Hell-fire and Damnation?

Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43: Hell

(Comic monologue to start - adapted from one performed by Rowan Atkinson in the 1980s)

Good morning, and welcome. As the more perceptive of you have probably realised by now….this is Hell. And I am the Devil. Though you can call me Toby if you like – we try to keep things informal here…as well as infernal.

Now you’re all here for eternity… which I hardly need tell you is a very long time. So you’ll have plenty of time to get to know one another. But for now I’m going to split you up into groups. Are there any questions? Yes? No - I’m afraid we don’t have any toilets. If you had read your Bible you would have known that this is damnation without relief.

Now then, let’s get on with it. Can you all hear me? Can you hear me at the rack?

Right then – murderers – over here. Thieves and pillagers if you could join them. With the estate agents.

Atheists? Are you here? Just move over there would you. I bet you’re feeling a right bunch of charlies.

Now then – everyone who ever saw Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Could you come over here please? I’m sorry but you see, it seems that God couldn’t take a joke after all.

Arsonists, Axe-murderers, Agitators, - could you move over there to the left please? With the Anglicans. Thanks.

Right, well that will do for now. I’m going to leave you with Beelzebub here – who will finish sorting you, and then he’ll show you the ropes….and the chains…and the electrodes. I’ll just leave you with a little joke I heard last week. How many Anglicans does it take to change a light bulb? One to change the bulb, and all the rest to say how much they liked the old one!

Good bye!
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After all the wailing and gnashing of teeth in this morning's Bible reading, I'm going to focus my talk on subject of hell. Its one of the more disturbing ideas in the Bible - isn't it? Put simply, the question that arises is 'Why would a God who created us and loves us want to consign some of us to hell? And what is hell like anyway? What's it all about?

There is a great deal of mythological imagery in the Bible which attempts to describe hell. Some of it is rooted in examples that Jesus' hearers would have known only too well. For example, one of the words that Jesus uses to describe hell is 'Gehenna' - which was actually the name of the steaming, continually smouldering rubbish tip outside Jerusalem - where all sorts of waste was taken, to burn and to rot. That kind of imagery is supported by other images of worms never dying and fires never being quenched. Then there’s the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in which heaven and hell are very close - separated only by a chasm over which Lazarus and God can converse; and there’s the image of hell being beneath our feet, while heaven is somehow above us.

From these disparate images - we get a sense that hell – whatever else it is - is about destruction, and its about total separation from God.

The idea of hell flows from two important Christian doctrines. Heaven, and free will. For heaven to be something real – something to be obtained – simple logic dictates that there has to be a non-heaven. A place for those who reject God’s offer of heaven. And if there is free will – it is possible for us to abuse it.

Maybe you, like me, have struggled with the idea of a loving God who could condemn some of his own children to hell. After all, this is a God who sent his Son into the world specifically not to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3:16). This is a God who said 'Love your enemies'. Why on earth (or rather, why in heaven!) would God then throw his enemies into hell. Isn't his whole being bent on our salvation - not our destruction. Well, C.S. Lewis suggests that nothing could be further from the truth. Hell is a state of mind, a place that we put ourselves when we fail to respond to the love that God is freely offering us. He says:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God ‘Thy will be done’, and those to whom God says in the end ‘Thy will be done’. All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it...“I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.”

So..let me be clear about this. Hell is not somewhere that God sends us to. It is a place where we chose to be, by turning our backs on God. Hell is where God is not – whether in this life or the next. God’s offer to us to total, unconditional, sacrificial love. He loves us so much that he is prepared to die for us! Every fibre of his being is bent on our salvation, not our destruction.

We know, don't we, that it is possible for two people to experience the same thing in entirely different ways. I am a fan of a 1970s progressive Jazz/Rock band called 'Blood Sweat and Tears'. I absolutely love their music - it sends me into moments of ecstacy. However, whenever I play it at home, Clare and Emily will always shout over the wonderful jazz-funk trumpet solos.."Turn it off! It's horrible". Well perhaps hell is a bit like that. Hell is, I suggest, God's love as experienced by two completely different people. Those who have honestly sought to love God will run to his arms with a cry of 'Abba! Daddy'. But those who have spent their lives so wrapped up in hate, in violence, and in deliberate evil will, I suggest, find the whole concept of God's love too painful to bear. They will turn from God, when they meet him, and turn away from the source of life.

Perhaps we might imagine hell like this - imagine a person before the throne of the Almighty, whose soul is so dirtied by their life of hatred and evil, that their response to the love of God is - just as they did in life - to turn away. Hell would be that person - turned with their face to the wall, with their fingers jammed into their ears...while God stands behind them, eternally, saying 'I love you. I love you. I love you'.

The destruction that takes place in Hell is not, therefore, a punishment. It is simply the end product of a chosen path. Let me put it this way. If I starve myself of food – I will eventually die, physically. In the same way, if I chose to starve myself of God, I will eventually die spiritually as well.

Taking the right path, the road to life, implies a deliberate, daily engagement with what it means to be truly human – to become day by day more like the source of life. Passion about the world, passion for other human beings, a longing to see the Kingdom established. These are the qualities of the Christian – and the qualities of all people who turn away from self, and turn towards God. Such a person, because of their real, actual, choice to follow God, is picked up by God, held in his arms, and welcomed into heaven. That’s what it means to repent…to turn away from self. An eternity in the presence of the love and creative power of God is the free gift that is offered to all who truly repent. As the gospel-writer John said…’whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

A popular myth has been allowed to surface that heaven is the place for goody-goodies who will sit on clouds stroking harps, whereas hell is the place for everyone who wants to have a good time. The rock group ACDC sang ‘I’m on a highway to hell’ – ‘living easy, living free’. No! Hell is not a party of the damned, with Satan as host. Satan is not the king of hell…he is simply its first arrival. And he too will be annihilated by his selfish desires. There is no king in hell, no demonic servants with pitchforks…just weeping, and wailing, selfish agony….and no God.

I know that the doctrine of hell will invite mocking. Those who preach it will be labelled as vindictive, manipulative and ‘fundamentalist’. Satan has done too good a job of promulgating the hell myth – so that it is very difficult to break through the imagery of hot, exciting eternal booze-ups and describe the reality of empty, Godless, destruction. I don't want anyone to think that we preach hell out of any gleeful sense of retribution, but rather a real and genuine hope that some at least can be saved from destruction and brought to new life in Christ. Being mocked is surely a small price to pay for the salvation of a small infinitely precious soul. And that is the business we are supposed to be in.

So perhaps my little drama at the beginning of this talk was wrong. I was naughty to do it – but I chose to do it in order to illustrate just how easily we settle into the cartoon image of hell. I hope that you’ll join me in praying for Rowan Atkinson – whose sketch it was based on, and every other exponent of the Disney version of hell – that they may find the path to life. Before it is too late.

Amen.