Since Dale Earnhardt was killed instantly when his car slammed into the wall at 180 miles per hour last Sunday at the Daytona 500 it’s natural enough that there would be cries for stricter safety standards for stock car racing.  But, it won’t take too long for the crying to run its course.  No matter how much squawking there is right now about making racing safer, no one wants to make it too safe.  Part of the thrill of stock car racing is the danger.  Watching other people race up to that big finish line of death without actually crossing it gives spectators a buzz.  Enough of a buzz, in fact, that NASCAR nailed down a $2 billion television deal this year.  So, while they may need and ought to make stock car racing safer, if they want the sport to live, they will have leave possibility of someone dying in the business equation.

For that matter, one of the things that gives all of our lives their meaning is the fact that death is part of the equation.  No matter where we turn, we’re likely at any time on any day to slam head-on into it; death has us walled in on all sides.  You don’t have to be a student of the Bible or even believe the Bible to know that death is a part of the equation.  Even the most pagan of all pagans knows that his physical life will end.  We keep identifying the risk factors that keep us too close to death.  In fact, the greatest risk factor is just being alive.

What I’m wondering is what would happen if death got taken out of the equation.  How would that change things?  What risks would we take with death out of the equation?  How would we live if we knew we could never die?

The apostle Paul exhorted his readers to “always be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”  Those words don’t give us the same buzz as do the words, “Gentlemen, start your engines.”  But, that’s partly because we’re removed by twenty centuries of time and Grand Canyon-sized chasms of cultural distance from those who first read them.  The first people who read those words, Corinthian believers, were living in a day and time when following Jesus was very risky.  Jesus was very much counter-culture and the decision to follow him in first century Corinth meant putting everything at risk.  One’s social status, ability to put food on the table and even his life were all part of the risk involved in following Jesus.  No one in this room, of whom I’m aware, has ever faced that kind of threat for their faith.

Interestingly enough, that may be changing.  Those of us who grew up in the 60’s and before remember how community life was very much dominated by the church.  Football coaches were forbidden from holding practice after 6:00 on Wednesday nights because that was a church night.  There was no such thing as a Sunday afternoon soccer tournament or Little League baseball game because Sunday was a church day.  And, good church people didn’t dare take in a Sunday afternoon matinee at the movie theater.  Of course, those same good church people did help keep the pre-matinee Sunday cafeteria buffets profitable.  But, you have to make concessions somewhere, right?  Especially if following Christ gets too costly as our culture is less and less dominated by the church and following Christ means, as it did twenty centuries ago, living in truly counter-cultural kinds of ways.

To the extent we make concessions we become less and less capable of speaking a word of redemptive hope to our culture because we are too much like the culture.  In fact, it’s not just that we are like the culture, we are the culture.  The apostle’s words, specifically, were, “steadfast” and “immovable.”  His meaning was that you stake your claim in matters of loyalty to Christ and you don’t budge.  Not an inch.  And, you keep going no matter what.  And, whatever you do, you don’t make concessions about your loyalty to Christ and his kingdom cause in this world.

Now, this is not a sermon about whether it is right or wrong to eat out on Sunday.  We will never come to the end of the debate about such weighty matters.  So, be sure to hear the specific application of the words “steadfast” and “immovable.”  The point at which we are to stake such a bone-headed claim is specifically, the scripture says, “in the work of the Lord.”  And, specifically, what might that be?  What is the work Jesus wants us to be busy doing?  That’s the debate that carries the real weight and the one which ought to engage our consciences and our churches every day.  It’s just that it gets confused sometimes by things that don’t matter. 

When I was the pastor of a little country church almost twenty years ago, some wealthy people gave the church a Xerox machine.  It was a significant gift.  The problem was that it came with a long list of rules as to who could use it and under what circumstances.  Those who gave the gift were well intentioned.  But, in short order, what appeared at first to be a gift turned into a Trojan horse.  It was amazing how easy it was to get sidetracked by the political maneuverings involved in quelling the potential for disaster a Xerox machine caused.  And, the only thing of which I was ultimately convinced is that being a Christian is about a great deal more than winning the world to Jesus.  It’s about making certain, too, that we don’t get lost in the world that has nothing to do with what concerns Jesus.  So, how do we answer the question about what concerns Jesus?

Though it’s about to run its course now, you may recall the WWJD fad.  What would Jesus do?  It was a good question that was meant to cause us to think about patterning our responses to the world after the model Jesus gave us. 

There’s a better question.  What did Jesus do?  I know of no better pattern when it comes to trying to answer the question for ourselves about what concerns him now.  What did Jesus do?

Well, to answer that question, you’ll have to do some reading.  Which, by the way, is something that concerns me, while I’m on the subject.  It concerns me how few people read anymore.  It’s astounding how few people read even one book about anything in the course of one year.  What’s even more frightening is how few people who claim to be “people of the Book” ever read the Book.  I’m more than willing to tell you that if the only exposure you get to scripture is what little I can give you on Sunday mornings in twenty to twenty-five minutes, you’re going to starve to death spiritually.  A word of warning.  Those who don’t read will ultimately be at the mercy of those who do.  And, that includes everything from the morning newspaper to great novels to the greatest Book ever written.  If you want to know what Jesus did in order to know what Jesus wants us to do now, you’ll have to do some reading.

Here’s a short course from the Bible.  Jesus was baptized.  He was tempted but stood up to Satan anyway.  He fed hungry people.  He ministered to the sick and dying.  He cared about little children.  He sought justice for those who were about to be run over, especially by those doing the running in the name of God.  He spent as much time with sinners as he did with saints.  He loved sinners.  He loved them.  He befriended them.  He got his hands dirty caring for people up to and including touching the sores of lepers even before there was any such thing as latex gloves.  He called people to faith and repentance.  He got thirsty and hungry.  He cried.  He died.  He rose again in part to so that people would know that living is about more than avoiding the risk factors that lead to death.  But, most of all, he did all of that because, before he did any of it, he came.  He didn’t have to come.  “Although he existed in the form of God (he) did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men . . . He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  (Philippians 2:6-8, NASV)

We marvel at the miracle that God made himself like us in the person of Jesus and was born in a manger.  In fact, the greatest miracle was not in the way Jesus came but in the fact that he came at all.  That’s what Jesus did.  He left the safe place heaven was to come to a world so dangerous it finally killed him.  So, if we want to answer the question about what we should do and if we are using what Jesus did as the criterion by which we will answer that question, then here is our answer.  Just as Jesus left the safe place to go the risky place so we must now go from where we are safe to where there is risk involved in order to find the people for whom Jesus also died and do among them the things he did. 

We must feed the hungry.  Love the children.  Care for the sick and dying.  Touch the wounded.  Seek justice where there is none.  Spend as much time with sinners as we do with saints and befriend them.  Call people to repentance and faith.  Let people see our tears.  For each and every one of us that call to go into the world for which Christ died and was raised again will be as unique as our personalities.  For all of us there will be risk.  For some, the greatest risk they’ll ever take will be walking across the street to do what Jesus did.  Others won’t cross the threshold of risk until they cross an ocean and plant themselves on another continent and learn another language. 

The truth is, there’s nothing all that new about our commitment to Rebirth at Cliff Temple.  Reduced to the simplest level, it’s just a commitment to renew our commitment to immovability, steadfastness and excellence in the ways we serve Christ in this place.  But, here is the tricky part.  If Rebirth means nothing more than simply revamping the old so that we can go on doing what we’ve always done in finer style then we shouldn’t bother.  The Christ who risked coming to us and then called on us to “‘Go . . . and make disciples of all nations,” (Matthew 28:18-20) is not now calling on us to simply make our nest more comfortable.  If our commitment to Rebirth involves no risk whatsoever, in our attitudes, agendas, finances and, maybe even our lives, then, we need not bother.  We might have to risk reading and interpreting the Bible for ourselves even if that leads us to an understanding of scripture that is contrary to Baptist orthodoxy.  We might have to risk our prejudices.  We might have to risk forgiving those who have hurt us.  We might have to risk getting hurt or used.  We might have to risk opening this building up so that the people of this community can find their way in here and in here find their way to God.  If we really want to be agents of change in this world then we will have to run some risks.  Which brings me back to the original question.

Is it not true that we shrink back from risk out of fear.  That’s natural enough.  The only question is, fear of what?  In one way or another, it’s the fear of losing.  Which is really what the fear of death is all about.  Losing.  Even fears of rejection and isolation are really fears of losing.  So, back to the original question.  How would we live if we knew that death had been taken out of the equation?  What risks would we take if we knew we could never die?  Listen again to these words.  “We will not all die, but we will all be changed.  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will all be changed.  Then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.  Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death is your sting?’  Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

How would you live, where would you go and what risks would you be willing to take if you knew that, even if you died, you’d live again?  What would you be willing to do if you knew that death had been taken out of the equation?  Well, as a matter of fact, that’s exactly what Jesus did.  But, most specifically, he didn’t so much take death out of the equation as he did take the losing out of dying.  He gave death a new meaning by giving us life beyond it by making even our own physical death an agent of change from what is so painfully temporary to what is eternally good.  So, that even if you die, in Christ, you don’t lose. 

Oh, we’ll still make many trips to Laureland and leave our loved ones there.  But, what gives us the courage in the journey to and from is the very promise of God that some day Laureland will be the some of the most vacant property in Dallas.  We’re only temporarily closing the graves Jesus will someday open when he comes again to give life without end even to those who have already died. 

So, it’s time to stop asking what we’d do and where we’d go if death had been taken out of the equation.  It’s time to stop asking and start doing and going.  Because, whatever else Jesus did, he at least changed the equation by taking the losing out of dying.

Now, what will we do and where will we go?