Psalm 121
OT Reading: Ezra3.1-13
NT Reading: Ephesians 2.11-end
He descended into hell
For many years now, especially in nice liberal congregations like ours, there has been something of a conspiracy of silence on the topic of Hell. We may enjoy reading Dante. We may cackle gleefully with the chorus of devils in Gerontius. We may relish medieval representations of the last judgment, with devils enthusiastically chasing the condemned into the fiery portals of Hell. We can enjoy these things to-day because such images, whether in paint or stone, music or poetry, no longer have the power to frighten us. We have long since abandoned any notions of a three-decker universe, with Heaven above the Earth and Hell beneath. We still use the word to describe the worst experiences we can imagine, but we are uncomfortable with the thought that anyone – least of all God Himself – might condemn us to Hell, or even allow us to consign ourselves to hell, if that might place us for ever beyond the reach of his saving power and love. Can there really be such a place?
Yet every time we recite the Apostles Creed, we assert that Jesus ‘descended into Hell’ before being raised to new life on the third day. I was idly turning all this over in my mind, when it occurred to me that if there was ever a time or a place to discuss what we might mean by ‘He descended into Hell’, Evensong at Hampstead in the Easter season was the moment, so here we are.
He descended into hell. What struck me first was what an unimaginably awful experience it must have been for Jesus himself. If there is anything we think we know about Hell, it would be that it is a place without God. If that has to be dismissed as theologically impossible, on the grounds that there can be no limit to God’s authority and power, then Hell might still be defined as a place dominated by the forces of Evil, a place where God has allowed himself to be so well hidden that he might seem to be not there at all, or not to be in charge. One would like to think that when Jesus died on the Cross, He was immediately received into the warmth and comfort of His Father’s embrace. But if He had to go down into Hell after His death, He would have been transported from the unspeakable agony and humiliation of death on the Cross into the no less appalling desolation of finding himself separated from His Father’s Love in a place of total darkness and evil. Moreover, if beyond death He was no longer subject to the linear progression of time, that sense of darkness and evil and separation from the Love of God would have been both absolute and eternal. We cannot begin to imagine what that might have felt like.
All we can suppose is that even in those circumstances, even as he stood naked and defenceless in a place where the forces of Evil seemed to be in control, he will have refused to acknowledge the devil’s authority, continuing quietly but firmly to assert the power of His Father’s love, even there. In that moment Truth and Love will have triumphed because they are integral to the nature of God himself, and therefore indestructible. The Devil will have known that His power was broken. But it will have required another supreme effort of Faith and Love to proclaim that message of Truth in that place of impenetrable darkness.
Our readings are not perhaps as graphic as that, but the returning exiles who set up their altar amid the ruins of the old temple, reinstituting the rhythms of sacrifice and thanksgiving despite their fear of the hostile people all around them, those brave men and women were witnessing to the power of God in hellish circumstances where the broken stones and fallen pillars all about them might so easily have discouraged them. Similarly, Paul reminds his Gentile converts, surrounded by the pagan culture of the great city of Ephesus, that until they received the good news about Christ, making them equal inheritors with the Jews of the promises made to God’s chosen people, until then they were without hope, and without God in the world (Ephesians 2.12). To be without hope and without god is to be in Hell. It is only when joined together in the body of Christ that Jews and Gentiles are at peace with one another and with God, having access through him in one Spirit to the Father (v 17-18). And what is true of Christ’s power to heal the divisions between Jew and Gentile in first century Ephesus, is no less true of his power to heal the rift between black and white, between the different ethnic groups in South Sudan or Ukraine, between Islamic jihadist and latter-day crusader.
And that surely is why the descent of Jesus Christ into Hell is such a profoundly encouraging part of the Easter story. It doesn’t matter how we choose to visualise the unimaginable. The Truth to which we cling is that Jesus has been to Hell and back for us. If there was ever any space in the whole of creation, seen and unseen, which was untouched by God’s presence, or beyond the reach of his power and his love, that is no longer the case. He has been into that dark place at the bottom of the ocean where lie the remains of Malaysian Airlines flight 370, he has been into that agony of fear and uncertainty surrounding the Nigerian schoolgirls and their families, he has been into the blinding light and the all-consuming heat of the blasts which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he has been into the darkest corners of our own depressions, as well as the devastation of our hopes and all that we hold most dear. He descended into Hell. And because he has been there we know that there is no place – physical, mental or spiritual – where we cannot reach out in the darkness, and find his hand. ‘For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8.38-39).
Finally of course, we know that he who descended into Hell rose again to new life. We may even go so far as to assert that it is precisely because we have known he was there, even in those darkest moments when we may not have been able to sense his presence, that we can have the confidence of knowing that we will also rise with him to new life in the spirit, sharing in the joy of his resurrection. We give thanks that Jesus not only died to save us, but that he descended into Hell to bring the power and love of God into the darkest corners of creation, asserting God’s rule even there, casting out fear by the power of Love, and rescuing all who were trapped in those impenetrable depths.
Thanks be to God. Amen