You’ve heard me mention Becky Oekerman a few times lately.  Becky and her husband Mitch were members of the church I once pastored in Abilene.  She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in mid-October.  They asked me to help with the funeral and, four weeks ago, just eight days before she died, Nancy and I traveled to Abilene where we sat at the Oekerman’s dining table to plan her funeral and say goodbye for now.  It surprised me when I found Becky able to sit at the table with us for nearly an hour and, though she knew death was approaching faster than a West Texas “blue norther” in January, there was an eerie calm in the room.  I read Romans 8:38-39,  “Neither death nor life . . . nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  

Then, I turned to Becky and asked her a personal question, the kind of question only a good friend can ask another in a moment like that, “How are you really doing?”  Becky said five words I’ll never forget.  Five words I’m certain Mitch won’t ever forget and five words I hope to remember especially when my time is drawing close.  Death was pushing her closer and closer to the edge.  It was a death that would mean leaving her husband, two children, one grandchild and a life cut too short at age fifty-three by a disease that had already left her unable to eat for days or even keep water down.  When I asked how she was really doing, Becky said, “I’m just trying to relax.” 

This was a battle she knew she couldn’t win.  She could have fought a little longer with highly experimental chemotherapy.  But, as many of you know from first hand experience with loved ones, the doctors told her that the treatment would only delay the inevitable and in the meantime cost her the joy of saying goodbye to those she loved with peace and dignity.  So, instead of fighting a battle she couldn’t win and in the meantime wouldn’t be worth what it would cost, she said, “I’m just trying to relax.” 

What decision had Becky made that had left her so full of peace she could stand on the edge of death itself and not feel threatened? 

Whatever it was, Jesus was in on the secret, too.

Jesus was being pushed to the edge, literally.  He’d been in the synagogue reading scripture.  Things had gone well for a while.  He’d grown up in Nazareth; people knew him as Joseph’s boy and, for sure, that was part of the problem.  One of the toughest tests of adulthood is learning to relate as an adult to other adults you once knew as infants, especially if they begin surpassing you in wisdom and spiritual depth as they mature.  Not many folks pass that test with flying colors.  That’s perfectly understandable, really. 

Like Rick Ivey.  By the time I got here, his hair was already thinning and graying although I didn’t know until this morning he’d tried to hide that.  To accept his adult opinion on matters that affect the life and ministry of this church is easy for me.  Those of you who remember nine-year-old Rick coming back into the worship service still wet behind the ears with baptismal water, his dry clothes outlined by the wet undergarments he refused to change, might have found accepting him as an adult in his own right more of a challenge. 

For Jesus, things had gone pretty well until he began to show his hometown folks that he had made his faith his own, that his adult understanding of scripture had taken his faith places they could not go with him.  Eventually, it would kill Jesus, but not yet.

After reading the words of Isaiah that prophesied the coming Messiah, Jesus sat down and made the startling announcement, “‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”  Then, he went on to announce that he knew how hard it would be for them to accept that.  That to be fully accepted as a prophet in his own right, he’d have to go other places where no one had ever known him as a child.  “‘Truly I tell you,’” Jesus said, “‘no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.’”  Jesus even illustrated this by reminding them of the ancient prophets Elijah and Elisha whose work was limited in those places where people could not or would not believe that someone so human could speak a word so divine.

People who are otherwise nice folks can get downright nasty if you challenge their faith convictions or their long-held religious traditions.  When these probably otherwise good folks heard Jesus challenge religious notions they’d nurtured for generations by claiming to be the Messiah, they didn’t just offer to debate the issue on the floor of the synagogue, they meant to kill him.  “They . . . drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.” 

We’re taking a walk with Jesus between Christmas and Easter.  We’ve been to his baptism, to a wedding and back home to his synagogue on the Sabbath so far.  Now, our walk takes us to the edge of a cliff.  Jesus is about to be thrown off not because he’s committed some horrendous crime that rates a lynching.  He’s being thrown off for having told the truth.  We won’t be at the edge of this cliff long because Jesus doesn’t stay their long, either.  But, there is something we need to learn while we’re standing there. 

It’s something more than just speculating about exactly how Jesus was able to, as the scripture says, pass through the crowd and just go “on his way.”  How did he do that?  Whether this lynch mob was in such a frenzy that everyone’s job became no one’s job and Jesus got lost in the crowd so that he was able to slip away or he did some kind of Casper the friendly ghost routine and slipped through their grasp we don’t know.  What we do know, and this is where the lesson on the edge of the cliff begins, is that, though Jesus could have fought this battle and won, he chose to just walk away. 

Don’t you think there were whole regiments of angels, just one breath’s call away, that could have descended on this crowd and done a fire and brimstone tap dance on their heads worthy of the Old Testament?  Jesus had power these people could have never imagined.  But, instead of using his power to blow people away, he used it instead to just walk away.  We will never really know, in our walk with Jesus, just how far God has gotten with us until we are in a position to use our power to take someone else down and use it instead to just walk away.

A good friend of mine was at work one day when a UPS delivery truck creamed his brand new car in the parking lot.  The driver was really broken up and told my friend that if this accident went on his record, he’d lose his job.  He had a wife and kids to support.  He also had no way of repairing the damage.  So, my friend let him walk away and ate the repair bill for several hundred dollars himself.  He could have taken the driver down.  He used his power, instead, to just walk away (Thanks to George Mason).  When God could have sent us the bill for our sins, he chose instead to eat it himself.  Aren’t we glad he did?

This cliffhanger was not the battle Jesus had come to fight and the scripture says he just “went on his way.”  He had somewhere else to be, something else to do; “His way” involved another battle to fight and, literally, another hill to die on.  So, what hill are we going to die on?  What one battle in this life is the one battle we want to be sure to engage?  That is a question that walking with Jesus will force us to ask.  Have you ever thought about it? 

The question isn’t so much about whether or not we’re going to make enemies, by the way.  For some, that is the question.  Peace at all costs, no matter what.  Certainly, we’ve all known people who were so gracious and kind and giving that it’s hard to imagine anyone, even one person, who would have thought ill of them.  But, I’ve been wondering lately.  Though I’d never intentionally want to make an enemy, if we can go all the way to end of our life without making even one enemy, has our life stood for anything?  If you’ve stood your whole life so that you were never standing in anyone’s way, were you standing any place that mattered?

I’m not talking about people who have whole oceans of anger churning hurricane-like in their souls and who are always spoiling for a fight.  There are people who thrive on putting other people down and who have some really sick need to embarrass or humiliate or denigrate others publicly.  Some people do that just because they’re so self-centered that no matter what they say it’s insensitive and rude.  Not that I haven’t had experience myself with finding my size 12 fitting nicely inside my mouth with plenty of room left over to reach in and tie the shoe laces.  All of us have experience with that.  But, there are people who believe, even if they’re not aware of it, that they have no reason to live unless they have enemies.  That’s a subject way beyond the scope of this sermon. 

The question this edge of the cliff moment poses for us is about something else.  Jesus was where he was because he’d told the truth, and lived it.  There was something he believed so passionately he was willing to sacrifice his life for it.  I guess the question for us is, do we?  Is there anything in this pluralistic culture that values inclusiveness and diversity at the expense of moral goodness that we hold so dear that, given the choice, we’d rather die than give it up for the sake of not being excluded?  Can it be said that, unless we hold to something so dear we’d be willing to die for it, we haven’t started living?

Though I’ve never read it, this week someone sent me a passage from Tony Evans’ book, Time To Get Serious.  Reflecting on Moses confronting Pharoah and leading the children of Israel out of Egypt into the wilderness, Evans writes, “How do you know whether you've chosen the world or God?  One answer is the treatment you got with your choice.  It cost Moses ‘ill-treatment’ to identify with Israel.  If no one ever puts you down because you are a Christian, if no one ever calls you a fanatic, if no one ever says to you, ‘You're crazy.  You're carrying this stuff too far,’ you are still living in Egypt.  You haven't faced the conflict of faith.  Some of us are still sitting on the fence.  We want heaven and hell.  We want God and Satan to work us a split deal.  But God will not do it.”

Jesus is living proof that telling the truth will cost you.  Evans would ask us to ponder, if what we are living hasn’t cost us, are we living the truth?  Jesus wasn’t out to make enemies.  He wasn’t out to avoid making them, either.  He was out to live and die for what God had given to do.  By this time in his life, he’d carved out a pretty clear idea of what that was.  If we’re going to walk with Jesus, that walk will take us to the edge of this cliff where we, too, must begin to decide what it is our lives should count for, and what battles we won’t fight, no matter what it costs us. 

For Jesus, it was a battle with sin and death and Satan on the cross.  No other battle, no other argument, no other war counted as much as that and aren’t we glad?  The question we must ask and answer is what God has given us to do, what truth has he given us to tell and live, maybe to die for someday.  Sometimes you get at that by filtering out what the battle isn’t about first.

If you have been listening to me at all these past five years then you know that is has grieved my soul deeply to watch what has happened in the denomination that nurtured my faith from the beginning, the Southern Baptist Convention.  Some of you find that issue about as exciting as the news that AT&T recently decided to sell off its wireless business.  Unless you own stock in AT&T, you probably couldn’t care less.  Many of us owned stock for decades in the SBC.  I was educated at a college and seminary funded by Southern Baptists.  I well remember the day when, if you said you were a Baptist, that was good enough and pretty clearly defined what you believed.  Those days are no more.

Over this past twenty-five years I’ve watched as the denomination that nurtured me has been dismantled and then reassembled along doctrinal lines I cannot, and will not, abide.  I’ve watched as The Baptist Faith and Message has been rewritten and reshaped into a restrictive creed and used as a doctrinal whipping stick.  I’ve personally witnessed the character of some of the best Christians I’ve ever known being publicly lynched because they would not sacrifice their conscience to keep from making enemies.  In just the past two years, I’ve seen missionaries that I have personally known fired because they would not sign the Baptist Faith and Message, a creed that now denigrates women, mocks the autonomy of the local church, the priesthood of the believer and has had any language that references Jesus Christ as the ultimate criteria by which all scripture should be interpreted removed from it.  And, I’m still amazed that after twenty-five years of this, some people still say, “it’s only politics.” 

As I see it, politics is a function of theology.  We relate to each other based on what we believe about God, or don’t.  If I tell a woman she can’t preach the gospel because the calling to ministry is gender-specific, that says as much about what I believe about God as it does what I believe about women.  I have grieved and been angry and in a state of disbelief and even embarrassed to be associated with the Southern Baptist Convention as it has continued to pull further and further away from its historic, truly Baptist, moorings.  Most recently, the SBC powers-that-be decided to pull out of the Baptist World Alliance, declaring it to be too liberal.  Again, because others will not conform to their increasingly rigid view of scripture, they have chosen not to work with some 40 million other Baptists around the world, some of whom would think we are liberal simply because women wear makeup to church.  How far will this go?

Suddenly, very recently, it occurred to me.  That’s not the battle Jesus called me to fight.  I believe that whoever Satan is and whatever power he has, one of his most effective tactics is not so much to put irresistible temptation in front of us but instead to simply keep us off task by enticing us to fight battles that are not ours to fight, especially battles that keep Christians fighting with other Christians.  Proving that the Southern Baptist Convention has gone astray is no longer, never was, my battle to fight, my war to win.

Out of the blue this week, I got an email from Mark Cornelison.  Twenty years ago, I was his youth minister.  We’ve not had contact much since then.  This is what Mark wrote.  “I wanted you to know that I am now in full-time youth ministry myself at First Baptist Church in Seminole, Texas.  You may have never realized how greatly God used you back then, but what I saw in you and through you brought me to where I am today.  Just because you don't see the fruit doesn't mean it isn't there.  Your work at that time has reached farther than you will ever know.  Thank you for giving yourself!” 

This same week, I also had the privilege of speaking with a young lady about accepting Jesus Christ as her savior and becoming his disciple.  And, somewhere, deep down inside, I heard a still small voice say something like this.  “The Southern Baptists are mine, too.  Let me worry about them.  Did you hear what Mark told you?  Go do that again, and again.  Keep giving yourself to those who need you and who want what you have to give.  Did you see that little girl’s eyes when you talked about Jesus?  Go do that again, and again.  If you really believe I’ve called and gifted young women, as well as young men, to serve me in this world, then get busy drafting them for service, and training them and leading your church to be an academy for all young servants of Jesus.  Let me worry about those who believe differently.  If you believe that Cliff Temple is where I’ve called you, then get busy working there making a place for some people no one else wants.”  That’s not a verbatim report of what I believe to be the voice of God in my soul.  But, it’s close enough. 

With those words, I’m actually beginning to learn something, I really am, about just trying to relax and no longer fighting battles I can’t win, and shouldn’t win, even if I could.  I’m more interested in using my power to help this church discover its still untapped potential for making disciples of Jesus.  I’m very interested in our church partnering with other families of faith, even if they aren’t Baptists, who have a common mission.  I’m really interested in telling Dallas that a church like ours exists, where women and men can discover and live out their divine calling, where all are welcome, regardless of race or sex or money or whatever, to come and hear and obey the gospel.

God only called me to do one thing, to fight one battle.  I don’t want to make enemies.  But, I’m more interested in it being said of me, just after I’ve finally relaxed, that he fought the good fight, and kept the faith.