Did you see this headline in the Metro recently? “Bullying victim was driven to death by 30 years of hell”? This man with learning difficulties died from a heart attack trying to defend his home against youths threatening to smash his windows. And that’s not the whole story – the 30 years of hell in the headline included many other attacks but also indifference by the people who should have taken care of this situation. And you will know many stories like this. There are many people whose lives we could refer to as hell on earth. And notice – we add the words – on earth. What does hell refer to in the bible, for us as Christians? Here we are not necessarily talking about hell on earth, but a hell somewhere else.
There are several different ways writers describe hell. But I want to look at 2 of them today. The first is called the traditional view of hell. This says that if a person has not repented of their sins and believed in Jesus before they die, they go to hell. In hell they are either annihilated or suffer conscious torment for ever.
The second understanding is called Universalism. People who support the universalist view think that eventually God will bring everyone to be with him. Some universalist scholars think that when the next age comes all God has created will go straight to heaven. Others universalists think that the followers of Jesus will go to be with him. Those who have not followed Jesus will go to a place where they will realise who Jesus is, who God is. They will realise their need for salvation and they will begin a process of being redeemed, being made ready to be with God for ever. Perhaps this can be called purgatory.
The first view of hell, the traditional view, seems very harsh to us, but its supporters maintain that it is biblical, it takes into account the holiness of God. Certainly in the bible there is a lot about punishment and suffering. The books written by the OT prophets are full of God’s punishment for Israel because of their idolatry, because they are unfaithful to their God who saved them out of Egypt. They have turned away from him and worshipped other gods. But the thing about this punishment is that it happened in the lives of the children of Israel at that time. They were killed, conquered and taken into exile. But we have to note that in every book of the prophets there is also God’s declaration of his love for his people, his love that never abandons them.
And there is also in every prophet God’s promise of restoration, a time when his people will return to the promised land to live their lives in peace and prosperity, God’s plan for them.
What is this punishment of God for? Let’s bring the question nearer home. Why do parents discipline their children? The best discipline has 2 aspects to it; to ensure that the child knows they are still loved, but they must undergo discipline so that they learn to behave differently, in a way that will enable them to live good lives. If we, in our frailty, our human-ness, recognise that this is our purpose in disciplining our children, then surely God, in his declared love for us, will want to help us to live in the way that is best for us. God created each one of us. He created us to live within certain boundaries, boundaries of uprightness, justice, trust in him, respect for others and for all his creation. This is the harmony, the peace, the well-being that God desires for us. When this is violated, by individuals or groups, then God has put barbed wire fences in place. These are to warn us, to turn us back to the right way. So God disciplined his OT people to cause them to put him first in their lives.
Let’s now turn to the NT. There are several references to hell. The book of Revelation especially has lots about punishment. Angels pour out bowls of wrath on the earth which bring dreadful diseases and much destruction. There is a lake of fire. And in the gospels Jesus himself speaks of outer darkness and fire of punishment. These two images – outer darkness and fire – give us a clue. If there is fire, there cannot be darkness. The writers of the books in the NT are using metaphors to describe something that is indescribable. The traditional understanding of hell, of conscious everlasting punishment for some, has been a very strong tradition for hundreds of years, so it is easy to read the bible in light of that. But how do we evaluate these 2 views of hell – the traditional and the universalist, or for that matter, any view?
We need to divert for a minute. I want to explain the term meta-narrative. Meta-narrative. The word narrative means story. Meta means the whole, so meta-narrative refers to the big picture, the whole, the complete story. A meta-narrative can be made up of many smaller stories, but all these little stories will somehow fit the complete story, the meta-narrative.
And here I have to make a confession. I have only ever seen one episode of East Enders! I don’t know whether you can believe that!
This one episode was a complete story in itself, but as I was watching it I realised I didn’t really know what was going on; I didn’t know the story of the whole series; I didn’t know how the characters usually related to each other. I couldn’t tell what was the big picture from just this one episode.
The bible is like that; many little stories within the great story. Next week we shall celebrate the story of the birth of Jesus. Before that comes the story of the birth of John the Baptist. The story of the angel’s visit to Mary that we heard in our gospel reading today actually happened 9 months ago. A thousand years before Jesus is the story of David the shepherd boy, whom God appointed and anointed to be king over his people. A thousand years before that was the story of Abraham. God called him to leave his homeland and travel to a new, unknown land. And before Abraham was the story of Adam and Eve and their disobedience to God; eating the apple and being banned from the garden of Eden. Ever since that story God, in his great love, planned the greatest story on earth; the story of salvation. God’s love worked through thousands of years to rescue his creation from the darkness of evil, of everything that despoils and destroys his creation. God worked to bring about a full restoration, a great healing, a bringing back of harmony, peace, goodness, justice. And why does God do this? For love. For love of you, for love of me, for love of everything he has created.
This love is a constant thread from Genesis to Revelation. This love-story climaxes in Jesus and will be completed when Jesus comes back at the end of time. So all the smaller stories in the bible need to fit into this, the greatest story ever, the bible’s meta-narrative.
A few years ago I met a young woman who had just become a Christian. She was full of joy and was very aware of what Jesus had rescued her from, how Jesus had changed her life. She was very keen to grow in her new faith, so when someone took her to church she asked them what she should read. They advised the New Testament. When she went back the following Sunday she said she had read that, what now? They suggested she read it again. The following Sunday she told them she had read through the NT twice now, so what was next? She was advised to read through the OT. This she started to do, and I met her just as she got to the end of the book of Exodus, the story of God rescuing his people from slavery in Egypt. She said to me: Why did they tell me to read the NT first? That’s beginning the story half way through. That really moved me. This woman, so newly a Christian, was so aware that the whole bible is the whole story of God’s love and his salvation.
How is this relevant to the topic of hell? Because we have to see the stories we are told about fire, about outer darkness, about punishment in the light of the meta-narrative of the whole bible – God’s love and the working out of that love. Since the early church fathers there have been some people who have held the universalist understanding of hell; that everyone will immediately or eventually be with God. Today we have scholars who have examined the language, the culture, the current beliefs of NT times and conclude that Jesus did not talk of punishment for ever and ever, of eternal punishment. So maybe it is possible that after the great judgement day which we shall all face, there is a place, a state, where people go, where people are, so that they can realise who God really is, to see his love in Jesus, to recognise true good and to be made ready to be with God for ever.
So what is the purpose of these hell stories and passages? If we were to take a few minutes silence now, and each of us looked at our hearts, would we recognise the sin that is there? It is hard enough for us. It is harder for those who do not know God. How does the world know what sin is? One person put it this way – the passages about hell remind us, warn us, of the dreadful consequences of sin, its destructiveness in individual lives and in communities.
It is so easy to mosey along each day, caught up in life’s challenges and not realise the dreadful outcomes of sin, the sins of action, the sins of inaction. As we grow in realising the gravity of sin, the great cost of sin, so we get to know more deeply what Jesus has saved us from. So we realise our desperate need for God to save us. And as followers of Jesus, as members of his worldwide church, we have a special calling.
The argument that some people use against universalism is that it does away for the need to preach the gospel, to share the good news of God’s salvation with others. This is absolutely not so. If we who have received the salvation of God don’t live his kingdom life in the world, what will happen? The light will go out; darkness will encroach more and more; there will be more injustice, more victimisation, more evil practices. We are called to be the lights of Christ in a world where darkness threatens so many lives, where shadows seek to cover political and social situations. It we don’t seek to live kingdom life on earth, to pray and work for God’s kingdom to come, to seek to show God’s love, forgiveness and mercy in our daily lives, who will? How will these things be known?
Are you ready for Christmas? Am I ready for Christmas? Really ready? Ready to acknowledge our desperate need for Jesus to come to save us? Ready to look beyond Christmas to Easter?
And what if Jesus returned tomorrow? Are we ready to meet him, to worship him, to proclaim him as Lord of all the earth?
I am not sure I know all the answers about hell. I am not even sure they can be known in this life, for I am limited by my finite mind, my human understanding, my weaknesses. And hell is to do with God’s judgement, it’s to do with the age after this, it’s to do with unlimited time, space – perhaps. We cannot know definite answers about situations beyond death. The importance of the question is – what is our response now, today, this week? This was Jesus’ challenge to the people he met. It’s his challenge to us now.
Our first reading from Ephesians sums up our salvation inheritance, please read it during this coming week; we who are the first to set our hope on Christ are to live for the praise of his glory. And in verse10 – God’s plan is that in the fullness of time – God’s time – all things will be gathered up, all things in heaven and earth will be summed up, headed up, all things in heaven and on earth will be united in Christ. All things will be redeemed, brought to their proper purpose according to God’s great plan. And as members of his church we are the first fruits of that plan. What a message to proclaim. What a calling to live. God help us to live his kingdom life, to help those whose lives are a bit of hell on earth, that the world may know the vastness and the power of God’s love. Amen
