Text — John 3:1-18

The title for my sermon today is a phrase we use in worship fairly often “This is the Gospel of Christ.  Blessed are those who hear it and believe.”  Think about that.  Is that really so?

Is the gospel true?  Is God really with us?  Does Jesus’ life really show us the path to God.  Jesus said “Love God with all your heart.  Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Do these no matter what happens.  If we hear that and believe it, does it bless us? 

I believe that if we hear the gospel — if it’s delivered to us, if we’re open to it — and believe it, we are blessed.  My life has been blessed by the gospel.  I can remember my life before I heard the gospel and believed it.  It wasn’t such a bad life, but I can’t imagine wanting to go back to that situation.

But not everyone agrees with that.  Some people just aren’t interested.  They’re into other things.  Some people find this belief about the connection between God and humans and humans with each other to be an illusion, a false comfort.

There is no way to prove any of these positions.  No science, no philosophy, can prove whether this gospel and its blessing are true. 

But no one can prove that believing is a mistake either.  Whatever we believe, or disbelieve, is a leap of faith.  How we choose to live, or how we look at life, how we think about life, what attitude we take toward life, including all the painful and terrifying things that are part of life — however we choose to do all of this, believing or disbelieving, is a leap of faith, a risk.  We could be right.  We could be wrong. 

As I was thinking about this choice, and how to capture the consequence and the reality of this choice, I thought of the final segment of the PBS Frontline documentary that we showed here during 2^nd hour.  The title is “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero.”  It’s a series of interviews with people who were at the twin towers on Sept. 11 and survived, people whose families died in that attack, religious leaders in New York City from various faiths, authors, journalists, photographers, rescue personnel, and so on.

This final segment of the video had to do with something that happened on that terrible day — something almost too horrifying to contemplate.  But I want us to contemplate it because it captures something essential about the Christian faith, or any kind of faith — this question of choice, the leap of faith.  As you know, people jumped from the highest floors of those buildings.

Let’s listen to what some commentators had to say about that. 

The following statements were delivered by members of the congregation: 

Beth Redington (part of JOEL MEYEROWITZ: One of the most impossible and memorable images of that day were people leaping out of the windows, being forced out by the fire behind them, driving them, herding them out the windows. And to see that image of two people - co-workers, strangers - I had no idea what their relationship was.  But not knowing that made it all the more poignant.  Imagine reaching out for somebody's hand to take your last step, ending your life in the hands of a stranger, plummeting thousands of feet to your death.

Susanne Fusso (part of MARGOT ADLER, NPR Correspondent): I think that the power of that image is it doesn't give an answer. It takes us in two opposing directions. On the one hand, we are all alone at the end. Life is fleeting. There's no one to help us when we face the abyss. And there wasn't. No one came for them. And on the other hand, they reached for each other. They said that in that moment when they're facing the absolute ultimate, there are other human beings to reach out, to be there, to help them, to help us.

Charles Smith (part of IAN McEWAN, Author): To me, it just seemed the bleakest possible image of the whole thing. Actually, I couldn't find a scrap of hope in it. What I saw was utter desperation, jumping to certain death rather than dying in pain and fire. It spoke to me of sheer panic, humans brought to the sort of furthest edge of despair. I found no hope in that at all. If there is a God, he's a very indifferent God.

John Shaw, (part of BRIAN DOYLE): A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met, and they jumped. I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers, but I keep coming back to his hand in her hand, nestled in each other with such extraordinary, ordinary, naked love. It's the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It's everything we're capable of against horror and loss and tragedy.

It's what makes me believe that we're not fools to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them, like seeds that open only under great fire, to believe that who we are persists past what we were, to believe, against evil evidenced hourly, that love is why we are here.

Karl Scheibe (part of Monsignor LORENZO ALBACETE, Catholic Priest): To me, that image is an inescapable provocation. This gesture, this holding of hands in the midst of that horror, it embodies what September 11 was all about. The image confronts us with the need to make a judgment, a choice. Does it show the ultimate hopelessness of human attempts to survive the power of hatred and of death? Or is it an affirmation of a greatness within our humanity itself that somehow shines in the midst of that darkness and contains the hint of a possibility, a power greater than death itself? Which of the two? It's a choice.

There we have it — a choice.  In this case, the choice is: How do we look at life?  How do we look at two people jumping to certain death holding hands?  But of course, we are all on our way to certain death.  The day is coming when none of us will be alive here on this earth anymore.  We are all jumping into a chasm, in that sense.

Do we see this “holding of hands” as an act of pure desperation?  Or do we see this as a sign of hope and love, even in the face of the worst disaster?  Is our connection with each other a false consolation?  Or a true consolation?  Does following Christ take us to God?  Or is this a pathetic fabrication?

How do we choose to live our lives?  Do we choose to embrace our isolation, and separateness?  Or do we take this leap of life holding on to each other?  Do we go indifferent to God?  Cursing God?  Or trusting God?  What do you believe is the right way to go?

I believe that the way to go is holding on to each other.  I believe that God is with us, even in the worst.  This is the gospel of Christ.  Blessed are those who hear it and believe.