Re-Thinking the Faith, Part 3 - "Heaven & Hell: Really?"

                         (Based on Mark 1:1-11 and Matthew 25:45-53)  

   One of my favorite poems is Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall.” In this classic, we witness a sort of debate as to the merits of the fences or walls we build between our neighbors and ourselves. On the one hand, Frost says that “Good fences make good neighbors,” and much of the poem narrates the annual spring ritual of two farmers rebuilding and repairing the fence along their property line. But the ultimate message of Frost’s masterpiece is found in its opening lines:

   Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, 

   That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, 

   And spills the upper boulders in the sun; 

   And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

It seems that Mother Nature, herself, strikes down the fences we 

humans build.

               This morning, as we continue to re-think our faith, I want us 

to consider the fact that this is how God works as well, as the Great 

Destroyer of the many fences and barriers that we build, not only

between ourselves and others, but between ourselves and God.

The two passages we looked at this morning both tell stories of 

significant barriers being broken, punched through, by God. In the

story of Jesus’ baptism, which Gloria read, as Jesus is being baptized,

he looks up and sees “heaven being torn open and the Spirit 

descending on him like a dove.” The phrase “being torn open” does

not suggest a temporary opening that’s there only long enough to let

this little dove squeak through. This tear is permanent, allowing God’s 

spirit to come and go, to dwell in both places. It suggests that the 

barrier between where God was believed to reside  - heaven - and

where we humans reside – earth – is gone – shattered, torn,

 eradicated. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

               In the passage I presented of Jesus’ death on the cross, 

another long-standing barrier is torn down, ripped apart, 

permanently removed.In the ancient Hebrew temples, their was

a huge, heavy, thick cloth that hung between that part of the temple

where people were permitted to worship – like our sanctuary – 

and a portion of the temple where only the priests could go – like our 

altar. That place reserved for priests was where the holiest of 

objects were kept – like the torah scroll and the ark of covenant. 

The “holy of holies” as it was called, was believed to be the part of 

the temple where God’s presence dwelled. Matthew’s crucifixion 

account says that when Jesus breathed his last and died on the cross, 

that massive, heavy curtain that had hung there for thousands of

years was ripped in two.  

        Now, whether you take the Bible literally or figuratively, the 

symbolism here is unmistakably clear. God doesn’t like fences. God 

doesn’t like barriers. God doesn’t even like the idea that where God 

lives and where we live should be thought of as separate.

        This brings us to the doctrinal dimensions of our faith that I’d like

us to rethink this morning and in the week to come. Most Christians

grew up with a three-tiered understanding of the world, the notion 

that the whole cosmos is divided into three distinct parts: heaven, 

earth, and hell. Heaven, we were taught, is where God lives, along

with angels and certain qualified dead people – those with the

“right” beliefs. Earth, as the traditional doctrine has it, is this 

temporary dwelling place, the proving grounds that determine 

whether we’re good enough for heaven or condemned to hell.  

Hell, according to traditional thinking, is the underworld, the burning, 

fiery land of suffering where the devil and his children – those with 

the wrong beliefs – spend  eternity in torment, weeping and gnashing

their teeth. 

       In our Lenten Bible Study this past Tuesday, I challenged the 
thirty participants to examine their understandings of heaven and 
hell and ask, “Where did my understanding of these realms come 
from? What is their origin?” What was true of those who were 
with me on Tuesday is that their images and understandings of
heaven and hell are not biblical at all. They are, instead, like the
cover of your bulletin today, much more heavily influenced 
by medieval writers like Dante. Richard Rohr puts it this way: 
 “Our Christian notion of hell largely comes unbiblical sources…
Hell is not found in the first five books of the Bible. It's not 
found in the Gospel of John or in Paul's letters. The idea of hell
as we most commonly view it comes much more from Dante's 
Divine Comedy than the Bible. Dante's Purgatorio and Inferno
 are brilliant Italian poetry, but horrible Christian theology. 
Dante's view of God is largely unbiblical.” 

            In 1986, I had the opportunity to travel to Jerusalem. While there, I worked with an archeologist, who took me to the southwestern gate of the old city. As you know, ancient Jerusalem was a walled city, essentially a circle with seven gates at different points around it. The southwestern gate opened out to a large valley below, known as the Valley of Hinnon or “Gehenna” in Old Testament times. He told me that this where the ancient Israelites threw their trash, they literally dumped it down in the valley. Gehenna is also the site where ancient polytheists conducted their 
human sacrifices. Kings and others sacrificed their sons or virgins on these huge pyres, and their remains were left in this valley of Gehenna to rot. Archeologists know this because of the huge number of bones, human remains, and trash they’ve uncovered over the years.

            When I learned this, it gave me pause, because “Gehenna,” 
in my experience, had always been translated as “hell,” in the bible. But here I was being shown an actual, physical place called “Gehenna.”It wasn’t an underworld or a separate spiritual realm; it was an actual, literal place, right outside Jerusalem. So when Jesus used this word in his teachings, all his listeners would have pictured an actual, earthly place! When I saw Gehenna and learned of its history, it made perfect sense to me that Jesus and other spiritual teachers would use “Gehenna” as a place we wouldn’t want to end up someday, right? Because a lot of Israelites actually DID end up there, burned as sacrificial offerings. It was a stinky, smelly, disease-ridden trash dump with a horrible and grisly history.

            This led me to wonder: what if there isn’t some barrier between earth and hell? Could it be possible that “hell” is right here on earth? Don’t many of us know people whose earthly existence has been so full of pain, suffering, disease, abuse, and lack of love that it is entirely accurate to say they have already been to hell? I’ve always found it interesting that the Apostles’ Creed includes the phrase that Jesus “descended into hell.” I’ve read a hundred explanations of what it might mean or why it’s there. Some say that for Jesus to go there, he would liberate any and all souls who were there. Others say that his horrific death brought about the sense of total abandonment and separation from God that the word “hell” had always tried to convey. One Pope actually wrote that in saying Jesus descended into hell, the apostles were affirming that even that place, wherever it is, is no longer separated from God, that Jesus destroyed the barrier that had kept people imprisoned there.

            God doesn’t like fences. Whether they are in minds, in our theology, or in our religious doctrines and rituals, God destroys barriers. In Jesus got sought to destroy the concept of hell. And God may have wanted to do the same thing with our concept of heaven.

            Do you know how many times Jesus even spoke of heaven? Less than a handful, and when he did, it wasn’t some place “out there” or “up there” that we go when we die. Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God, and from the very beginning of his ministry, he spoke of that kingdom as being “here and now,” as being “among us” and even “within us.” Jesus was never interested in an alternative world or in selling us real estate for when we retire/expire. Jesus came to teach us and to show us that God’s presence and dwelling place is NOT up there in the clouds! It is wherever people are doing God’s will.

            So when Jesus was healing people, he was doing God’s will and God was there! When Jesus was feeding people who were hungry, he was doing God’s will and God was there! When Jesus was being with people who were lonely or outcasts, he was doing God’s will and God was there! When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he said, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done ON EARTH!” No pause!

            As theologian Brian McLaren put it, Jesus came to give us a plan to refurbish and renovate the earth, not to provide an evacuation plan from it! Even John, who wrote the impossible to interpret, highly metaphorical book of Revelation, ended that book about the end times with this image: “Then I saw the Holy City coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, NOW the dwelling of God is with people and God will live with them.”

            When Jesus was baptized, folks, 2000 years ago, this is the same essential image he saw! The heavens tore open – wide open – and the living Spirit of God shot through that new and permanent opening and made God’s dwelling place with us.

            Being a follower of Jesus is not about believing the right stuff or doing the right stuff, so that we can get beamed up to heaven someday. Being a follower of Jesus is about seeing in him living proof that God is here and now, that that same Spirit that came into Jesus at his baptism has come into each and every one of us. Being a follower of Jesus is about understanding that we are participants in the ultimate renovation project. And our master builder has torn down the walls – all of them – beginning with those that separated heaven from earth and heaven from hell.

            What a privilege we have! What a calling we have! What an 
opportunity we have! This faith of ours is not an evacuation plan. 
My grandmother may have said it best when she said, “Too many 
Christians have their heads so far up into the heavens, that they’ve 
become no earthly good.” May that never be said of us. Thanks be 
to God, who doesn’t love a wall. Amen.