In Hell of All Places by Rev. L. John Gable
April 19, 2019
You may not recall it now, but I feel fairly confident I can tell you what you were doing last July 8th, 9th and 10th. You, along with the rest of the world, were watching with rapt attention as attempts were made to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach who were trapped in a cave in northern Thailand. The ordeal began over two weeks earlier on June 23rd as the coach and his team of 11-16 year old boys went exploring in a remote cave, when the rains began to fall and the water within the cave began to rise, trapping them 2.5 miles inside. No food, no supplies, no means of escape, no way to make contact with anyone on the outside, only a thin rock ledge on which to settle, immersed in total darkness. It took nearly a week for them even to be located and then began the long ordeal of trying to figure out a way to get them out.
Few of us will ever forget that remarkable story and the tireless efforts of literally thousands of volunteers to extricate them from that “hell hole”, and I do not use that term lightly. When I think of what hell must be like, I don’t picture “fire and brimstone” as much as I do being inextricably trapped, cold, dark, isolated, frightened, and alone. In this sense, I imagine hell less as a physical place than as a spiritual condition of being totally cut-off, isolated, separated from the love of God.
Popularized by Dante and others, perhaps playing on our deepest fears and anxieties, hell has always been considered a place of misery and torment for those condemned to eternal punishment. The concept of hell has gone through radical transformations over the centuries, from the early Greeks describing it as a place “where lost souls lie for eternity face down in a swamp of mud and frogs” to a later understanding of it being “unbearably suffocating, repulsively crowded with people pressed together like grapes in a wine press…(with) no latrines.” The Jewish concept of hell grew out of the frustration religious people were feeling over injustices they were experiencing in this temporal world; people were getting away with sin in this life, so around the 2nd century BC they began looking for ways to punish them in the next life; enter Gehenna, named for the dump near Jerusalem where garbage and animal carcasses were cast into fires which burned continually. Although not expressly mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures, Gehenna soon evolved in to a kind of “cosmic disposal site for the wicked”. Perhaps expanding on that concept, the New Testament refers to it as being “a lake of fire” with “weeping and gnashing of teeth”, as “outer darkness” and a place where “the worm never dies.”
Regardless of whatever and wherever it may be, hell ranks as one of history’s most influential concepts. Many conversions and much theology has been shaped, not by the love and grace of God, but by the threat of eternal judgment and damnation.
Yet if hell is that place where God does not exist, I wonder with you, where that place possibly could be? The Psalmist writes, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol (the shadowy underworld of the dead), You are there.” Or as Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things yet to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” I take this to mean that there is no place where we can go to escape the presence of God’s Spirit or His love. However, that is not to say that we cannot turn our backs and our wills from Him; that we cannot reject His love and cut ourselves off, isolate and separate ourselves from God. Contrary to popular belief, hell is not so much a place that God sends us to as it is a condition we freely choose for ourselves when we decide against God and reject His love.
In this understanding then hell is not so much a “place” as it is a “spiritual condition” which means our concept of hell could be best described as being the polar opposite of our understanding of heaven. If we describe heaven as being the condition of being eternally in the perfect and intimate presence of God, then hell must be that condition in which we are totally cut-off, isolated, separated from the love of God. Which means that the experience of hell, just as we believe that the experience of heaven, can begin right now, and I believe for many it does.
The plain Gospel message is that once we were all cut-off, isolated, and separated from God by the pervasiveness of our own sinfulness. We were trapped and in bondage to disobedience, living under the penalty of death; but the Good News of salvation is that “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” Jesus came to liberate us and restore us into a right relationship with God. In Jesus Christ God made the ultimate sacrifice and paid the ultimate price for our salvation; He did this on the cross of Calvary. So the assurance of our faith is that there is nothing that can ever separate us from God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, save our own willful rejection of it.
Why speak of hell on this holy night? Because in a very few moments we will stand and affirm our faith together once again by saying the Apostles’ Creed, just as we have regularly over the past several months. Here we find this interesting phrase that states, “He (Jesus) was crucified, dead and buried, He descended into hell”
After making absolutely no mention of His earthly ministry at all (remember the all-encompassing comma between “born of the Virgin Mary (comma) suffered under Pontius Pilate), the writers of the Creed go to great lengths to affirm that “He descended into hell.” Why? The Scriptural support for this is very thin and is largely based on a rather obscure text in I Peter 3:18-19 which says, “He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which He also went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison who in former times did not believe.” The inference is that after His death and burial Jesus went into hell to preach to those who had gone before Him in order to give them the opportunity to repent and believe.
Now, while the Scriptural support may seem suspect, the theological rationale is overwhelming and exhilarating! This obscure little phrase is yet another ringing affirmation that there is no length to which God will not go to show His incredible love for us. Listen to the way Frederick Buechner reflects on this assertion of our faith. “’He descended in to hell’…has an almost blasphemous thud to it, sandwiched between the muffled drums of ‘was crucified, dead and buried’ and the trumpet blast of “the third day He rose again from the dead.’ Christ of all people, in hell of all places! It strains the imagination to picture it, the Light of the World making His way through the terrible dark to save whatever ones He can. Yet in view of what He’d seen of the world during His last few days in the thick of it, maybe the transition wasn’t as hard as you might think. The fancifulness of the picture gives way to what seems, the more you think it over in your mind, the inevitability of it. Of course that is where He would have gone. Of course that is what He would have done. Christ is always descending and re-descending into Hell.”
The message is simple and clear: Jesus Christ is willing to go to hell to restore those who are lost, cut-off, isolated, or separated from God in order to redeem and restore them. What He has done for us He is willing to do for all.
As the heavy rains began to fall, after nearly a week of carefully coordinated planning, despite personal risk of safety and nearly impossible and increasingly more perilous conditions, over the course of three days, for their sake more than 10,000 doctors, divers, Navy Seals, rescue workers, government workers, police officers and soldiers from 18 different countries, went in to that “hell hole” to rescue those boys, and late in the day on July 10th , as the world watched and waited and prayed, the last of the 12 and their coach were finally lifted out to safety; the very last ones to emerge being a doctor from Australia and three Navy Seals who had gone in after them as soon as they were discovered and had stayed with them the entire time until they were rescued.
Friends, Jesus Christ came into the hell of our lives, into our brokenness and isolation and separation from God, to rescue us and set us free in order that we might have new life, abundant and eternal, in fellowship with the God who made us and loves us. Christ of all people, in hell of all places? Of course. Amen.