And to what end? Well, in the town I grew up in, camp was just the thing that everybody did when they got into high school. You might say that it was something of a right of passage. Others, however, may be a bit more pragmatic and say that camp is all about personal improvement. Late summer is the perfect time for the aerobic conditioning and skills development that increase your chances of playing and winning during the season. But still others look to the focused attention and shared hardship of long hours of practice in the hot sun as something far more important than simply tradition or personal improvement. Sure, Camp is what we've done "'round here" for ages and it might even help the kids run faster longer, but it is more than that, too. Camp changes character, camp redefines culture. Camp, in many ways, makes the team. Shoot, camp may even make the school.

In the now classic high school football movie, Remember the Titans, we get a powerful - if somewhat dramatized - example of just how something as seemingly trivial as football camp can effect a wider change in culture. In a particularly poignant scene near the beginning of the film, the football team of the recently desegregated T.C. Williams High School in Northern Virginia is encamped at Gettysburg College. Coach Boone (played by Denzel Washington), walks among the players as they do up-downs outling his program in terms only a football coach could love. "We're gonna change the way we block," he says. "We're gonna change the way we tackle. We're gonna change the way we win." What the members of the team were experiencing together would not only improve their skills, but it would change the way they played the game. The practice would build community and it was the community as much as the skills that would win football games.

Now, what makes this particular (dramatized) example so important is the way that the film makers show how the comradery that develops among players ultimately capture the hearts and mind of the football-crazed school and town. T.C. Williams High School, and all of Alexandria Virginia found a "new way to win," by watching their children play sports together.

Now, before you all become convinced that I spent too much time over the last month watching our tomato plants grow, I do have and appropriate church point here. The analogy between the camp experience and faith lies in something that we do here in church that we take as seriously as coaches take practice. In fact, it is riddled throughout the texts for today's celebration - Christian Service.

It is seems pretty obvious to me that the compilers of the Church's lectionary are absolutely dying for people to talk about "service" on this feast of St. James. The collect of the day spoke of "self-denying service." The story, from the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of the way in which new Christians took up an offering for the needy, and were blessed by the gift of prophecy. And Matthew recounts some of Jesus' clearest words about the need for servant leadership within the community of believers. Even the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah gets in on the act when he admonishes King Jehoaichim not to "seek great things for [him]self." Yep, it seems as if everybody has got service on their mind.

This is no surprise to us. Service to others is a key facet of our faith. It is central to the entire message of Christ ("who came not to be served but to serve"). And it is obviously something that we take very seriously here in Saint James Parish. Much of the good that has been said about us this year has had to do with our success in acting out Jesus' call to serve others.

But why do we do it? It certainly isn't always convenient, and depending on the conditions, service can range from fun to not fun. Jesus even admits that there are other ways of conducting ourselves in the world ("like the gentiles who Lord over one another"). But he commends the model of service to us as the way it "will be" among us.

Just like Camp, some might say that we serve because service is what Christians do - its tradition and Jesus old us to. Now, I must admit that this is a pretty good reason but Jesus tells us to do a lot of things either don't always do- like turn the other cheek - or, at least, don't like to do- like pay our taxes. What is it about service that makes us serve so fervently?

Some might also suggest that Christian service is about self-betterment or personal achievement. That is, we serve not only for the betterment of others, but for our own benefit. Now, this is a pretty widely held thought. There is an increasing body of social criticism (e.g. Robert Wright. 1995. The Moral Animal), which suggests that there is no such thing as pure altruism. In fact, the entire "service learning" movement in American Schools seems predicated on just such a premise. Service is formative to moral integrity. It is about both giving and receiving.

In today's Gospel lesson, we are presented with a little bit of biblical foundation for this type of thinking - to me it is one of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith. In the course of his interaction with James and John and his subsequent calming of the argument that follows their unorthodox request, Jesus makes a paradoxical statement about the relationship between "greatness" and "servitude." James and John (and their mother, according to this version of the story) have asked Jesus to assure them of places of honor in the kingdom of God. Jesus responds, initially that those places are not his to give, but later, seems to contradict himself by saying that those seeking such recognition should do so by subjugating themselves to the others. "Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first must be slave of all."

Now at first, this saying seems to follow right along with the standard rhetoric of Jesus. It even bears a striking resemblance to the punchline of the parable about the laborers in the vineyard from the beginning of this chapter (on page 17 of the new Testament in those pew-end bibles). In verse sixteen Jesus sums up the relationship among the laborers hired at different parts of the day by stating "The last shall be first, and the first shall be last."

But when we move down a dozen verses, something seems to have changed. The grand end-times leveling of the playing field by a God who "prepares a place" for each of us has become something of a race to the bottom of the stack. "If you really want to be great," Jesus seems to be saying, "you'll put your time in now. But don't worry, you'll still come out on top in the end." We serve in this life as a down payment on a better life in the future. Service is, therefore, good for us and this earthly life is the most advantageous training ground.

And here, it seems, we may have found our answer. Service is good because it serves everybody. Service is win-win. Those we serve get what they need, and we get the promise of everlasting life. Jeremy Bentham would be so proud.

But there,, remains one more way that I would like us to think about service this morning. Like summer sports practice, service is, in fact, more than just a part of our tradition, or a means of self-improvement. The church upholds a vision for service that not only reaches beyond the individual, but also reaches beyond the church, into the wider world - in a surprisingly profound way.

I think that most would agree with me that a Christian notion of service has something to do with the betterment of others. When we give of ourselves, our time, our talent, or our money, somebody else benefits from our actions. That's pretty simple. But I think that's only half of it. On a strictly temporal level, our individual service - and even the service of groups like this parish, is relatively fleeting. We feed a person for a day, they are hungry again the next. We clean-up a neighborhood, it remains hemmed in by a city in trouble. We provide fresh water for an entire city or a country, but the needs seem to go on and on. At our best, it seems we are emptying the ocean with a bucket. But the effects of our actions are much greater than you think.

Like the wins and losses of high school sports, our individual accomplishments count for little in the course of a year, or a life. But the work that we do has the power to capture the hearts, minds and imaginations of those around us bringing them to a new understanding of service and a relationship Jesus, our model for service.

When we become the servants of others we become as Christ to them. When we give of ourselves, not counting the personal costs, but seeking to benefit our brother or sister, we participate in the ministry of the Christ "who came not to be served but to serve, that is, to give his life as a ransom for many."

More importantly, when we organize ourselves as a community of service, as a community in which each is seeking to be the servant of the other - not for their own gain but for the development of the community - our community becomes a genuine Christian community - a witness to the transforming power of Christ - a microcosm, if you will, of the Kingdom of God.

When we, as a Christian community take our service into the world, when we hold ourselves up as the city on the hill that we are called to be, we put on Christ and become as Christ for the world. And if we are Christ for the world then we, as a community do the work of Christ, healing the sick, binding up the broken hearted, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked. Yes, all of that and more too. By becoming Christ in the world we have the power to transform the world. Our witness of service not only meets the needs of the present age but it transforms the present age into the reality of that future age which we call the kingdom of God. For those of us that bind ourselves together in service and proclaim the transforming power of Christ in this culture, "the eschatological future has become [for us] an eschatological present," [Niebuhr, Christ in Culture, p.195]. The Kingdom of God, the great leveling at the end of time in which the last shall become first and the first, last, is NOW and we are helping to usher it in. Block by block, act by act, person by person, we serve to bring about the Kingdom of God.

And so my brothers and sisters in Christ my charge to you today on this Feast of St. James our patron, on this day that we focus on the value of Christian Service in our life together, is to serve one another. Because in serving we're gonna change the way we love. We're gonna change the way we lead. We're gonna change the way we live! And with God's help, we're gonna change the whole world in the process.

Amen.