Howdy! You know, one of our sister congregations
in our Lutheran Church circuit asked me if I
wanted to attend a men's retreat in Montana over
Labor Day weekend. I thought, why not? I'd like
to escape Houston and the concrete jungle that
we have here. I wasn't sure what to expect, but
it turned out to be an amazing time of fly fishing,
boating, hiking, shotgun practice, and whatever
struck our fancy up there. Believe it or not,
I caught five fish! Five times more than I ever
caught before! Yes! Ah, increased lifetime from
one to six, oh man. And some guys went golfing,
but I have absolutely no golfing skills, I can
barely even do putt -putt. So, I find myself
on that Saturday, standing on the edge of a cliff
about 40 feet in the air, looking down into a
river. From below, it hadn't looked all that
high. But once I climbed up and stood on the
edge, I realized... The cliff was higher than
I expected. Now, I had seen a few people already
jump, and everyone was fine. The depth was over
100 feet. I had my water shoes, and I was jumping
in feet first like everybody else. Everything
was fine, but my knees started to shake. My heart
was pounding, my stomach dropped, my hands gripped
the rock behind me. And I thought, what am I
doing up here? Now, something you should assume
about your pastor is that he turns almost everything
into a spiritual metaphor. I even have the mug
to show it. I thought to myself, what if God
were telling me to jump? Don't worry, He wasn't
telling me to jump. But what if? Would I trust
Him? Would I obey even if I was afraid? Now I
know God doesn't work like that. He doesn't just
tell us to jump off of cliffs to prove our faith.
But I had been scared a lot when I was a kid.
I avoided too many challenges that would have
helped me when I was younger. So since then,
I sometimes look for things that make me a little
uncomfortable, safe things, but to give me those
experiences. And that's where my mind went. If
God asked me to do something scary, something
that made no sense to anybody else but me, would
I obey? And then another thought hit me. Why
climb all the way up here if I'm not going to
jump? I had already made the climb. The choice
was in front of me. I couldn't stay neutral.
You don't just stand on a cliff for the rest
of your life. Was I going to stand still and
make my friends wait another hour and a half
while I stood there? Or was I going to leave?
So I jumped. Life in Christ requires we choose
Him daily. Isn't it amazing how we can take the
simplest of things and make it into something
complicated? Moses faced something like that.
He had brought the children of Israel out of
Egypt. And they kept complaining, I'm going to
save you from the oppression and the slavery.
But we are just tired of walking. God just wanted
the people to follow Him. Moses showed them that
God's Word isn't far away or unreachable. His
commands are not impossible. His will is acceptable.
And yet they kept hesitating and pulling back.
When we realize that we have a choice before
us life and prosperity with God Death and destruction
without him God calls his people to decide We
are meant to choose life not by looking for the
quick thrill of jumping into a river But by loving
the Lord walking in his ways and holding fast
to him That is what leads to life and blessing
And here's where the metaphor of my cliff jump
stopped being just a metaphor. Because when I
hit the water, I didn't cross my arms the way
I should have. The impact caught me right in
the chest, the spot in my sternum where my chest
muscles were weakened years ago by cancer radiation
therapy, and it fractured. Yes, I am preaching
with a fractured sternum right now. Following,
even in a silly practice metaphor like that jump,
cost me something. It hurts, and it still does.
There's plenty of ibuprofen in my office at this
moment. But that's the reality of the Christian
faith. Following Christ is not just about the
moments that work out neatly, or prayers that
get answered in exactly the way we wanted, or
paths that always feel smooth. Sometimes faith
costs. Sometimes obedience hurts. Jesus doesn't
hide that. In Luke 14, Jesus said to the great
crowds, if you want to follow me, count the cost.
Whoever does not carry his cross and follow me
cannot be my disciple. He says it plainly, count
the cost. Don't pretend discipleship will be
painless. That's how life often works, right?
We all face these cliff -edge moments. We oftentimes
want our Christian faith to be just a neutral
choice. It's just the default. The default for
normal people. Where we just cruise along the
river and watch the cliffs from a distance. Wouldn't
that be a great way for Christian faith just
to be? But there are moments in our lives where
we find ourselves at a place where neutrality
is no longer possible. where indecision itself
becomes a decision. When you try to say, I don't
want to take a side, and that actually default
gives you a side already. Do we stand for the
people that are being oppressed? Do we tell someone
when they've gone too far and we cannot accept
it any longer? The question is always the same.
Am I willing to jump? Am I willing to take the
risk? Am I willing to pay the price? We need
to count the cost. when we follow Jesus. And
often it's not the climb that's the highest part.
We may talk a good talk, saying what we would
do if the choice was in front of us, how we must
be willing to choose what isn't what others would
accept. It's the choice at the top that matters,
when we don't feel the ground under our feet
and we have to keep moving forward. It's the
moment when the cost becomes clear, when we realize
This could hurt when we know not everyone, maybe
not even those closest to us, will agree or understand.
That's when faith gets real. But don't miss this
either. Life on the other side. Life is on the
other side of that leap. When I told my mom later
on because yes, I went ahead and called her afterward
You know, that's what you do because I knew how
bad it would be if I saw her sometime in the
next month And she gave me a hug and I Winston
Payne and she were to say what's going on if
I didn't tell her she'd be very unhappy I'm like,
okay, let's just do it. Hey mom Her immediate
response Why would you do that? And then after
a nice long pause, she added, well, you're 45
years old. You can make your own decisions. Thanks,
Mom. And she's right. Nobody could make that
decision for me, not even the people who love
me the most. But isn't that when we make the
most important decisions in our lives anyway?
Jesus was very clear in Luke 14. He's walking
along with the crowds, and He turns to them and
says, if you want to follow Me, count the cost.
This won't be easy. It may mean putting Me before
your family, before your possessions, before
your comfort. It will cost you everything, and
that's a hard word. It's one thing to cheer Jesus
when He heals us, when He multiplies bread and
fish. Thank you for letting me walk better, Jesus.
Thank you for making sure we had plenty to eat
for lunch today. But to follow Him? To really
follow when we're called to eat His body and
drink His blood? To accept the sacrifice that
He showed us on the cross and that now defines
our lives? That means putting our lives in His
hands. Even if it bruises us. Even if it costs
us. Even if it breaks us. even if it kills us.
And then Jesus starts talking about salt. If
salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made
salty again? How does that make any sense? Have
you ever had your little canister in the pantry
and gone up and grabbed something out of it and
said, ooh, that tastes like sugar? Well, if you
did, your dad probably was pulling a joke on
you. But salt is salt. How is salt not salty?
Now pure salt, the kind we buy in stores today,
it doesn't lose its saltiness. Pure sodium chloride
and ACL, table salt, it cannot stop being salty.
It's a stable compound. If you put it on your
tongue in a hundred years, that's great because
that means you live to be a really old age. But
it's still going to taste like salt. But in Jesus'
day, salts often came from places like the Dead
Sea, where it was a mixture of salt, gypsum,
sand, and other minerals. And if that mixture
was exposed to moisture, the actual salt would
dissolve away, and it would leave a chalky, tasteless
white powder that looked like salt, but tasted
like nothing. It was useless. Always wondered
what... Jesus was referring to. That's what discipleship
without commitment is like. It still looks like
the real thing on the outside, but it's lost
its purpose. That's what happens when we claim
to follow Christ, but we back down when others
look at us and say, why would you want to do
that? Why would you want to do that thing that
Jesus would say? See, a disciple who loses their
distinctiveness their flavor becomes like that
residue. Still looks like salt, but no longer
useful. And that's what it felt like on that
cliff, when suddenly, a young girl climbed to
the top. Now, I'd already been up there for an
hour by then, and her father went up there with
her and showed her how easy it was, and he jumped.
And then her older sister, came up and held her
hand to jump with her. Only the young girl let
go at the last second. I looked at her and it
was like, that was slick. That was slick. Well
done. Now, she stood there with me for at least
another half hour while others were trying to
convince her to jump. They kind of gave up on
me. And they were triggering to convince her
to jump. For some reason, Some comment made by
her father. He had climbed back up again brought
to mind a physics lesson for me because well,
of course it did and I started rambling about
how the law of gravity unlike other laws that
may change is just the appearance of gravitational
acceleration in the universe made to appear as
if it's a downward momentum because of living
on what appears to be a flat surface, but is
actually curved and Then the girl looked at me
and said Why are you talking to me about this
instead of jumping?" Forty -five seconds later,
I jumped. And two minutes after that, she jumped
with her family. Why did that comment get me
to jump? Because we realize that the very thing
that gets us to do the hard things is when we
realize our part in living in faith for the next
generation. didn't want that girl to let my fear
become an excuse for her to avoid something she
really wanted. Something that maybe she needed.
I wanted her to be brave in ways that I wasn't
when I was a kid. When we come back to church,
when we have our own children, we walk away from
abuse because we can't let others see that as
an example of how to live. When we leave our
dream job so we don't miss out on spending time
with our nieces and nephews. When we stay with
a lower paying job so we can spend time with
the kids who need us the most. But salt isn't
something that changes how salty it is over time.
Salt doesn't decide to lose its saltiness during
college and then find it again after the fun
years end. Salt is either salt or it isn't. Are
you salt? And if you are, where is your flavor?
See, here's the question. Where are you standing
at the edge right now? What cliff has God brought
you to? Maybe it's a decision to forgive someone
who hurt you. Maybe it's a call to give more
generously than feel safe. Maybe it's speaking
about your faith in a place where you'd rather
keep quiet. There are introverts. It happens.
And maybe it's letting go of something that you've
been clinging to. It just feels a little too
scary to let go of. Maybe standing on the edge
is scary. But frankly, the leap may bruise you.
It may even fracture something. It may mean people
close to you shake their heads and say, why would
you do that, Christian? But the leap is where
faith becomes real. It's where life with Christ
begins. And as a church, that is our calling
too. To follow Christ, not to jump off cliffs
per se, but we're called to be salt. Not to look
like salt, but to live without flavor. We are
meant to live with flavor, with distinctiveness,
with faithfulness that endures. We are called
to be a people who don't just stand on the edge
of the cliff admiring the view, but who leap
into the waters of God's promise. Because here's
the truth, choosing life in Christ isn't about
avoiding pain. It's about trusting that the life
he gives is greater than any cost we could bear.
Moses said it long ago, choose life so that you
and your children may live. Jesus says it even
more clearly, whoever loses his life for my sake
will find it. So may we not hesitate at the edge.
May we count the cost and still leap. May we
choose life by choosing Christ. And don't forget
to cross your arms when you jump. Thanks be to
God.