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The
following sermon is presented as one view point among many in the world of
Christian theology. No expectation of
strict agreement with this sermon is necessary for one to use these words as a
starting point for conversation. The
pastor submits that he does not have all the answers and is using experience
and reason as methods to come to his conclusions.
In the Christian
tradition, hundreds of years of thought have led to certain understandings of
who God is for us. But all those
discussions have also led us astray from Biblical upholdings and down a road
that is more cultural than Biblical. And along the way, God has been made into
something that is all together different.
And so…these are God’s stories…
In the year of
our Lord 1555, a lot was going on in Europe.
Only nine years after Martin Luther’s death, and a 35 years since the
beginning of the reformation, the Church was in upheavel everywhere. Catholics were reforming, the Protestant
Church had started its great solidication and distancing from the Catholic
faith, the divisions that plagued the middle ages were still going on, and a playright named Dante captured it all in a
vision we hear today as the Divine Comedy. For some, in fact for many, it was a
brilliant piece of work. And his eloquence
was visioning, especially his depth at creating a model of a nine circle place called
hell where souls are sent to burn for all eternity. If you’d read it you will realize how
terrifying and also imaginative it is.
It’s story leads you all the way through the circles until you reach the
end. You’ll need a glass of something
stronger than our grape juice to prepare yourself. It’s an amazing story….BUT THAT”S WHAT IT IS…A
STORY.
Since it’s creation in the 1500s, this
vision of hell has been converged into Christian theology. In 1667, John Milton wrote Paradise Lost and
again we were mesmerized by the visions of hell, this time even more molded to
Christian identity. And in the late 19th
Century, the Fundamentalist movement tried to circumvent a focus on hell by
making one of their five pillars the sacrificial atonement belief about Christ,
making him out to be a lawn to be slaughtered by a violent God who was really
interested in sending us to fire and brimstone hell. There’s two more sermons in this series that
will address what I just said later.
But Hell…and Heaven. The two are intrinsically tied together. When
we think about Hell, we see images of fire and of suffering. But the Jews never saw that. In fact, what the Jews believed is that when
people died, they went to a place called Sheol”, which means the place of muddy
waters. It’s a pretty destitute place,
where people kind of milled around.
Nobody really wanted to go there, but they felt that that was it. They’d all see each other again in this place
that wasn’t really all that happy but at least wasn’t burning. So, Jews never got this idea. But Jesus spoke of it didn’t he…
Maybe, but remember, Jesus was a
Rabbi. And if you really look at the
message, he didn’t talk about things as different from a Rabbi as you might
think. He wanted people to follow the
Sabbath, LIVE out the Torah, etc. But
Cody…he talks about Hell right there in Matthew and Luke. Well…maybe.
I think it makes sense to believe
that…except when you consider context. And context is everything. Let’s just start by remembering something I
told a few of you a couple of years ago in a sermon…
In Jesus’ time, he seems to talk an
awful lot about burning and consuming of things. Outside of Jerusalem, there’s a garbage
dump. Archeological digs believe it may
have been the largest garbage dump in the ancient world, in fact, there is such
a large area of it that archeologists are unsure if they are ever going to be
able to uncover it all. But this garbage
dump had pretty much everything in it that had rotted and had gone bad. They didn’t have anything else to do with the
stuff. So what they routinely did was
burn up as much stuff as possible, consuming it in brilliant fires that lit up
in the night. The gospels really don’t
mention “Eternal damnation” but rather “burning and consuming.” Heaven and Hell become a shorthand
description of what happens when you die, and that description is the
NOTHINGNESS… or the eternal life.
The
Weeping and Gnashing of teeth is a little bit harder except focusing on who God
is. And that’s the bigger question of
this entire sermon series. If you
imagine that God is a God of damnation, then you can conceptualize that there
will be people who end up in hell because they were sent there. If on the other hand, you just believe that
hell exists, then you have to allow yourself to send on toward God and add this
awkward understanding of God to what you already believed. Neither direction of thought seems very
exciting.
John
Wesley, the founder of United Methodism, he didn’t focused on hell. In fact, he focused on Grace, on the idea
that God has already forgiven us for our sinfulness, has already restored us to
wholeness, and invites us to grow in love to God and to neighbor. Wesley, along with many of the others, wasn’t
focused on hell, he was focused on hope.
Heavenly Alternatives
When
one spends their time worried about avoiding an ill fate, they often do so by
establishing an alternative future.
Instead of hell, this is where we could go…and that place is
heaven. You might recognize heaven from
Hollywood in movies like Ghost, City of Angels, What Dreams may come, and many
many others. And I admit, Joe last year
did get me to read a compelling book about a little boy who medically was dead
and started talking about heaven. And I
actually believe Heaven does exist, but I’m not sure we’re headed there.
The
reasons for this are many, and for a moment I want you to conceptualize the
common story. Human beings, born into
this world, are given a chance to prove themselves to God. Some make it, others not so much. The ones who don’t do so well go to Hell
forever. The good ones, those like you
and me (at least I think so) go to heaven to a place of magnificent glory and
beautiful people with bagels and cream cheese.
Ok maybe I’m mixing ideas….but that’s really what I think we’re all
doing ourselves.
Media
is a powerful force in the world, and after a while we start thinking that what
people have put on the movie screen is actual what the Bible says…and it
doesn’t. In fact, there is VERY little
if anything that can be said about heaven.
There are a few stories of angels and singing, of trumpets and magnificent
chairs, but mostly what we glean from the Bible is that God is in Heaven and
Jesus ascended their after the resurrection.
You may have heard Jesus once or twice refer to this house that has many
rooms that has a place prepared for you and me.
But have you also captured those many moments where Jesus says, where I
go, you can not be.
The Jewish tradition never believed
that people were going anywhere. That’s
why the story of Elijah being taken up to Heaven on a chariot was a big
deal. He didn’t go to Sheol. And Moses, Abraham, those guys, Jews thought
they were there too. But only Christians
think they themselves are going to heaven.
Cody….Jesus said he opened the gates of heaven to us… Or perhaps what
the greek translation that we misunderstand is that Jesus brought God to us
from Heaven…. Not that we are traveling to Heaven. In fact, the traveling is supposed to take
place by Heaven itself…
Hear
that passage again (Revelation 21:1-4).
The Heaven we are talking about is not us going away. It’s coming here.
Who is this God of Damnation. I don’t
see it in this passage. I see a God of
love, returning to be with God’s people in love and hope and to wipe away tears
and to bring about the kingdom of God here on earth as it is in Heaven. And we as Christians are watching for
resurrection of all persons. Sometimes
at funerals we bless the memory of the person with these words… May you rest in
Peace until you rise in Glory… That does
not mean to Heaven necessarily, but to a new beginning…and that new beginning,
it may happen here.
Do
I expect you to believe everything I say about this God. No. Do I expect this sermon to challenge
you. Absolutely. But this sermon series is meant to be an
extended about who you believe God to be.
For me, certain aspect of God have been misrepresented, starting with
God’s focus on eternal damning of most and elected joy of a few. I’m happy to report that this to me feels like
a sad and desperate creation of God in our image rather than that of the
Biblical image. So as we continue
throughout these next seven weeks, challenge yourself and begin to articulate the
God you believe in, and I’ll keeping working to articulate The God I DON”T
believe in.
Amen
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