Home > Lenten Blog 2025

Whoever serves me…

April 15, 2025

Isaiah 49:1-7 | 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 | John 12:20-36 | Psalm 71:1-14

Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.

Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.   John 12:26

Oh to be a servant, that is the question that got me stuck in the readings. I tried various key words or phrases to move incoherent blocks of writing. In the end what I actually put out might not have anything to do with the lessons but “how am I a servant” would not retreat into the little archive room in the back of my mind. I even tried to cheat by asking my son Percy… I asked him “What is a servant and what makes one a servant of God?….” 

As for me I went back in time trying to find an answer. You see long ago when I was young, at university, and quite fit I might say …I was a waiter. But not just the regular kind of waiter, but a banquet waiter. So serving took a little bit more or less depending upon what type of waitstaff you were. A few things made it easier then being a restaurant waiter. We had no need to remember the day’s specials or who ordered what… it was just simply this is the menu. It was chosen by your host’s taste… so enjoy. They also decided how we were to present ourselves to their guests. Of course food, uniforms, and service depended on the size of their wallets. Yet in all the functions a few things remained the same despite the expense and that was the opinion of a few guests on how they would have done it differently. That along with the criticism of the staff for being slow or unwilling to accommodate their requests for something else. Yes, I know this has nothing to do with being a servant of God but this is just one aspect of being in service. The same can be said of a military person, or a Priest and so on…. What ever profession or job you can think of. We all serve someone for multiple reasons but the main one, put plainly and with no frills, is to survive. Some do it better than others, survive that is, but when the lord asks me to be his servant survival is not the goal. He is asking me to step into a Jesus moment…To be that kind hand that feeds, clothes, loves and heals.  Not to mention to be the strength and voice to shelter those in need of protection. It is at this point that my humanity points towards me to ask if I stepped into that Jesus moment, or I scurried in a meandering way. I pray my conversation didn’t go this way….

And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”

But I said, “I have labored in vain,
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;”

But needless to say, I can see my step in to Jesus moments are lacking in one form or another….and perhaps there are no right answers on being a servant to God. only a path to turn our decisions into the right answers. So, the mistakes made along this path are because we are human and to err is to be human…

Oh…Percy’s answer…..  “ I don’t think it means converting and lots of prayer but rather to take action and fully live his teachings with everyone regardless….”. 

P.S. When I posed the same question to Sebastian this was his answer:  “Maybe like be a part of a community that wants to do better and help make their community one of inclusion and helping?”

I guess the new generation may have a better grasp of what it means to be a servant of God as they see their Jesus moments moving forward and beyond the church walls….

Geo Borgia