Trashland

Scripture: The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 26), A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I have been to hell. I don’t mean that metaphorically. I’ve quite literally walked through the valley of hell and the fields of blood. And I must say—it wasn’t nearly so hot as I had come to expect. It was actually a rather pleasant 70 or so degrees.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus launches into the sort of uncomfortable crazy talk that one might expect at a Kentucky tent revival. Seriously, beware the pastor who actually enjoys preaching on texts like these:

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 go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where the worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

Fires and blindings and amputations, oh my. The Word of the Lord. Just what on earth do you suppose Jesus is talking about here?

Right off the bat, let’s agree that this is not a part of the Bible to be taken literally. It can’t be. If it were, Christians would look a lot like Hollywood pirates, all peg legs and eye patches and hooks for hands. While I am no professor of Church history, I cannot recall even one single instance of a theologian or saint, from Peter and Paul down to this very day, who heard these words of Jesus and went home to break out the bone saw. I hope it obvious to all that Jesus doesn’t want us lopping off body parts.

So what’s all this about stumbling and falling into hell? Well, let’s keep in mind that Jesus called Himself the Way—the Way to the Kingdom of God, the Way to eternal life. And in the early Church, Jesus’ followers were not called Christians so often as we were called Wayfarers, followers of Jesus, followers of the Way. Stumbling blocks along the Way are those things that keep people from Jesus, that prevent people from following or from keeping to the Way. Jesus wants us to get rid of those things. He wants us to eliminate in ourselves the things that prevent anyone else from coming to Him.

He explains all this in response to the Apostles fretting over an unlicensed exorcist. Someone who is not part of Jesus’ inner circle, someone who is neither an Apostle nor disciple, has, they have found, been using Jesus’ Name to cast out demons, and they have tried unsuccessfully to stop him. We know from historical records that this was a fairly common problem for the early Church: Jewish and pagan exorcists would use Jesus’ Name as just one more magical formula in their repertoire. You go with what works, I suppose.

And in response to all this, Jesus says something remarkable: “Do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in My Name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me. Whoever is not against us is for us.” And He goes on to tell them that while the smallest act of kindness done in His Name will be greatly rewarded, those who lay stumbling blocks along the Way are responsible for keeping people from Jesus. Wayfarers are to clear the path for others, to walk with them along the Way, not to block it.

We must shed, therefore, whatever sins within us keep others from Christ, Who is the Way and the Truth and the Life. This rogue exorcist is not to be met with hostility but with affirmation of what good he is already doing, and an invitation to know greater goodness, greater truth, by accompanying us along the true Way. There are honest pagans, honest atheists, honest Hindus and Jews and Buddhists who seek the truth of God with a loving heart, and woe to us if it is the actions of we Christians that keep others from knowing the Christ. The Kingdom of God is not about us keeping others out. It’s always about reaching out to our neighbor in need.

Okay, that’s all well and good, I think. But why must He talk so much about hell? We find comfort in knowing Jesus as our Savior, but we squirm, and rightly so, when He speaks so frankly and so forcefully about damnation. Is He threatening us? Warning us? Scaring us straight? What does He mean with all this talk of being cast into hell, thrown into hell, salted with fire? Aren’t our lives fearful enough already?

We should start off, I think, by making it clear that hell is not a word that Jesus ever used. It simply didn’t exist back then, and certainly not in Hebrew. “Hel” is actually the name of a Scandinavian death goddess from the Viking Age—not exactly biblical. In fact, a lot of our ideas about hell have little to do with the Bible. The word translated into English as hell is actually Gehenna, and Gehenna is a real place. You can go there. Indeed, your pastor has been to hell, about three Februaries back.

In Jerusalem there is a craggy, rocky valley, a terrible gash in the earth just south of the Temple Mount, where in ancient times the Canaanites performed their horrible rites of child sacrifice. Because of this unholy desecration, the Israelites refused to settle in the valley, using it instead as the city’s trash dump. All the sewage and offal and blood from the Temple sacrifices sluiced down through the city and out the dung gate into this grotesque scar of land, where the fires always burned and the worms never died. The name of this valley was Gehenna, and it was the worst place any good Israelite could imagine.

The ancient world believed not only in the land of the dead under the earth, but also in a great abyss beneath the underworld, so far down that it was said to take three full days to fall all the way to the bottom. This abyss was the eternal prison for titans and demons and old wicked gods, locked away forever in a terrible darkness thrice wrapped in night. The Greeks called the abyss Tartarus, but the Hebrews had no word for it. They called it simply Gehenna, the trash heap, the defiled valley—the very worst place they could imagine, where the fires always burned and the worms never died.

Imagine that. I for one find it very interesting that Jesus’ name for hell is a trash heap. For Jesus, hell is where people are treated as refuse, as garbage, rather than as immortal and beloved souls possessing the image of God. One needn’t travel to the underworld to find such places. For Jesus, hell could be found right here on earth. And I think that’s just as true for us in our time as well.

One final bit of weirdness regarding the valley of Gehenna: Jesus predicted that within a single biblical generation—40 years—destruction would come upon Jerusalem, and all would swept away, even the great Temple of God. Not one stone would be left upon another. And so it came to pass, 40 years later, when the iron fist of Rome fell upon the rebellious people of Judah. The Christians of Jerusalem escaped, mind you, because they took Jesus’ warning seriously. They followed the Way. But those who stayed were slaughtered, their bodies cast into Gehenna and burned. I can’t help but wonder if Jesus didn’t prophesy precisely this in our Gospel this morning. Such was the fate He would spare His people, in this world and the next, if only men had ears to hear.

Here’s my real concern. I’m afraid that whenever we hear talk of hell we resort to two very hellish outlooks, which are selfishness and fear: selfishness because our immediate concern becomes the state of our own soul, rather than the needs of our neighbor; and fear because we view God as pouring out infinite suffering rather than eternal salvation. We must cast these sins aside. Jesus’ words to us today are simple. We are to cling to Christ in all things. We are to cut away anything within us that would cause others to stumble in their journey toward Jesus. And we are never, under any circumstance, to allow human beings to be treated like trash.

Such is the Way of Life. Such is the Way of the Lord.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.