. I focused on me and my desires.  I was more concerned with my happiness than the happiness of others.

I forgot the joy from a simple thank you.  I forgot how helping other people made me feel.

Living my life for myself made me more depressed than I like to think about, and for longer than I would care to admit.  There were several nights that I found myself standing under stars and yelling up at the sky.  I was yelling at God for my life not being the way that I wanted it to be, not being the way that I had thought it would turn out.

But God wasn’t listening because I wasn’t listening to God.

And it took me a long time to come to terms with this.  I still have days that I struggle.

Not so long ago, I was having a conversation with my father.  We were discussing religion, as we often do.  I had been particularly struggling at this time.  And I said to him, I was not sure if I could call myself a Christian but that I could call myself a follower of Jesus.  He laughed at me and told me that was what a Christian was.

I had often said those words to some of my friends, many of whom don’t believe or those who can’t believe.  I had said those words because of the things that Jesus had said and done in his ministry were things that I could model myself after.

Jesus hung out with the people that nobody else would hang out with.  He kicked it with lepers, prostitutes, and tax collectors.  He treated women equally when all others thought of them as property.  He fought for the poor and marginalized.

That seemed like a great example to live by.  But I was not living by it.  Not at all.

That was about the time that I felt like I had hit bottom.  I did not recognize the person that I had become.  I had sinned against people that loved me.  I knew that something had to give.  That something had to change.

But there is hope.  In God’s grace, there is always hope.

Serving God isn’t that hard.  We make it way harder than it ever has to be.  “Love God” and “Love your neighbor”.  It really doesn’t get any easier than that.  We like to complicate things that need to be simple.  It’s human nature I suppose.

We argue over how to love our neighbors.  We argue over who our neighbors are.  We argue over the details instead of seeing the big picture.  And we ignore that Jesus is calling us to serve.  Through his entire ministry, he calls on us to serve.  Even at the point in today’s readings, Jesus knows the fate that awaits him but he is still calling us to serve.

You think that in the 2000 years since then, we might have gotten it right.  That we might have figured it out by this point.  The Jesus cult started out as a ragtag group, as just another sect of Judaism in one of the greatest empires to ever exist, and has grown into the most predominate religion in the world.  And we still are missing the point.  We have forgotten to “Love God” and “Love our neighbors”.

We wage war for money.  We value making a profit over the value of people.  We worry more about judging people for who they love rather than to love them ourselves.  We are more concerned with making sure that we have everything we can instead of making sure that everyone has enough.  We have to label everyone and everything and make sure that we are only associated with the ‘right’ people.  We think that our differences separate us when they should be uniting us.

In God’s grace, there is always hope.  In our own lives and in the world around us.  There are always people striving for hope, working for love, living for justice, fighting for peace.  One day at a time, one battle at a time, one issue at a time.  The struggle goes on.

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege to serve as the co-director at the Senior High Youthquake that took place at Ferncliff.  I was never that active in my youth group growing up and never attended any Youthquake or anything at Ferncliff.  For several reasons, but mostly due to our involvement in Boy Scouts and always camping, hiking, or canoeing.  Maybe also because of all those other clubs I mentioned before.  So the whole youthquakes and energizers were a new experience for me.

Something else I was not aware of was the Young Adult Volunteer program, which they were sharing the camp with us at the same time.  These are young adults who volunteer a year of their life to serve all across the country and the world.  A few of the YAV’s (young adult volunteers) came and spoke to the kids at youthquake.  Several had been overseas, some had stayed here to serve.  Their stories had all one thing in common – they had reached a point in their lives (usually after graduating college) and they seemed lost at what to do.  So they choose to live a year volunteering, to serving others.  Instead of living for themselves, they choose to live for others.  I wish I had been that mature at their age. (And I checked, I’m too old to go now).

But it gave me hope.

These young people seem way smarter than I remember myself, way more giving, way more serving.  They seem to be on right track of things.  I still find myself struggling.

My grandmother has always told me that I need to find God’s calling, to find my purpose for this life.  I’m getting there.  It is something that we all have to do.  Some of us have an easier time at it, we are called at an early age.  Some of us, well, some of us are still working on it.  But all of us have to be open to that calling, we have to be seeking it.  We have to be seeking a way to serve a God that loves us unconditionally.  To serve is the only real and honest response to God’s grace.

Far too often, the world seems too big, too unchangeable.  We are not called to save the world.  We are called to do what we can, to make a dent.  Then like a stone being thrown into a still lake, the ripples will spread until the entire lake has been effected.  I challenge you, I challenge myself to go out this week and to make a dent.  To do something to receive a simple thank you.  To do something simply to serve.