CAN WE GET OUT OF HELL?
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

July 20, 2008

Jonah 2:1-10 & Luke 16:19-24

There is a phrase in common English usage that we all know which applies to our lives at the most difficult and inopportune moments. It is the phrase, “I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't.” Parents know it very well. No matter what we say or do our children are sure we are against them and we are horrible. It happens in work environments on a daily basis as we find ourselves in between management and the customer or between management and management. This phrase has a corollary which goes something like, “You can't please all the people all the time and most of people any of the time.”

There are many responses to this natural human evolution of behavioral reality. Remember that old term, hardly in use anymore—codependence? Co-dependent people, in the midst of such a double bind, would assume, “well, it's my fault that I can't please everyone.” The equally aberrant response in the extreme other direction is to say, “Well, I don't care and I'm going to do what I want to do and say anyway!” Both are extreme reflections of the same narcissism and unrestrained selfishness.

Preachers and Ministers get caught in these double binds quite often and most particularly when it comes to the concept of HELL. Nearly everyone in the church business believes in heaven. There is a fair amount of diversity on what heaven might be like—whether the streets are paved with gold or not, whether there are pearly gates versus the more traditional cast iron, and whether we become angels or members of some angelic choir who must perform for eternity. The details of heaven make no difference, because we all have a tendency to believe it will be good and we want to end up there when life as we know it now ceases to be.

Well, hell—now there is something that folks are willing to fight about. If I am going to fight about something, I'd prefer to fight about getting into heaven, but for the sake of those who worry about hell, I guess it is well worth a sermon. I grew up fearing hell—how about you? Not every one did.

One late winter afternoon, which was really early spring—you know those days when it gets to be warm enough that you can smell spring in the air…, but, then at night it remains right at or below freezing. Anyway, those were the days down on the farm back home again in Indiana when we would haul manure from the barn stables and spread it with a manure spreader out into the fields for its fertilizer value. This one particular day I was helping my farmer uncle Ezra, who is also a preacher. We were cleaning out cattle stalls with these huge pitch forks like you often see devils holding in cartoons. There has got to be a correlation there somewhere. Incidentally, pitch forks that are made for pitching hay have three prongs. A manure pitch fork like the devil uses always has four. A little farm knowledge there....

Anyway, we were digging out the caked-in manure and as the day warmed up the manure would sort of melt from its frozen chunks and I stepped into a stall and sank in, and the vacuum that was created would not let me step out. Were it not for the pitch fork I was holding I would have toppled over into the ….stall.

My uncle was laughing so hard at my predicament that he was little to no help. I was sinking deep in manure and it was beginning to seep into my work boots over the top. There was no help forthcoming from my uncle, with the exception of a lecture that this could be compared to hell, that we need to be careful what we wade into, because we may sink and find ourselves stuck and not be able to pull ourselves out, and that surely hell smells this bad. Thank you, Uncle, for this moment of religious clarity and understanding. I then pulled my feet out of the boots, (my socks stayed in the boots) and I walked quickly out of the barn to the nearest hose. My uncle nearly impaled himself on his own pitchfork laughing—another lesson about how some people deserve to go to hell for enjoying other people's unfortunate predicaments in life, I told him. We went in and had a little piece of heaven—Aunt Nellie, who believed a fat wife and big barn never did any man harm, had fresh-baked cookies ready and the smell of cookies and hot coffee soon dissipated all the smells of the previous experience.

But what about hell? Is it real? Ought we to concern ourselves with the real possibility of eternity in a flaming hot pit of despair serving a horned devil with a four-pronged pitch fork? Or, is God's love and compassion so great, God's grace so fully given that none need fear, only ready ourselves to be embraced by the light and found already redeemed by God's loving actions in the blood of the lamb, Jesus the Christ?

The Evangelical Protestant theology around at the beginning of this country, which helped shape the collective soul that we call America, was best defined by early congregational minister Jonathan Edwards, whose best known sermon revolved around that popular image that we are all sinners in the hands of an angry God who is holding us over the fire pit of hell, and our very least transgression will cause God in God's wrath to drop us into the pit of eternal damnation. Such images were and are pivotal in scarring the hell out of a lot people. Fanning the flames of hell in such sermons gave rise to the largest revival of spirituality to date in our country and the religious fervor that followed gave rise and definition to the morality and ethics that most of us grew up with this land.

But today in 9 out of 10 churches we talk more about the mercy of God, the compassion of God, the gentleness of God, the great love of God, the unconditional positive regard of God for all of God's creation, and except in those traditional King James Bible Thumping congregations, we don't really hear much about going to hell in a hand basket, and aren't confronted with the judgment of God upon our lives. So tough were the preachers in our land for the last two hundred and fifty years that we have seen a reactive jump to the other side of the spectrum. When one idea—God's wrath and disappointment and anger and vengefulness—is emphasized  at the expense of all else, what could we expect but a shift in emphasis? Like the great plates of this earth that push and push in one direction, suddenly the shift goes another way. Rightly so, the American mindset was so developed after 200-plus years of preaching about how bad we were, that we were producing without even thinking some of the worst self images and distorted thinking that the world has ever seen.

Never before has there been a better time in which to live and serve God. We know more, we possess the ability to see into other cultures, other religions, see the damage done in the past as well as look at what worked well and apply all those learnings today. It is a great day to be alive and learn and serve God.

Amen.

I believe that the religious experience of our time has run the risk of shortchanging us because it is often missing the grave accent of the judgment of God. Believing in Jesus does not save us from being judged by God and perhaps to be found wanting.

I believe in the great love of God, in the boundless blessings of God, in the precious promise of God. I also believe where it reads in Proverbs 5:21-23: “For a person's ways are in full view of God, and God examines all our paths. The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare us; the cords of our sins hold us fast. We will die for lack of discipline, led astray by our own great folly.”

One of the greatest religious follies of our generation has been the neatly packaged religious messages that have sought to tell us that once we have been saved we are always saved. Friends, Jesus does not save us from the judgment of God. Salvation is not an insurance plan that guarantees eternal satisfaction and a home in heaven.

Hear the Holy Scriptures that Jesus knew and that formed his life in God: Ezekiel 18:20: The righteousness of the righteous ones will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them. But, if a wicked person turns from all the sins they have committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right , they will surely live….God asks, “do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”

We are not sinners in the hands of an angry God. We are sinners in the hands of a God who welcomes us home when we confess our sins, repent and change and come home to living the ways of God rather than the ways of this world, where selfishness and greed light the paths of our streets and might and power and manipulation determine who has and who has not. If we live by the sword we will die by the sword. If we are unjust and selfish in our lives, how could we expect justice and compassion and mercy when we die.

Salvation is an active verb, not a static noun. Salvation is a discipline, not a one-time happening. In Hebrews 12: let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance that race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

Salvation is a race to run, to be won. While God expects none of us to be found perfect…, God expects to have seen us to be constantly striving to achieve our faith by following  the more excellent ways of love.

When we die, I don't thing that everyone goes to heaven. Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of God, but only those who have done the will of God….I will say to those who cry out ‘Jesus Jesus, away from me, I never knew you.'

In my more arrogant unChrist-like moments I think that is surely television evangelists that Jesus is talking about—but, Jesus is talking about you and I, and that we must be about disciplining ourselves in the ways of God, we must be about serving the needs of this world, not our own, we must be about allowing God to become fully present in us in all that we say and do, we must be acutely aware that the show isn't over until we stand before God, And I, for one, hope God is full of great compassion and mercy, for I am far from perfect in my life and faith.

I do not believe that God sends anyone to hell—I believe that a lot of folks choose hell, separation from God. Rather than face the judgment of God, they choose hell. Rather than risk love they choose lostness and alienation and evil. Is it ever too late for any of us?

Some of you might know this story. I love it and share it because in it I find great truth about God. Jesus told stories to attempt to tell truth, because stories can carry truth easier than factual statements—It is just the nature of truth and stories.

A person dies and goes to heaven. Gets TO the gates of heaven and knows for the first time whether they are pearly or not. This person is greeted and welcomed into heaven by St. Peter and St. Mary (this is an inclusive story). The person is told, “Enter into heaven and begin the next step into eternity, and if you need anything just come back and ask.”

The person goes on in and begins to explore heaven and in about an hour comes back and says to Peter and Mary, “It is great here, wonderful, exciting and vibrantly alive, truly a better place than ever I could have known on earth, but, there is just one thing puzzling to me, WHERE IS EVERYONE? NO ONE IS HERE BUT ME!” Where are Jesus and God? Where are Moses and Miriam and Abraham and Sarah and my mother and father and all the rest?

Peter and Mary smiled and put their arms around the new entry into heaven and said, “Oh, we see what you mean. God and Jesus and everyone else are down in hell ministering to those folks—would you like us to show you the way to them?"

I believe you and I are subject to judgment in our lives. I am committed to the ways of God through Jesus, the Christ; like Paul we are running the race, praying for perseverance. I join with the Psalmist who in Psalm 139 states the ageless truth; If I ascend up into heaven, you are there: If I make my bed in hell, behold you are there…. even there your hand shall hold me.

Let us commit ourselves to the long race of being committed servants of God who hunger for righteousness sake and who in the end lay ourselves prostrate before God who loves us and who is merciful to those who love God and who have loved God's created world.  Amen.