Delivered June 22, 2008 at Bethel and Brooks Chapel UMCs
Not long ago, I was flipping through the channels on my television when I came across a comedian that looked interesting—so I figured I would pause and give him a listen. He was not your run-of-the-mill stand-up comedian; he was playing his guitar and singing humorous songs—or, at least, songs that were supposed to be humorous.
Because, you see, while I did not find his lyrics terribly amusing—I did find them to be lewd and somewhat offensive. In fact, some of what he sang was downright dirty. And as I sat there with my mouth agape at what I was hearing, it was what I heard once he finished that really shocked me.
Acknowledging that his music was less-than-tasteful (and to be blunt, pretty immoral), he said, “I know I’m goin’ to hell for this.” The audience laughed. Then he said, “And I’ll see you all there!” How would you have reacted to such a statement? How would you expect them to have reacted? Instead of booing him or walking out, every one of them cheered—clapping their hands, shouting wildly, and whistling. Apparently, the thought of ending up in hell did not bother them. In fact, it looked to me like they were rather fond of the idea.
I turned the television off, and sat there stunned by what I had just witnessed. But as I thought about it, it began to make sense. The people who sat in that audience, and reacted so favorably to what that man had said, did so because of a lack of understanding about hell.
Now there are many concepts that people both inside and outside the Church struggle with, as far as grasping those ideas goes. And I think that is due, at least in part, to the Church of today glossing over certain topics because they are unpleasant to talk about; they make people uncomfortable. And after all, we want to make sure that everybody is happy—that is what keeps them coming on Sunday mornings, right?
Well I would challenge that view. I refuse to believe that the Church’s responsibility—our responsibility—is simply to make folks happy. I believe, rather, that it is our responsibility to make the Truth known and to see lives changed for the better. It is our responsibility to offer this world Jesus, that it might have both wholeness in this life and the hope of heaven in the life to come. It is our responsibility to make the love of God through Christ available to all.
But while that very notion—God’s love—is an undeniable and very important reality that everyone needs to be aware of, it is not the only facet of God’s character that needs to be taught. We like to hear about God’s mercy and graciousness and kindness, because it offers us a reprieve from the guilt we carry when faced with the fact that all have sinned and fallen short of his glory. It provides us with a measure of comfort to know that God is forgiving, patient, and lenient. But if we never turn the coin over and look at the other side—the side that reveals God’s wrath, anger, and judgment—we have watered down the Gospel to a state where it becomes ineffective. We no longer have a Gospel; what we have is a motivational speech.
For you see, while God is loving—God is also righteous. He is sovereign. And above all else, he is holy. And it is for this very reason that God cannot tolerate sin. Scripture tells us that God hates sin, and he will not dwell where it exists. The Bible also tells us that there is punishment for sin, and for living a life contrary to God’s will. There is punishment for denying God, and refusing to let him into your heart through his only begotten Son. This punishment is spoken of in the passage we read this morning. This punishment is called hell.
I suppose we ought first to establish the authenticity of hell, since there are those who question its existence. Even within the Church, there are some who hold fast to the belief that hell is nothing more than a “frame of mind”—that there is no real proof that it is an actual place.
To those people, I would refer them to the numerous biblical passages—like the one from Revelation—that refer to the souls of the wicked going to a physical destination where they will receive payment for their unrepentance. The Scriptures are brimming with chapters and verses that warn evildoers of what lies ahead if they do not turn from their ways. But apparently, what the Bible says is not good enough for some people.
Thus I would also submit such persons to the ancient languages of Hebrew and Greek, in which the Old and New Testaments, respectively, were written. In Hebrew, when talking of hell, find the word sheol—which means “underworld,” “grave,” or “pit.” To the Jews, this was thought of as the dwelling place of the dead; it was seen as a place of extreme degradation, from which there was no return. The Greek word, however, is geenna or gehenna. This derives from the Hebrew gey hinnom, or “valley of Hinnom.” The valley of Hinnom was located south of Jerusalem, and was the place where the filth and dead animals of the city were cast out and burned. It is easy to see, then, that this word—gehenna—is steeped in symbolism, and was a good choice for Jesus (and the New Testament authors) to use when speaking of the eternal punishment for the wicked. Another New Testament word that is used in reference to hell is hades; this word was originally meant to denote the name of the god of the nether regions (also called Pluto at times), but it later became used in a way similar to sheol—referring to “death” or “the grave.” With all of these various ways to speak of such a place and all the different names it has, does it not stand to reason that it must exist in some form?
But the thing that (to me) most clearly points to the reality of hell is the reality of heaven. If heaven exists—and again, the Bible clearly indicates that it does—then it stands to reason that its opposite exists as well. If there is a place where the souls of the faithful and just go to reap the fruits of their labors, then there must be a place where the unfaithful and unjust go to reap theirs.
As a side note, I find particularly vexing the doctrine of universalism—a doctrine running rampant in today’s western Christianity which states that, in the end, all beings will be saved. This belief starts from the conviction that a loving God cannot impose eternal punishment, and that eternal bliss cannot be complete while any are excluded. So then, this theory does not necessarily deny the existence of hell—but it does say, in a nutshell, that no one will go there. Why, then, does hell exist? I have yet to find anyone who can offer a satisfying answer to that question.
So what goes on in hell? I think some people have a terribly misguided idea that it is a big old party where everyone just does whatever they want, whenever they want. Perhaps that is why those people in my opening story cheered the comedian for what he said. But I assure you, the environment in hell is anything but a party atmosphere. Hell is a place of unending torment, where fires burn forever—yet all is utterly dark. The Bible tells us that hell is reserved not only for the wicked among us, but also for the devil and his angels, false prophets, and those who have denied the Gospel. It also alludes to the idea that there are degrees of punishment—that some will be chastised with greater severity than others.
Nonetheless, we have likely all seen images of hell that portray it as a place where demons poke at you with pitchforks and brand you with hot coals or irons; perhaps, in these images, you have also seen those being punished locked up or shackled—unable to go anywhere. While some of those descriptions are a tad unsettling—maybe even a bit scary—I have to believe they pale in comparison to what it is really like.
In hell, Scripture says, all we will hear is continuous moaning, wailing, and shrieking. Lost souls will weep bitterly as they clench their teeth. Flames will engulf the bodies of the ones who are there. The acrid stench of sulfur will fill the breezeless air, and the lake of fire will flow—preparing to swallow those cast into it. This sort of torture and wretchedness is made plain to us, and is certainly so severe that most shudder at the mere thought of it.
But what makes hell miserable and intolerable more than anything else is not what afflicts the body—but what afflicts the soul. For you see, the aspect of hell that makes it absolutely insufferable and impossible to endure is the fact that those who are there are forever separated from God. Once within the confines of hell, there is no second chance. There is no opportunity for appeal. God cannot hear you, and you cannot hear him. You are apart from him everlastingly, and can never draw near again. I have to be honest with you—this thought terrifies me. It terrifies me much more than any sort of physical torture and pain that is promised. The thought that I could never again call upon my heavenly Father—the thought that I would never see the blessed face of Jesus—frightens me beyond words.
There may be much I still do not understand about this life or what happens once it is over; I am still learning, and I have a long way to go. But one thing I do know: hell is real. It is not a figment of my imagination, or a negative thought pattern, or an adverse state of being in this present life. It is a place—a real place—set aside for the fearful, the unbelieving, the abominable, the murderers, the whoremongers, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and the liars. And I know this as well: no one—not you, nor me, nor anyone else who truly grasps the reality of hell—wants to end up there.
So how do you avoid it? The answer is simple. Turn to Jesus, trust in him, confess your wrongdoing, and cast off your old ways. Love God with all your being and other people more than yourself. And finally, do good at all times and in all places—even if it means going against the norm. Enlist yourself as a laborer for the Lord. The immediate pay might be lousy—but the benefits are out of this world.
So normally, I wouldn't use this space for a "movie review"--but I just finished watching one that I thought was pretty good and perhaps worth taking a look at (that is, if you like movies with a message that runs deeper than the surface).
Yesterday, I watched I Am Legend, a recent movie starring Will Smith. Smith plays a character named Dr. Robert Neville, who is somehow immune to an unstoppable and incurable virus. Now, he's the last human survivor in New York City--perhaps the world. Mutant plague victims lurk in the shadows--watching Neville's every move--waiting for him to make a fatal mistake. Neville, humankind's last and best hope, is driven by only one remaining mission: to find an antidote using his own immune blood.
While the acting was less than spectacular and the special effects were somewhat camp, I appreciated the religious subtexts that--to me--were quite apparent. Smith's character is portrayed as a "savior" of sorts, and the only one with the ability to save what is left of humanity from its fallen state.
In this, I see glimpses of the life and mission of Christ. The diseased monsters in New York represent humankind in its wicked and sinful state. The fact that Smith's character is the only one immune to the virus represents the sinlessness of Christ. And the concept that blood must be used to cure the disease--to me, it's obviously an acknowledgment of Jesus' blood being the only possible atonement for sin.
Now, other things occur in the film which take away from my Christ-centered theory--things which I won't divulge here, in case you choose to watch for yourself--but, in my mind, the over-arching message of the plot is a very powerful one. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear.
'Til next time,
Jason
Sermon delivered 16-Mar-08 at Bethel UMC and Brooks Chapel UMC
Today, at the beginning of Holy Week, one saying keeps popping into my mind:
"What a difference a day makes." You have all heard that saying, have you not? I suppose
it points to the fact that no matter how things are one day, they can be entirely different the
next. A day does make a lot of difference indeed. So then it is reasonable to assume that a
week—seven days—would make an even greater difference. It certainly made a significant
one in the waning hours of the earthly life of Jesus Christ.
For at the beginning of his last week on earth, a day that we call Palm Sunday, people sang songs of praise. The crowds welcomed Jesus, with adoration, into Jerusalem. They waved branches of palm trees and shouted, "Hosanna!"—they cried out for God’s salvation, which they believed this Nazarene had brought them. They hailed him as the Son of David, the King of Israel, and the long-awaited messiah.
But what a difference a week makes: for by the end of that same week, the very people who had been giving laud, honor, and acclamation to Jesus were now bringing denigration, hatred, and cynicism.
On this day, denoted on our calendar as both Passion and Palm Sunday, we remember both ends of the spectrum; we remember the jubilation that began Christ’s final week on earth, and the sorrow with which it was ended. We began this service with upbeat praise, happy songs, and waving of the palm branches to draw our attention to the triumphal entry into the Holy City. But now, I call your attention to the more somber side of this day—as we consider the death of our Lord.
So I bring you this question: what is your passion? What is it that you are passionate about? Before you answer, perhaps we should define what "passion" means. Can anyone tell me? Well, according to Webster’s dictionary, passion is—simply—"a powerful feeling or desire." I think we could all agree on that. But I found something interesting when I looked up "passion" in my Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. The word "passion" is derived from the Latin passio, which means "suffering." While desire and suffering may not seem to go together at first, the link between the two becomes clear if one takes a closer look.
Have you ever had a great desire for something, but for some reason could not attain it? Did you not feel, in a manner of speaking, that you were suffering because of it? Perhaps there has been a time in your life when you desired something that you knew, for one reason or another, you should not have; the conflict produced within your spirit over wanting something, yet struggling to stay away, is surely comparable to a suffering of sorts. Or what if you truly desired something—desired it above all else—would you not be willing to undergo a degree of suffering to obtain it? So then it becomes evident that desire and suffering are in fact connected—and both have a part to play when it comes to defining one’s passion.
The story that we read in Matthew’s Gospel this morning gives an account of what we have come to refer to as the passion—the torment and death of Jesus Christ. And though we may see the answer as obvious, the questions have often been posed: who was responsible for Christ’s death? What, exactly, killed him? Those are two issues we are going to spend some time on today, beginning with who.
Probably the most common line of thought is that is was the Jewish religious leaders that killed Jesus. They were the ones who conspired against him and sought to put him to death. They were the ones who lured one of Jesus’ own hand-picked apostles, Judas Iscariot, to betray him for thirty pieces of silver. They were the ones who had problems with his teachings, and feared an uprising of the common people that might lead to a revolt that Rome would violently overturn. They were the ones who called the loudest for his blood as he stood before the Roman governor, making false allegations against Jesus and shouting for the release of a thief and murderer instead. The view that the Jews killed Jesus has led to an unfortunate air of anti-Semitism in certain pockets of Christianity. But, in reality, the Jews did not kill Jesus.
So then it must have been the Romans, right? With Pontius Pilate at the forefront pronouncing the verdict, and the soldiers carrying out the actual, physical crucifixion—they were the ones who killed Jesus. Were they not? Well in a literal sense, one might say that. One might say that Pilate, who finally bent his will to the shouts of the masses and ordered Jesus to be executed, was responsible for Jesus’ death. Or one might say that the soldiers who saw him up to the hill of Golgotha and drove the nails through Christ’s hands and feet were the culprits. But, in truth, Rome did not kill Jesus.
So you are thinking, "Ah! I see where you are going with this. You want to know who, on a spiritual level, killed Jesus. Then the answer is: us!" Well, it is true that Jesus was sent, by the Father, to the cross for our sins. It is true that the weight of our wrongdoings was placed upon his shoulders, and that he carried the burden alone. It is true that Jesus became a representation of our transgressions, so much so that—in those desperate final moments—God turned his face away from his dying Son (causing Jesus to cry out, "Why have you forsaken me?"). But though Jesus died for us, not one of us here made him go to that cross. So, in fact, we did not kill Jesus.
Alright then—if it was not a person or group of people that took Jesus’ life, then it must have been something he underwent or some element of his physical punishment that did him in. But let us look a bit closer at some of the particulars of Christ’s afflictions.
First there are the beatings he received at the hands of the Roman soldiers. This event is captured in bloody detail in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Gibson, however, has said that—as violent and gory as his film was—it did not even come close to showing what Jesus actually went through. Indeed, the Bible tells us he was scourged; this was a Roman judicial penalty, consisting of a severe thrashing with a multi-lashed whip containing embedded pieces of bone and metal. The book of Isaiah lets us know that, following this, he was barely recognizable as a human being. After this flogging, he was disfigured to the point where people were repulsed to look upon him. The beatings he endured would likely have killed most men. But that is not what killed Jesus.
So perhaps it was the nails. Bible scholars estimate that the nails used to impale Jesus on the cross were between seven and nine inches long, with a diameter of roughly 3/8 inch. The points of these spikes were in all likelihood not placed in the palms, as commonly thought, but in the wrists—in ancient times considered to be part of the hand. They were driven into the vicinity of the median nerve—causing chocks of pain to radiate through the arms. Nails were also driven through Christ’s feet, but to allow for this the knees had to be bent and rotated to one side—leaving him in an almost unbearable position. Can you imagine being pierced with a railroad spike? That would be the modern equivalent of what happened to Jesus. Yet that is not what killed him.
Then maybe it was what he bore while on the tree. As if the scourging and being run through with enormous nails were not enough, Jesus was left hanging there to die. The sheer mechanics of crucifixion make it one of the cruelest forms of punishment and execution. Tremendous pressure was put on the arms, wrists, and shoulders; often the shoulder and elbow joints would become dislocated. The arms, being held up and outward, placed the rib cage in such a fixed position that the victim could only exhale with great difficulty—and could not take a full breath at all. In fact, respiration would have only been possible as long as Jesus could pull himself up to breathe in; once the pain became too intense, he would slump back down and breathe out. In short, the process of crucifixion was nothing more than slow, agonizing suffocation: the weight of the body crushes the lungs, places stress on the heart, and-eventually—the body can simply tolerate no more. After several excruciating hours, Jesus died on the cross. Interestingly, our word "excruciate" is a derivative of the Latin excruciare, meaning "from the cross." Yet the cross was not what killed Jesus.
So in summation: neither the bloodthirstiness of the religious authorities, the cruelty of the Romans, nor the sins of humankind killed Jesus. It was not the beatings, the nails, nor the intense anguish our Savior bore that killed Jesus. Make no mistake: each of those things played a significant part, but none were the key perpetrator. But have we not exhausted all the options? No; in fact there is one more that, until now, we have overlooked.
Well then what killed Jesus? Passion killed Jesus. His desire for us—his love for us—made him undergo the suffering he faced. It was love, and love alone, that led him to Mount Calvary and placed him upon the tree. No one person (or group of people)—no one thing—was responsible for Jesus’ death. For you see, no one or nothing on this earth could have taken Jesus’ life had he not been willing to give it up. And that, beloved, is the key: Jesus’ life was not taken from him; he laid it down willingly. He gave it up, so that we might live—and, in doing so, he showed us the greatest form of affection anyone can show another. Therefore it can be said, in the realest sense possible, that we are his passion.
But what we must remember is this: though Jesus understood the mission laid before him, as I said a couple of Sunday nights ago, he was not forced to comply; he made the choice to be obedient to it, and to offer himself as the only acceptable sacrifice for sin—the sacrifice that forever changed the fate and course of humanity. He made the choice because he was—and is—so passionate for us.
Now, remember my original question? In case you do not, I will ask it again: what is your passion? What is it that you are passionate about? What is it that you would go to any length, even enduring tremendous pains, to have? What means so much to you that you would not even withhold your life in order to have it? Can you think of anything?
Brothers and sisters, there ought to be one thing. For inasmuch as we are Jesus’ passion, he ought to be ours. He should be the one thing—the only thing—that we spare no pains and go to any length to obtain. He should be the one thing that we would even lay down our lives for; in fact, he tells us that is precisely what we have to do. He tells us that, to be his disciples, we must pick up our cross and follow him. We must be crucified with him. And we must die alongside him. In other words, we have to be willing to give up all that we were—shedding the old, and clothing ourselves in the new—by leaving the things of this world behind us. Instead, we must make Jesus the desire—the passion—of our life. Only in doing so may we be spiritually reborn, forgiven of our sins, and granted eternal life in paradise with our Savior.
So I admonish you today to reflect on your life, and where your priorities lie. Perhaps Jesus is your greatest passion; if that is the case, praise the Lord! However, maybe for some of you, he was once—but something else has since taken his place in your heart. Or maybe you have never fully given yourself to Jesus—maybe you have yet to make that life-altering and life-giving commitment. If you are not sure you are where you need to be in your walk with the Lord, then do not wait one moment longer to mend the situation. Christ calls to you, beckoning for you to come. This is the hour! Jesus laid down his life for you. Is it not time you laid down yours for him?
