Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

John 19:38-42, 1 Peter 3:18-20

As we begin Holy Week, I have a question for us to consider this Good Friday. Where did Jesus go immediately after he died? His body was buried in the tomb. Where was Jesus during those hours when the body was in the tomb?

Jesus told the thief on the cross that he would be with him "in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Where is paradise? Did Jesus go straight to heaven? Did he go to hell? Or did he go to a holding place of the dead waiting for either heaven or hell?

One of the current disagreements over the Apostles' Creed is whether to say that Jesus went "to hell" or went "to the dead." The earliest Christians used the word dead. Then about four hundred years into Christianity the word was switched to hell. In the twentieth century the ecumenical version returned it to the original word dead. Does it make a difference?

One easy answer is to simply use the Old Testament idea of hell. Did you know that the Old Testament had no specific teaching about hell as a place of torment and punishment? Hell as punishment is a New Testament idea. Throughout the Old Testament, the word translated as hell is the Hebrew word Sheol. This was simply a holding place for the dead. Both good and evil people went there at death.

This solves the problem. When Jesus died he went straight to Sheol, the place of the dead. This view helps us with one of the troubling questions of faith. What happens to people who never heard of Jesus? Whether they were people in the Old Testament or modern people out of range of Christian evangelism, what happens to them when they die?

Most of us are troubled by the claim that all who do not know Jesus immediately go to hell and are punished for something they never had a chance to know. If they are punished without ever having a chance to know Jesus, God must be an unjust God. No wonder 1 Peter says that Jesus went to the place of the dead and gave the dead a chance to believe in him. People from Noah's day had a chance to meet Jesus. Jesus went to the place of the dead and told them that he loved them and died for their sins. He announced his victory over the devil and invited them to join his family.

If Jesus did this during the days his body lay in the tomb, then it is logical to believe that Jesus gives everyone a chance. This idea that Jesus went to the place of the dead is a teaching of comfort. With the Apostle Paul in Romans 1, we can assert that everybody gets a chance to fall in love with Jesus Christ. If this is what the Apostles Creed meant, why did later Christians change the word from dead to hell?

We know that the New Testament teaching about hell shifted dramatically from the Old Testament. The Greek word for Sheol is Hades. While there are a few New Testament references to Hades, the main teaching about hell uses a different word, Gehenna . Gehenna was considered a place of fire and torment, eternal punishment and sorrow. This is the word Jesus used when he warned about people going to hell. Yes, you heard me correctly. This same Jesus who taught about God's love for everyone and compassion for the humble is also the Jesus who taught that hell involves torment.

Did Jesus experience hell?

For Christ also suffered* for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you* to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight people, were saved through water.

- 1 Peter 3:18-20

A minister was preparing for a difficult funeral. The deceased was known to be a cheat and liar. He had abused his wife and children, and hurt most everyone who knew him. What would the minister say?

As the pastor entered the funeral home for the service, the brother of the deceased stuffed a $100 bill into the pastor's pocket. The brother said, "You can keep that $100 if sometime during this funeral you say that my brother was a saint. I don't care what else you say about him as long as I hear you say these words, 'He was a saint.'"

The minister began the service, saying, "We have gathered for a difficult service today. Many of us think of Jim as nothing more than a scoundrel and drunk. Most of know that his wife left him because he abused her and the children. We might be tempted to summarize his life by calling him a scoundrel, a liar, and a cheat. But I am here to say that compared to his brother, he was a saint."

Usually we think of hell as the place of eternal punishment where terrible sinners like Jim go for punishment. John Steinbeck, in his book Travels with Charley, describes visiting a small, Vermont church where the preacher described hell. Steinbeck writes, "It is our practice nowŠ to find from our psychiatric priesthood that our sins aren't really sins at all, but accidents that are set in motion by forces beyond our control. There was no such nonsense in this churchŠ. (The minister) went into a glorious fire-and-brimstone sermonŠ. He spoke of hell as an expert, not the mush-mush hell of these soft days, but a well-stoked, white-hot hell served by technicians of the first order. This reverend brought it to a point where we could understand it, a good hard coal fire, plenty of draft, and a squad of open-hearth devils who put their hearts into the work." Steinbeck concludes with this statement, "He forged a religion designed to last, not predigested obsolescence."

While this is one common interpretation of hell, there are other ways of interpreting Jesus' word‹Gehenna. Gehenna was the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. The city dumped its garbage into the Hinnom valley. It was common for people to have seen this place where fires smoldered and worms crawled through the garbage. I think Jesus used this image of hell to comment on the fact that people begin experiencing hell when they throw their lives away. Whenever people feel like garbage, useless and rejected, they are descending into hell. Hell, by this understanding, does not have to wait until after death. It is the pain of rejection. Hell is isolation and loneliness. Hell is the feeling of worthlessness and hopelessness. Can we say that Jesus has experienced these things?

This Holy Week we follow Jesus from the temple to the trial. In less than a week his closest friends abandon him. He is betrayed. He is misrepresented in the trial. The crowds who cheered for him on Palm Sunday turn against him and call for his crucifixion. As we rethink Jesus' passion we realize we are watching Jesus' hell. Indeed Jesus felt what it was like to be thrown onto the garbage dump. He did more than simply die a painful death on the cross for us; he has felt the deepest isolation and rejection that we will ever feel. Here is what we claim every time we recite the Apostles Creed: Jesus knows our hell.

This does not mean that because hell begins here and now it will not continue into eternity. I resonate with C. S. Lewis' definition of hell as God respecting people's free choices enough to let them continue in their chosen path for eternity. Lewis wrote, "Now there are a good many things not worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy is gradually getting worse‹so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be."

Here is the truth: Hell is living an alienated, isolated life separated not only from God but also from others. In other words, Hell begins here and without repentance or grace, the isolation lasts into eternity.

I believe Jesus descended into hell not only so that he could show compassion towards those trapped in a hellish existence. He descended in order to rise victorious and release those trapped in their own hellish isolation. His desire was to bring them back into loving relationships. He wants to welcome them into his family. No wonder he told us that the gates of hell could not stand against his followers‹the Church (Matthew 16:18). In other words, we are invited to invade people's loneliness in order to draw them out of their isolation and welcome them into his joyful love.

What would that look like? I love the writings of Walter Wangerin, a Lutheran pastor and author. When he was seven years old, Walter's family moved to a new community near the end of the school year. Walter was assigned to a second-grade class in the private school that was attached to the church where his father was called to pastor. The first day of the class young Walter fell in love with his teacher, Miss Augustine. As Walter sat in the back of the class, none of the children talked to him. When they stood to sing their opening hymn, tears came to his eyes and he began to sob silently, feeling desperately alone. During the recess young Walter remained at his desk crying as the other children ran out to play on the playground.

Through Walter's sobs he then heard something. He looked up and saw that the teacher had brought her papers and was sitting in the desk next to his, and she was humming pieces of hymns. Without looking at him, she stopped and said, "Walter Wangerin, Jr., I hope you don't mind if I sing." He shook his head. "Thank you," she said, "I usually sing when I work. And when I feel lonely too, I sing."

After a while Miss Augustine invited him to sing with her. She said, "Do you know 'Jesus Loves Me'?" Walter Wangerin knew the song, but he couldn't sing. He could not cry and sing at the same time. Ms. Augustine did not take offense, but responded, "Walter Wangerin, if you can't sing with me, why don't we try shouting the words. You know the words. Let's shout them together." Walter Wangerin recalls, "The children of Immanuel Lutheran School were stopped in their tracks on the playground that day. Astounded, they stared at the second-grade windows, whence came a roaring in two loud voices, one very young, and one very wise: 'Jesus loves me this I know!'"

It is all right with me if we decide to simply say Jesus descended to the dead. Perhaps it is the most accurate way we can describe what historically happened between Friday's crucifixion and the Easter resurrection. However, I will cling to the teaching that Jesus is willing to invade hell to bring us out of our isolation into a community of joy. He was willing to go that far for you and me. How far are we willing to go to love someone this week?