Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-28
Psalm 19:7-14
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

Pentecost 17
Proper 21B RCL

DON'T GO TO HELL

Credits: Pulpit Resource 2003,2009 ad loc.
The Living Church 9/27/09 p.4

As most of us know, Christians have an unfortunate tendency to treat with contempt other Christians whose faith they think is wanting. From the very beginning, Christians have, over the centuries, subjected each other to inquisitions, heresy trials and even to armed attack - all in the Name of a loving Lord.

Hopefully, the worst of Christian-on-Christian violence is over, but suspicion and competition within the Faith are alive and well. Some Episcopalians look down their collective noses at Christians more conservative than they are. And the treatment of congregations and dioceses that recently have felt' compelled to leave our Church verges on the scandalous.

The ecumenical movement of the last few generations has made at least a start in addressing our Christian divisiveness. Liturgies are similar; Bible rea0ings for Sundays are widely shared, and we are in formal inter communion with Lutherans and now with Moravians. But a whole lot more needs to happen.

So, who can represent Jesus to the world? The disciples, the insiders, expect Jesus to condemn the one who is not following them, in today's Gospel: "Master, we saw" one casting out devils in your Name, and we forbade him, because he is not following us." Jesus surprises them I'd th His response: "Do not stop him. Whoever is not against us is for us" (Mark 9: 39-40). So apparently, following Jesus is more inclusive than following the disciples! When they want to rebuke the outsider, Jesus sternly begins to warn them: "If anyone of you shall cause one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble ..." (9: 42): that is to say, we want to discuss the sins of others. Jesus turns the focus towards our own sin. His stern words of warning seem to be addressed to the insiders, the disciples, who have a responsibility to the "little ones who believe in Christ" (9:42) - little ones, immature believers for whom the last thing they need is a stumbling block put in their way.

The mention of hell's worms and fire surely would remind the hearers of the very last verse of the prophet Isaiah, where the prophet foretold a horrible fate for the outsiders, all those who rebelled against the Lord. But here in Mark's Gospel, Jesus foretells a horrible fate for those who are insiders, disciples who lead astray other, newer, immature disciples. What Isaiah applied to the heathen, Jesus applied to His own disciples. So once again, as the prophets said so often, judgment begins with God's own house!

This is a very tough Gospel today. We want judgment to begin with the outsiders - people that we think are undisciplined, uninformed, and others who are "not one of us". Jesus is embarrassingly affirming of them, and distressingly judgmental about us.

And he's not working on just any of His followers. He severely warns the inner circle, the apostles, the closest followers. He says to them that there is hell to pay for those who are strong, but who provide a stumbling-block for those who are weak, for those who are on top who abuse those on the bottom, for those who are big and in the know, the inner circle, - who mislead the little ones.

In the New Testament, evangelism is defined as snatching others from the fire (Jude 23), and Jesus speaks often of the fire of hell (Matt.5:22), and sees Himself as a rescuer from hell. Jesus is pictured as One sent to urge people to avoid hell, and His urgings are nowhere more urgent and dramatic than in today's Gospel.

In our Church we don't talk much about hell. Hell is not one of the more uplifting Biblical themes, but here in today's Gospel, Jesus undeniably speaks about hell.

We need to realize that the English word hell translates three different terms.

1. First, it translates the Hebrew word Sheol, the place of departed spirits. When the Apostles' Creed says that Jesus descended into hell, the point is that those who died before the time of Jesus had a chance to receive and accept Him. So the descent into that hell, Sheol, is a matter of justice in offering salvation to those who had the bad luck to die before Jesus came. In the 1928 Prayer Book, instead of "He descended into hell", one could say "He went into the place of departed spirits." (see I Peter 3: 18-22).

2. The word Hell also refers to the underworld, Hades, as pictured in various pagan mythologies.

3. The word Hell is used in today's Gospel to translate the Hebrew word Gehenna which is the Greek for Ge-Hinnom, the Valley of Hinnom south and west of Jerusalem. It was the site of pagan sacrifice in ancient times and thus was viewed as a polluted place. So later it became the city dump, a place of constantly burning trash and garbage. It is this place to which Jesus is referring. Jesus is saying literally that it would be better to pluck out your eye or to lose a limb, than to have your whole body thrown on to the rubbish heap of Gehenna.

That is to say, your life is precious. Don't let it be discarded on the trash-heap of life. God made you, and He makes no one to be human garbage.

Jesus was the One Who constantly descended into hell. Not just when He died, during those three days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, but throughout His ministry. He entered those places which we avoid, those places that we put out on the margins, out on the edge of town - the shoddy nursing homes, the pitifully ill-equipped places for those suffering from Mental illness, the dumping places for humanity, on the edge of town - the blind, the lepers, those possessed by devils.

We have seen Him, throughout this year, in the Gospel of Mark, entering hell confronting demons, rebuking the devils that possess people, healing and driving out all that dehumanizes and degrades. He spent much of His life with those who had reached the end of the line ..

In Jesus, we are not permitted to resign ourselves saying, "They have dumped me here; this is the end of the line". We can choose to treasure the gift that God has given us in our lives, our talents and our responsibilities. The Church is to be made up of people who treasure their lives and are determined that we will not let our lives slide into nothingness and despair, simply because of we find difficult to control.

The Church is to be the sort of place that keeps entering hell, keeps attempting to salvage lives, to rescue people, to remind them that they are precious to God, beautiful, and by no means destined for the trash-heap of the world.

That is a metaphor for the Church. The Churches are always to take in the refuse of the world and build on it, making something beautiful out of what the world discards as beyond redemption. No one is beyond God's ability to redeem. And that includes you and me.

Later, some time after this teaching in today's Gospel, Jesus Himself would be put up on a Cross, overlooking the Valley of Hinnom, Gehenna. He could see Gehenna clearly from Calvary. His own deepest experience of Gehenna was Calvary. Take that as a symbol of what Jesus does throughout His ministry. He goes to Hell, in order to defeat Hell and win for God a Kingdom of the ones whom the world once regarded as mere refuse.

O Master, from the mountainside
Make haste to heal these hearts of pain
Till all the world shall learn thy love
And follow where thy feet have trod
Among these restless throngs abide
Till glorious from the heaven above
Shall come the city of our God. Amen
(Hymn 602)