Climb Aboard

October 1, 2022

St. Paul in his letter to the Roman Christians says “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” (1:16)

I’ve often wondered about “the power of the Gospel.” Even a cursory glance around us, and it doesn’t seem as if the Gospel is all that powerful. Evil people stride through the world with impunity, sickness and disease are everywhere, the Church is divided and often heretical and apostate. Noted Christian leaders rise to stardom and fall to sexual and/or financial sin, and if we are honest, none of us are without those secrets we hope nobody ever finds out. So where is the power of the Gospel, and why does it seem so powerless?

Paul gives us the answer here: it is to all who believe. The world doesn’t believe. In fact, people deliberately choose unbelief. It is disguised beneath a veneer of religiosity, but few actually believe enough to commit themselves in any meaningful way. At a memorial service recently, I  told the story of Henri Blondin, the tightrope artist who lived around the turn of the last century. We remember the Great Wallenda, who a few years ago walked a cable strung across the Niagara gorge, but Blondin did it first. He walked from one side to the other, and back again. He then asked the crowd if they believed he could push a wheelbarrow from one side to the other. They cheered enthusiastically, and off he went. He asked the crowd on the other side if they believed he could wheel a man in the wheelbarrow. Again they cheered. 

“Who’ll volunteer to get in?” Blondin asked. The crowd fell silent. He had exposed the difference between real faith and casual assent. People don’t experience the power of God because they don’t believe with a conviction that makes them climb into the wheelbarrow. 

In my own life, I can attest that every time I’ve failed, every time I’ve sinned, it’s because I didn’t believe Jesus could save me from that particular temptation or trial. But when I believed enough to ignore all the feelings, every weakness and every temptation to take a shortcut; when I climbed into the wheelbarrow, every single time, the Gospel of Jesus Christ was powerful enough to save me. And it is powerful enough to save you, too, but you need to stop cheering and climb into the wheelbarrow.