Hell (Sept 30, 2012)

Homily Yr B Proper 26 Sept 30 2012

Readings:  Esther 7:1-6,9-10;9:20-22; Psalm 124; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50

Hell

The response to our psalm this morning, which we repeated several times together, was  “We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler.”  Now, when that psalm was written, the way a fowler, or bird-hunter would catch a bird would be to set up a trap or snare, so that when the bird landed in a particular place, it would trigger the snare and a net would fall on the bird.  And as the bird would try to get away, flapping its wings and running with its feet, it would get all tangled up in the net.  And the more it would struggle and flap and kick, the more tangled it would get, caught up in the cords of the net and unable to get away. 

It is, I think, a good image of our human situation.  Often enough, we seem to get all tangled up in a net, and the harder we try to break free, the more we seem to get stuck.  Sometimes we end up dragging other people into the net, and they become tangled as well. 

In our scriptures, the net that tangles us and prevents us from being free is called sin, or sometimes evil.  Sometimes we are the ones who are responsible for the net, sometimes its others who throw the net on us, but often it’s just a tangle of cords that seem to be all around us and our communities, something in the system that is of our own making, but no one seems to be able to get rid of it.  And that is tragic.

Do you remember the incident of Korean Air Line 007 which was shot down over Soviet Airspace in 1983, amidst allegations that it was a spy plane?  269 people died in this tragic event, and the world was brought to the brink of nuclear war.  Now over twenty years later, now that the Cold War has ended and we have access to classified documents and the transcripts of the plane’s flight recorder we have a clearer idea of what happened.  It seems that a sleepy crew of the passenger plane with an imperfectly calibrated auto-pilot system made the mistake of leaving the plane on auto-pilot as they left Alaska heading towards Japan.  They drifted into Soviet airspace.  The Soviet air force scrambled two MIG fighters to intercept flight 007.  The pilot of one of those planes was a Colonel named Gennadi Osipovich.  He wasn’t even supposed to be on duty, but he had switched shifts with another pilot so that he could volunteer at his son’s school the next day. 

When Osipovich flew his MIG jet alongside the flight 007, he recognized it as a Boeing civilian plane.  His superiors insisted that it was a spy plane and ordered him to shoot it down.  Osipovich tried to make radio contact.  Nothing.  He flashed his lights.  He waggled his wings.  Still no response.  He fired warning shots.  He was told six times by his ground controller to fire on the plane.  And under the pressure of time, just as the Boeing was about to leave Soviet airspace to re-enter international airspace, he fired his missiles and brought down flight 007, sending 269 people to their deaths, an act that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Gennadi Osipovich was caught in a net.  He was caught in a net of suspicion, of hostility between East and West, of Cold War military procedures, of a history of spying and airspace violations.  He was caught in a net of sin and evil that was so tangled that he found no way out.  Gennady Osipovich is a tragic figure.

God wants to free us from the net that has us all tangled up, the net that turns us into tragic figures like Gennady Osipovich.  God has promised to put the entire world right, showing up evil for what it is and judging it so that it no longer has the power to infect his good creation.

Which is why in our Gospel reading today, Jesus talks to his disciples about hell.

“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.”

What do you think of when you hear the word “hell”?

  

Hell is something we don’t talk about much in the church, at least in the Anglican church.  In part that is because our common notion of hell is grounded in the picture that arose in the middle ages, in the writings of Dante and others.  The most common idea about hell in our culture is that it has something to do with the after-life, that when people die, that God will sort them into two lots, and the good people will go to heaven and the bad people will go to hell, a place of damnation and eternal punishment.  And that sort of picture makes many of us really uncomfortable, uncomfortable with the notion that a loving God would let some people end up in that sort of hell.

So I think that it’s important to go back to our scriptures, to go back to the teaching of Jesus to try to understand what he meant when he used the word “gehenna”, the Greek word that we translate as hell.

It’s a word that Jesus doesn’t use very often, recorded just a dozen times in the New Testament, and three of those are in today’s gospel reading.  So let’s look at today’s reading.

Notice, first of all, that in Jesus teaching, the opposite of hell is not heaven, but life.  If you look at Jesus’ sayings, they say that it is better to enter life than to go to hell.  The emphasis is not on life after death, but on life, now and in the future.  Notice as well that in the third saying, Jesus switches from saying “enter life” to “enter the kingdom of God”, something that in other places, Jesus will say “has come near” or “is in your midst”.  Again, this isn’t just about an afterlife, he seems to be talking about something that is both present and future.

And the word that we translate as hell is also revealing.  Gehenna, the word Jesus uses, is actually a place name.  It is the Hebrew name for the Valley of Hinnom which is found on the south west side of Jerusalem.  It is the garbage dump of the city of Jerusalem, the place where garbage from the city is dumped and burned, with a fire that burns day and night.  Not only is garbage dumped there, but sewage from the city also ends up in the Valley of Hinnom.  To make matters worse, child sacrifice used to be practiced there, because of this the valley had been condemned as an evil place by prophets such as Jeremiah. 

This is the word that Jesus uses in today’s gospel.  Gehenna is the valley where evil, filth and garbage are sent to be destroyed in a fire that burns day and night.  Gehenna then, is a real place, a real garbage dump, which becomes the image of what God will do to destroy all that is evil and filthy, the eternal fire which burns all the garbage that has polluted God’s good creation.

This is the New Testament image of hell.  Hell is the place of fire which burns everything that opposes what God wants for the life of his people and his good creation.

Are people oppressed by war and violence?  To hell with war and violence.

Does a little child suffer from abuse?  To hell with child abuse.

Does someone you know suffer from addiction?  To hell with it.

To hell with all these things that oppress us and prevent us from living life as God intended us to live.  Let them burn and be destroyed.

And Jesus, using the exaggeration typical of his culture, tells his disciples, even if it’s your foot that’s the preventing you from living life as God intended, well to hell with it - but don’t you go with it.  Better for you to enter life, to enter the Kingdom of God with only one foot.

Of course, it’s not our foot that’s the problem.  But remember the net that we were talking about?  The net of sin and evil and garbage that we so often get all tangled up in?  It’s that net that God will judge and send to hell for destruction, so that we can be free to enter life, to enter the kingdom of God without being all tangled up in it, without being caught in it.

  

That is good news.  But that doesn’t mean that everything is easy.  Because it’s hard to get ourselves untangled from the net.  In fact, we may have gotten so used to being stuck in the net that it starts to feel comfortable, a bit like home in a perverse sort of way.  We can’t get untangled by ourselves.  We need to be saved, like the bird who is set free from the snare of the fowler and enabled to fly once more.

Jesus says to us, turn and follow me and I will set you free.

We all get tangled up in the net of sin and evil.  Some of it’s our own fault, much of it is out of our control.  But if we turn to God, God has promised to forgive our sins and to set us free.  The net will go to hell, to be destroyed in the fire, so that all God’s creatures can live as God intended them to live, now and for all eternity.

Amen.

With acknowledgement and thanks to Dr. Thomas Long, who told us the story of Gennadi Osipovich in Ottawa at a 2009 clergy conference.

The Journey of Faith (Sept 16 2012)

Homily:  Yr B Proper 24, Sept 16  2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Prov 1:20-33; Wisdom 7:26-8:1; James 3:1-12; Mk 8:27-38

The Journey of Faith

This morning we baptize Isaac.  It’s a time for celebration, and we will celebrate.  But baptism isn’t just a celebration.  It’s serious stuff.  As Jesus himself reminds us in today’s gospel, being a follower of Jesus isn’t trivial. It’s serious. 

The baptism we will celebrate is a rich sacrament , a symbol which incorporates many different images and meanings.  One of these meanings is the one that I talked about with the children earlier.  Baptism is a sign of the new life that we have in Christ, it is a symbol of new birth, of being born as a child of God and adopted into God’s family, into the family that we call the church.

But we are also baptized, and Isaac too will be baptized, into the death and resurrection of Jesus.   Baptism is a sign that we have become followers of Jesus, the one who said that “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

It’s not always easy to follow Jesus.  Have you ever noticed that in the gospel of Mark, Jesus is always on the move?  Always going somewhere, always on a journey.  Today’s gospel reading is a turning point in that journey, quite literally.  Jesus and his followers start out by heading north, and then they turn around 180 degrees and travel in the opposite direction towards the south.  Why did Jesus go to Caesarea Philippi?

Some of us here are old enough to remember the Cold War, the period of conflict and confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States and its allies.  The height of the Cold War was in the early 60’s.  In 1962 there was the Cuban Missile Crisis.  In 1961 the Berlin Wall was built. In the early 60’s the atmosphere in West Berlin was tense, there was the constant threat of invasion.

In 1963, John F. Kennedy went to Berlin, to the farthest frontier of Western Europe.  And standing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, with a million people gathered in the streets, he made his famous statement “Ich bin ein Berliner”.  I am a Berliner.  And with those words he pledged the full might of the American military to protect the people of West Berlin against the aggression of the Soviet Union.  And the crowds cheered, because Kennedy had said what they hoped he would say, what they expected him to say, what they had been longing to hear.

In the year 33 AD, Jesus went to Caesarea Philippi.  Caesarea Philippi was at the very northern frontier of the land of Israel.  It was a Roman city, built in honour of the Roman Emperor.  It had a gleaming white marble temple dedicated to Augustus Caesar, Son of God, Saviour of the World.  For a Jew in the year 33 AD, Caesarea Philippi was the symbol of everything that was wrong, everything that was evil in the world.  The Jewish people had been under Roman occupation since 63 BC. The last hundred years had been a time of festering resentment, violent protests, humiliation and shame.  Every Jew dreamed of the day that the Romans would be overthrown and defeated.

Jesus led his disciples and the crowds that followed him on a long journey from Galilee to Caesarea Philippi, with its blasphemous temple dedicated to Augustus Caesar, and its threatening military barracks housing the Roman Legion.  In the crowd that followed Jesus were people whose mothers and fathers had been killed by Roman soldiers in the Galilean rebellions of the year 6 AD.  The crowd must have been nervous; they must have wondered why he was leading them to Caesarea Philippi.

And as they come within sight of the city walls, Jesus pulls his closest followers aside and asks them, “Who do people say that I am?”

And they answered him, “some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and still others, one of the prophets.”

And then Jesus asks them, “But you, who do you say I am?”

And I can imagine Peter, looking at Jesus, and then looking at the Roman city with its temple and soldiers.  I can imagine the events of the past few months running through Peter’s mind, the huge crowds that gathered wherever Jesus went, they way they follow him and hang on his every word, Jesus acts of power, the growing conflict with the authorities.

And all of a sudden he gets it.  Jesus is the one, the one sent by God, the one that all of Israel has been hoping for and dreaming of for hundreds of years, the one who will save his people. 

“You are the Messiah.”

The Messiah.  The one the prophets had promised that God would send.  The one who would purify Israel, re-establish its supremacy among the nations, defeat the Romans and usher in a new era of peace.

I’m sure Peter expected that at any moment Jesus would address the crowd in the fashion of JFK, or of a great military leader and announce his mission, declaring that anyone who wanted to join with him to overthrow Rome must be ready “to deny themselves, take up their sword, and follow me.”   And with that they would begin the long march to Jerusalem, gathering strength along the way.

But Jesus doesn’t do that.  Instead, Jesus begins to teach them that he must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the authorities, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

And when Jesus addresses the crowd, there is no talk of taking up the sword.  Instead they are told to take up their cross.  The instrument of Roman terror and torture.  The cross, that burden, which as a final act of humiliation, the Romans would make a convicted rebel carry to his own execution. 

There were no cheers from the crowd.

At first Peter tries to convince Jesus that he’s got it wrong.  He takes Jesus aside and rebukes him.  But Jesus in turn lets Peter have it, right in front of all the others.  There is to be no misunderstanding on this.  Jesus will not be the Messiah they are expecting. 

And with this, Peter’s hopes and dreams, his expectations are crushed.  He is angry, he is embarrassed, he doesn’t understand, but most of all he is profoundly disappointed.

Like Peter, sometimes we don’t get the God we want.  What do you do when God doesn’t meet your expectations?  When God disappoints us?

I was told a story of a small rural congregation in which one of the woman became very ill. 

This congregation rallied together.  They held prayer vigils for the woman who was ill, they visited and provided support, and they had a tremendous faith that God would heal the woman.  They expected God to restore her to health.

Sadly, after some time, after many prayer services, the woman died.  And the congregation was devastated.  They experienced doubt.  The God they had hoped for, that they had expected, didn’t show up.  And they were profoundly disappointed.

Somewhere along our journey, something of the same sort will happen to us.  There will be times in life when things are hard, when we are lonely, when there is sadness or illness or brokenness.  There will be times when the God we want and expect doesn’t show up. 

You know, when I read today’s Gospel earlier this week, I came at it with the assumption that Jesus is my role model.  That this Jesus who teaches that he will suffer and be put to death, that this Jesus who teaches us to deny ourselves and take up the cross like he did, that’s what I’m supposed to be like. 

But that’s hard.  I don’t know if I can be like that.  Honestly, I don’t think I can ever live up to that standard.  I don’t know if I even understand what it means for me in my culture to take up my cross and follow Jesus.  This gospel became more and more disconcerting to me.  I started to have doubts. 

It’s not that I don’t accept Jesus teaching.  I do.  When I read about people like Oscar Romero or Mahatma Ghandi or Mother Teresa, I am awestruck and full of admiration.  It’s just that I’m not sure that I’m up to that sort of thing, in fact I’m pretty sure I’m not.

And that’s when I discovered that there’s another role model for me in today’s gospel.    And that’s Peter.  Peter.  The one who gets it wrong.  The one who gets chewed out.  The one who doesn’t understand, the one who is profoundly disappointed.  Because you know what Peter does?  He continues to follow Jesus.  He doesn’t know why Jesus is doing what he’s doing.  He is full of doubts and fears.  He doesn’t understand.  But somehow, in spite of all that, he has faith. 

Somehow Peter realizes that even though Jesus may not be what he wants, and Jesus may not be what he expects, Jesus is the one in whom he can put his trust.  And so at a time when many in the crowd turn away from Jesus, Peter follows.  Peter walks the journey of faith, dogged by doubt and fear and misunderstanding and missteps along the way.  It won’t be until Easter morning, three days after Jesus prediction of his own death has come true, that Peter will finally get to look into an empty tomb, and start, just start, to understand.

Our journey is like that.  Isaac’s journey will be like that.  We don’t have to have it altogether.  We don’t need to understand everything.  We will be disappointed, we will have doubts along the way.  We will be tempted to turn back.  But all these things are part of the journey of faith, the journey that each one of us embarked on at our own baptism.  Just ask Peter.  

Amen.