Are you Somebody?

Nuala O’Faolin recently wrote a book whose title, Are you Somebody?, says it all.  She takes it from a question she was asked one day.  In her account of her life, she attempts to answer the question…maybe not the answer the person who asked the question was looking for, but an answer nonetheless.

            Are you somebody?

            Isn’t that a question that we are asked…and we ask ourselves…a thousand times a day.  The question may be asked in terms of “are you somebody important?”  Or maybe the person wants to know, “are you somebody I know…or I should know.”  Perhaps underlying all of this is the unspoken assumption, “are you somebody I should care about?”

            Are you somebody?

            How would you answer that question about yourself?  Are YOU somebody?  Perhaps it might depend on what you meant by ‘somebody’.  I mean, aren’t we all somebody? We all have our own personality, our own interests, our own quirks and our own habits.  Maybe you might say, “well, I’m somebody to some people” I have a family that loves me…and if they don’t love me they at least acknowledge that I belong to them. But am I somebody important? Am I somebody valuable? Well now we are getting into dangerous waters indeed.

            Are you somebody?

            Our Gospel lesson today introduces us to somebody who might have been asking this very same question.  In John 4, we meet this unnamed ‘Samaritan Woman’ who epitomizes the question we have been asking.  And even though we don’t get to know much about this woman, we find out what it means to be somebody through her eyes.

            It seems like an ordinary day.  Jesus has been out preaching and he is thirsty and tired.  He sits by a well in a small town in Samaria while the disciples go off and do…disciple things.  As Jesus is sitting there, this woman comes up to him.

            This woman…this unnamed woman coming at the well at noon.  Not in the morning, when everybody else would come to the well.  At noon.  So she wouldn’t be noticed by other people.  So she could avoid the other women in the town.  So she could be alone.  As she comes to the well, Jesus begins to talk to her.

            Are you somebody? Ok…not the question he asks.  Rather he asks with the benign request for a drink of water. 

            She responds, “How is it you a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (4:9).  She responds, “Are you somebody?”  She is confused because it was a social custom that Jews and Samaritans would be kept separate from each other.[1]  Not only this, but this is a man asking something from a woman.  There is a high wall of social norms, laws and regulations that are being overcome and it understandably makes the woman uncomfortable. 

            The best part of this story comes with Jesus’ response to this.  If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘give me a drink’… What a great statement.  Essentially Jesus is saying “Well I actually AM somebody…in fact I AM” but then goes on to bring the conversation back to her again.  “I could give you ‘living water’.” 

            The story then takes another turn when Jesus tells her to go get her husband and come back to talk to him.

            Then comes the truth.

            I have no husband.

            Jesus replies, “You are right in saying that you have no husband. In fact, you have had five husbands and the man you are living with now is not your husband.”

            Five husbands.  That’s a lot.  But it is also the reason why the woman is out at noon by herself.

            No matter what the reasons are for having five husbands, the fact of the matter is that in a small town like Sychar, having five husbands meant you were somebody.  You were that woman ( you can feel free to fill in what ‘that’ meant).  You were that woman that five men couldn’t stand so they left you.  You were that woman who was cursed by God and had her husbands die on her. You were that woman that you couldn’t even make the current guy marry you.   

You were somebody…but you were really nobody.  You were nobody that anybody wanted to be around.  You were nobody that anybody cared about. You were nobody that anybody wanted to see.

You were alone in the world and you can imagine what this felt like. 

She might have felt that she had been cursed by God.  She might have felt unclean because of her current circumstances.  She definitely felt alone.

Cursed.  Unclean.  Alone.

The nature of her five (failed?) marriages doesn’t really matter.  What really matters is how she felt.  Ostracized by her community, forsaken in love, abandoned by everyone and everything important.  It is no wonder that when given the opportunity to talk to Jesus, she talks about an old theological dispute.  Something that’s not personal, not about her.  Something that’s safe.

Cursed.  Unclean.  Alone. 

I bet that we have all felt like this at some point in our lives.  One of the memories I have of growing up was being called a “waste of air”.  But so many people have had to endure so much more.

I think of Anna, who grew up hated by her father only to marry a man who cared even less for her.

I think of Dan who gave his life over to drugs at an early age, kicked out by his family and lived his life on the streets.

I think of Mildred, the elderly woman that nobody wanted to visit and nobody wanted to listen to her pain.

Cursed.  Unclean.  Alone.

When we find ourselves like this.  We may ask ourselves, “Am I somebody?”  And the answer comes back in our heads and nestles in our hearts, “I am nobody worth listening to, I am nobody worth being with; I am nobody worthy loving.”  “Am I somebody?”  “NO” the answer echoes in the stillness of our rooms with only ourselves to hear it.

But when we consider this story, a different answer must be given. 

At its’ heart, this story is about the man who did pay attention, who did listen, who did care.

At this point in John’s Gospel, the reader knows fully well who Jesus is.  In fact, we cannot avoid this fact.  John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was With God and the Word was God”.  John makes it pretty clear that Jesus is the Word, that Jesus is God.  “All things that were created were created through him.”  Jesus is God, He is the creator of the universe, of all that was and is and will ever be.

Reimagine this story.  Here is a woman, a broken, lonely woman going to the well one day.  Who does she meet? I AM.  The Beginning and the End the Alpha and the Omega, the CREATOR of the universe and all that is. 

This God became flesh, became man, and sat at the well with this woman.  He took an interest in her.  He offered her ‘living water’, everlasting life and life with hope.  He offered her a future where the God of the Universe loved her and took an interest in her.  In Her! 

This may not seem like a lot…but it is EVERYTHING.  It doesn’t matter what the other people in town are saying.  It doesn’t matter that life hasn’t worked out according to plan.  It doesn’t matter that our hearts are broken (it does, but hear me out).  What matters is that the GOD of the Universe, the one who holds worlds in the palm of His hands, is uniquely interested in YOU.  He wants to hear from YOU.  He wants to know what is going on in your life.  He wants to know your pain.  He wants to know your joy, he wants to know your life.

Are you somebody?

Yes, yes you are.  You are somebody of great importance to the great God of the Universe.  You are His beloved child.

You are somebody, and of slightly greater importance is that He is somebody.  He is God Incarnate.  He is the Christ.  He is the one who offers you living water to drink, both now and forevermore.

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[1] Jewish people of Judea (southern Israel) considered themselves to be ‘pureblood’ while the Jews of Samaria (Northern Israel) were descendands from mixed races.

When Jerusalem Burns

Lamentations 3:1-23

It was a bright beautiful end of summer afternoon…the kind that makes you want stay out forever and run and play in the grass and just enjoy life.  You can imagine the kind of anticipation that we had while we waited painfully for that school bell to ring and we could escape the shackles of an societal prison, the school.  When it finally rang, we bolted out of the school faster than a streak of lightening, each to their individual homes to frolick the last vestiges of summer.

The school bus never saw Kevin…and Kevin never saw the school bus.

In the blink of a moment, a young boy’s life was ended and a family’s world was destroyed.  I remember sitting in our classroom, trying to absorb the news that our friend and our classmate was gone, never to see him again.  His desk sat as an empty reminder of this lost life and as an awareness that life was so much more fragile than it had appeared to be.  We all understood the rules of the game: old people die, not young ones.  10 year old boys are not supposed to die…EVER.  And if they did, there was always some miracle, some new drug or some new medical power that could bring him back to life and everything was going to be alright, all the time.

I remember going to the viewing and seeing Kevin’s family.  What do you say to a family that is mourning the loss not only of their loved one, but of their future, of the world they once knew, and their entrance into a new world where things no longer make sense, where ‘God’ no longer operates in the rules they are accustomed to.  Somehow the words, ‘sorry for your loss’ when I finally managed to utter them out of my lips didn’t seem to help or even begin to address the issues that were going on.

What do you think when death and destruction haunt our doors? What do you do when your world crumbles around you and becomes a devastating mockery of the life you once knew? Where do you go when Jerusalem burns to the ground, never to be restored again?

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This is much more than an academic question, and the answer has life and death consequences to it.

We live in the midst of suffering, sometimes more and sometimes less,  but the reality of suffering surrounds us and at times threatens to overwhelm us.  We see it in the death of children, the destruction of families, the scars of warfare, and the struggles of the sick.  We always don’t know what to do with it, and so at times in the Church we pretend that it doesn’t exist.  We put our church faces with our big smiles and we enter the door of the church and we pretend for a couple of hours that our suffering doesn’t exist, that we are happiest people on earth.  We are afraid, sometimes that the Church…or God…might see us in our weakness or in our struggles and we may be laid bare before it all.  We sing praise songs we don’t mean to ensure that nobody will discover the pain and the anger that all too close to the surface. 

Where do you go….when Jerusalem burns?

This is the reality that Jeremiah faced when his world ended.

Jeremiah is one the most fascinating people in Scripture, for me anyway.  He is the longest of the writing prophets and he is the prophet that we know the most about, emotionally.  He is not ashamed, as here in this passage to express the full rains of emotions.  It is interesting that when Jesus asked who the people said that he was, “Jeremiah” was one of the answers (Matthew 16:14), and that says a great deal about how people viewed Jeremiah…or Jesus for that matter.

But Jeremiah lived in a time of great suffering.  He lived at the end of the Southern Kingdom.  Jeremiah prophesies for over 40 years.  At the end of his ministry, Jeremiah suffered the most devastating loss one could imagine.  The Babylonian army came in and crushed Jerusalem.  They put Israel’s leaders to death, they exported the brightest, the best and the beautiful to Babylon, and they burned Jerusalem to the ground.  At first Jeremiah was put on the Exile train out to Babylon, but then he was given a choice and he chose to return to the ruins of Jerusalem, and to live minister among the people.  It is in this situation that Jeremiah writes the Lamentations.

We can begin to understand the devastation that Jeremiah must have felt as he looked at the ashes of his city and took in the horrific sights around him.  And as we look at this text, we can’t simply read it and explain it.  We must experience it.

‘I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath.” (3:1) This dark and ominous beginning should haunt us.  As we read on, he has driven me and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.” (3:2) There is a reason why Lamentations doesn’t make it into too many devotional books and this is it!

His entire world has turned to darkness.  Surely we know people for whom this is true…surely this has been true even for us at times. Later on he will say, “my soul is bereft of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is”(3:17)

Why? How could Jeremiah….I mean Jeremiah is a prophet, a righteous man…how could he say these things?

It goes back to the destruction of Jerusalem.  For us, Jerusalem may be just a city on a map, far away not only geographically but culturally.  We don’t think much about Jerusalem and we sure don’t think about the temple in any significant way (for right reasons). But for Jeremiah, Jerusalem was the very heart of the kingdom of God.  The death and suffering of people was horrible enough, but the destruction of Jerusalem was something else entirely!

Jerusalem was the place where God lived. It was his physical location among the people and it was the proof that God had indeed blessed His people with His presence.  Great things had happened there and greater things were yet to come.  Micah and Isaiah prophesied about a time when Mt. Zion will be exalted above all other mountains and the nations would swarm to the Temple and learn about God and the Word of God would go forth into all the world.  The people of Israel, it was claimed, would rule the nations of the world, from Jerusalem, which would be the center of the world.  Jerusalem would be the place where the divine and the human intersected and now it is burning to the ground, reduced to rubble and ashes.  How can that be? How could God do this?

God had crossed a boundary for Jeremiah…a self-established rule that God must not break.

We all have them, if we are honest with ourselves.   We impose rules on God and we expect them to be followed.  Rules such as, I will worship God as long as children do not die.  It’s perfectly fine for adults and old people to die, because after all, that’s how things work.  But not children! I will worship God as long as my marriage remains intact and everything is financially good.  I will worship God  as long as I don’t lose my job.

But the moment any of these things happened, God has crossed a line that we cannot bear and we will not tolerate and we will run away from him and take refuge in our despair.

Look at the source of Jeremiah’s despair:

            He has driven men and brought me into darkness

            HE has made my flesh and my skin waste away

            He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago

            He has walled me about so that I cannot escape

            He is a bear lying in wait for me

            He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces

            He has made me desolate

Translate this: God has taken away my life and left me empty and bereft of happiness. “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.”

Ever meet anybody like this? I know I have.

I remember going to visit a lady at one of the churches I’ve served who was stuck in the past.  Her husband and her daughter had died, only a few months apart from each other.  Her world was completely devastated and she could not recover.  Her heart broke every moment of every day and no matter how much she cried it was never enough.  There was no light, only darkness.

I’ve talked with fathers who have lost their children whose only words that I could distinguish between sobs were “my baby boy….” No light, only darkness.

I’ve seen marriages shattered on the altar of reality where a husband or a wife realizes the type of person they married and life will never be the same again.  No light, only darkness.

And sadly this is where so many people stay.  They can’t get out of these thoughts and they can’t go anywhere with them. 

I remember watching my mother die of Parkinson’s disease.  Parkinson’s is a cruel type of disease because it not only robs you of life, it takes away every ounce of dignity you possess as a person.  I was a relatively new Christian as my mom got sick.  I used to pray every day that God would ‘fix’ her.  That God would perform a miracle, that God would come down from heaven and cure her.  I used to make ‘deals’ with God, that if He would fix her, then I would be a missionary and go the ends of the earth, or that I would make sure that everybody would have a copy of the Bible and I would do my best  to make sure that everybody believed in God.

It didn’t work. 

Mom died, and I remember being broken.  God had broken the rules.  And I began to think, maybe if I had prayed harder or maybe if I had done more or maybe if I wasn’t just a screw up that maybe God would have healed her.  I remember the darkness creeping in, threatening to overtake my soul. I remember feeling like Jeremiah.  “My soul is bereft of peace.  I have forgotten what happiness is.”

Where do you go, when Jerusalem burns?

Jeremiah gives us an answer. “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.  The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.”

Now if he had said this to me, I would have responded with “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? GOD DOESN’T LOVE ME, GOD HATES ME! HOW COULD YOU EVEN THINK THIS?”

But the amazing thing is that Jeremiah doesn’t respond like this.  He has a very different reaction.  He is able to go through the pain of the first nineteen verses of the chapter and end with this absolute and wonderful declaration.

Notice that there is no theological discourse here.  There is no prolonged discussion of the nature of evil or any answers to the question of “If there is a good God, why do bad things happen?” This is because Jeremiah’s purpose is very different.  He is showing us two things: (1) when bad things happen, we need to be honest to God with all of our emotions and (2) we need to root our hope in God and His love.  The only thing that keeps us out of the darkness is knowing the reality that no matter what happens, God’s love is constant.

Jeremiah says, “But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope”(3:21).  “Hope” in Scripture is not an abstract term.  We often use the word “hope” as a “wish” or a “longing”.  If I say when I’m at work, that “I hope that Marilee will bake a pie today,” I am expressing a wish that there will be pie when I get home.  I have no basis on which to base this hope, unless Marilee said “I am making a pie” before I left for work. 

But in Scripture, the word ‘hope’ has a different connotation.  “Hope” refers to a definite knowledge that you have within you.   The Hebrew literally means ‘to wait’ because ‘hope’ is about seeing beyond our current circumstance and seeing beyond the present reality.  It looks to what we know God will do in the future.  It is this that shapes and frames the present, because we know that no matter how bad things are now, no matter how terrible or even how horrific, God wild deliver us from it.

            “But I will hope continually and will praise you more and more”-Psalm 71:4

 “But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.” Micah 7:7

Even the New Testament understand this:

“According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead..” 1 Peter 1:3

And so Jeremiah reminds us that in the midst of all this terror, in the midst of this darkness, there is hope, because of who God is and what he has done.  We may be so captured by our reality that we don’t think there is any possibility that things could change.  But the gospel calls us to hope in God, to know, beyond the shadow of any doubt that things will get better.

But how do we know?  When we are faced  with suffering, with pain, with death, how can be sure that things will change?

Jeremiah again gives us the answer.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.” (3:23)

There is no greater statement in the entire First Testament than this verse! And we are usually in such a rush to get to this verse when we get to this chapter that we ignore the preceding twenty verses.  Devotional books cutout the surrounding material in order to highlight this verse.  But if we do that, we actually miss the point of how great this verse truly is.  In light of great suffering, the ‘steadfast love’ of the Lord never ever ceases. 

The Hebrew word dsx is our anchor in this passage.  There is no one word in English that captures the meaning.  What it refers to is that deep, covenantal love of God that will never be shaken.

            “…His steadfast love endures forever.”-1 Chronicles 16:41

“O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keeps his commandment.” Nehemiah 1:5

“Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens; your faithfulness to the clouds.” Psalm 36:5

The way that the Apostle John puts this statement is, “God is love” (1 John 4:8).  The idea is that God’s love is so closely attached to his character that there is no distinction between the two.

But how do we know this?

Because God proves this over and over again to us.  Scripture is one big story about how God’s constant love prevails.  God loves the people of Israel and proves himself again and again. Jesus reminds us of this love at the end of the gospel of Matthew by declaring that “I will never leave you nor forsake you..”

But most of all, we know God’s steadfast love never fails because of the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In fact, we could re-read this chapter in light of, and from the perspective of Jesus and God the Father.  We can hear the anguish of Jesus as he approaches the cross.  We can picture the anguish of God as he looks at His Son on the cross and looks at the true Jerusalem and the true Temple lying in ruins, shattered on the cross.

God is not far away, a dispassionate deity who is unconcerned with our suffering.  He is a God that knows what suffering is like, who understands our pain and who understands what is to see dreams shattered.  He is not a cruel God who throws us into a world of pain  haphazardly or with no concern.  He is a God who stands right with us in the midst of shattered dreams and broken worlds.  He is a God who hears our grief, and grieves with us.  

But he is also a God who pushes us beyond our grief and our current situation.  That is what is amazing about the Resurrection.   It is not just proof that there is life after death (there is that), it is that God’s faithfulness, God’s steadfast love, God’s hesed is faithful to us beyond all the darkest moments of our lives.  He proves that for every world that is broken and every dream  that is shattered, there is a hope to be had by all people.

So…where do you go when Jerusalem burns, when your hopes and dreams are shattered and the darkness threatens to overtake you? You run into the arms of the Savior, whose steadfast love never ceases and whose mercies are new every morning.  

God's Disappointment

I remember when I was a kid experiencing disappointment for one of the very first times in my life.  It was nothing earth shattering, but it had a profound impact on me.  I was in the Magic Kingdom in Disney World (any child’s dream come true!), waiting to see Mickey Mouse.  Mickey of course is the king of Disney World and no visit is a complete success without a hug from Mickey.  Well, Mickey was out there and all the kids were flocking to him, and I realized that I was going to have to wait to see him.  But before I could get through the throngs of kids with their brightly colored shorts and Mickey Mouse hats on, Mickey was gone! I had missed my opportunity to hug Mickey. 

A few years ago, Philip Yancey wrote a book that every Christian should read entitled, Disappointment with God.  In it, he deals with our soul’s struggle with God.  I’ve often wondered if maybe at times we should reflect on the opposite side of the equation, on God’s disappointment with us…or just me in particular.

I have often wondered if it were to be possible to count the number of people I have disappointed in life.  I think it is inevitable that we are going to disappoint.  We can never quite live up to the hype of ourselves, the pure potential we have inside of us, or the image we harbor inside of ourselves.  Most of us so desperately want to satisfy people’s expectations of us that we often live in denial when we fail to meet those expectations.  There is a soul shattering thud in our hearts when the truth of our failure comes to light and there is no denying that we are not the people we imagine ourselves to be.

Perhaps you could say that I was destined to be a disappointment.  Or perhaps I became a disappointment through my life choices and the decisions I have made.  Maybe there was some inherent flaw within me, or that I created a flaw and have acted accordingly.

When I was younger, people would look at me and say that I had great potential.  “You have so much to offer the world,” one counselor said.  “You are going to be great,” my parents would say. “You will impact the kingdom of God,” my churches said.  Only as time has raced on, the potential I had has gone unused or it has atrophied or it has been wasted. 

I disappointed my parents because I could not live up to their dreams for me.  I still at this date do not know or understand what those dreams were, other than I would be great.  Perhaps I was supposed to be a lawyer or a politician to help right the wrongs in the world.  Or perhaps I could have been a medical doctor and helped sick people.  But whatever those dreams were, they certainly don’t match my reality and I am cut off from the world of my past.

My high school labeled me ‘the most likely to succeed,’ but they again never defined what success was.  Was it money, power, or a combination of the two of them? Was it to go on to be a statesman and to come back to my hometown in order to lead future generations in the paths they should go? Regardless of that, I have been the most successful person with the fancy job and the big house.  I have not returned, unlike Hardy’s prodigal Native, to illuminate any path towards success.  I have let them down.

Have I been the best husband? Lord knows that is not the case and how many times have I let my wife down?  How many times have I not been the strong provider and supporter that she was expecting and needing?  How many times…?

I could go on to explain the churches and the parishioner’s I have disappointed?  How many times did I not have the piece of advice they needed or the patience and love they desired?  How many times did I walk into the office, feeling as if I could accomplish everything like Hercules…only when the end of the day came, Ichabod Crane emerged from office door, defeated and scared at every shadow?  How many committees who interviewed me and hired me did I let down when they began to realize my weaknesses and problems?   How many do I currently disappoint who come to my office seeking for answers only to emerge more confused than ever?

And now, sitting on the precipice of life, what do I look forward to?  With a sense of dread, I know the day is coming when I will disappoint my children and they will no longer look at me as that silly man who makes them smile, but will know the reality that I am a fragile, broken and vain little man? 

And with that in mind it is with trepidation that perhaps we should ask the question: is God disappointed with me?

My gut answer would be: OF COURSE HE IS!  How, in fact, could He not be?  What, with my silly prayers and fleeting conviction and lackluster devotion to discipleship and mission?  I can imagine being dragged before the court of heaven, having God Almighty standing there, showing me the wonder of His creation and saying with a disgusted sigh, “I made this for the likes of you?”

Is there any hope for a disappointment like me?

Out of the corner of the Old Testament, there does seem to be a glimmer…and maybe just more than a glimmer.  In the prophet Zephaniah we read this:

                        On that day you shall not be put to

                                    Shame

                        Because of deeds by which you have rebelled against me;

                        For then I will remove you from your midst

                                    Your proudly exultant ones

                        And you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain

                                    But I will leave in your midst

                                    A people humble and lowly

                        They shall seek refuge in the name of

                                    The Lord

                        They shall do no injustice

                                    And speak no lies

                        Nor shall there be found in their mouth

                                    A deceitful tongue

                        For they shall gaze and lie down

                                    And none shall make them afraid

                        Sing aloud, o Daughter of Zion

                                    Shout, O Israel

                        Rejoice and exult with all your heart

                                    O Daughter of Jerusalem!

                        The Lord has taken away the judgments

                                    Against you

                                    He has cleared away your enemies

                        The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst

                                    You shall never again fear evil

                        On that day be it said to Jerusalem

                                    Fear not, O Zion

                                    Let not your hands grow weak

                        The Lord your God is in your midst

                                     A mighty one who will save

                                    He will rejoice over you with gladness

                                    He will quiet you by his love

                                    He will exult over you with loud singing

“He will quiet you by his love”

This is said to a group of people who have disappointed God, their families, their ancestors and their neighbors.  This is said to people who have failed to live up to their potential and their expectations.  And yet, God, does not say, “I am thoroughly disappointed in you…” nor does he say, “You have let me down…”  Rather, just the opposite, he will remove these judgments against them and he will rejoice over them with great singing.  Imagine for a second the image of Almighty God, king of the Universe, singing over these rag tag group of people…who have done nothing but disappoint…and you begin to see the amazing truth in the gospel. 

We have to remember that the Kingdom of God is made up of nothing but disappointments.  Which one of us has ever lived up to our potential, who has ever met the expectations of everyone we have met or has lived his life with God to the fullest?

I have days when I remember this truth, but then I have days where the burden of disappointment seems to dominate me and threatens to overwhelm me.  I have days when I can rejoice that God loves me despite my failures and days when the deep threatens to swallow me up. 

The hope is that even though we continue to disappoint, that God will one day overcome all the disappointment in the world and restore His kingdom.

Yes, I believe in Hell....No, I don't want you going there

I am going to be upfront about my beliefs.  I am a Christian.  I believe in Christianity because I believe that it is the best explanation of the world we see at large, the nature of the universe, and because I believe it is true.  I believe that Jesus is the Messiah; that He died on a cross and rose again from the dead.  I believe that God loves His creation and wants to be in relationship with us.

I also believe in hell. 

Hell has been…well…a rather unpopular concept in the last few years.  Noted pastor and theologian Rob Bell argued against hell in his popular book, Love Wins.  Academic theologians have argued against hell and have tried to replace hell with a concept called “annihilationism,” a concept that advocates that God destroys wicked souls rather than leave them to the torment of hell for eternity.  

And unfortunately, hell has been an “all too” popular concept in many Christian circles.  Pastors gleefully announce that “sinners” will burn in hell.  Picketers with signs declare all sorts of categories of people who will burn in hell.  Others suggest that only those who say the ‘sinner’s prayer’ will be spared from the fires of hell.

I believe in hell because Jesus believes in hell.  He talks about hell…quite a bit actually.  But I think we ought to take a note from Jesus and not dwell too much on it.

Jesus teaches that there is a place of eternal punishment.

• ·         Luke 10:15, “And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.”
• ·         Matthew 25:30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
• ·         Matthew 5:22, “whoever says, ‘you fool shall be liable to the hell of fire.”

It should be noted that while Jesus teaches that hell is real…he really doesn’t describe it in detail.  Nor does any other place in the New Testament. 2 Peter 3 talks about fire and people melting, but there is nothing definitive to be found there.  Revelation talks about a “Lake of Fire,” but we should be wary about trying to extrapolate too much from a book made entirely of word pictures.

The Old Testament is even more vague about hell…or rather everything about the afterlife.  One of the few people to make an appearance from beyond the Grave, Samuel only hints that he is being “disturbed” (1 Sam 28:15).  Ecclesiastes seems to suggest that everybody’s fate is the same, righteous or unrighteous (Ecc 7:15).

What is of note is the old picture of the devil with a pitchfork running around a fiery inferno is difficult to maintain biblically.  Jesus’ conception of hell has more to do with the Kidron Valley, where the people in Jerusalem threw their trash to be burned rather than a pro-active description of hell. 

Hell is a place of God’s absence.  C.S. Lewis probably had one of the best descriptions of hell in his book The Great Divorce, albeit by way of contrast.  In the book, people from hell go on a bus trip to heaven and they are offered a chance to stay in heaven.  All but one person decide to get back on the bus to hell.  The reason for this is that they have grown accustomed to their lives in hell, and they prefer it to heaven.  In the end God gives these people what they want, in a perfect tribute to Paul’s opening to Romans, “God gave them over...”  There is a profound truth in Lewis’ work, that most people who find themselves in hell will not only have actively chosen it, but will prefer to be there.

As a Christian, I don’t believe that God wants people to go to hell.  I don’t think He is up there in heaven, scheming of new ways he can trick us into choosing hell.  I also don’t think there should be celebrating or cheering that people are “going to hell.”  I believe that is the wrong attitude to have.  If hell is real, then it pains God to send people there.  We should never rejoice in that which causes God pain.  We should never rejoice in that which causes anyone pain.

The longer I live the Christian life, the more I am aware that I am not worthy of God’s love.  I have done nothing that commends me to God, and I continue to walk in sinful patterns and selfish ways.  I continue to get angry with people about mundane and pointless reasons.  I hoard the gifts that God has given me for myself.  I am no better than anyone else…in fact I am worse than a good portion of people. 

I can truly say that I do not want anybody to go to Hell.  In my anger, I will say things, “I hope he’s burning” or “I can’t wait til they get to judgment.” But then I catch myself and I realize that I too am deserving of hell. It is only the grace of God that keeps any one of us out of the peril of hell.

For as much as I disagree with him, Rob Bell was on to something.  Our focus in the Christian Church has been too much focused on those who will be punished.  Rather we should be focusing on the positive aspect that in the gospel, Love Wins.  God’s love was meant to break down barriers between social and economic and racial classes.  God’s love was meant to prod us on to ministering to those in need among us.  God’s love was meant to spur us on to actions that would help more people choose life with God.  Rather, we have chosen to be like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal, angry and mean spirited to those we deem as unworthy.  We want to keep the fatted calf for ourselves and hope that our delinquent brother stays in the pig stys of hell.  This is not what Jesus meant when he preached on hell.  He wanted us to see the ends of death, so we may choose the path of life and not delight in the destruction of others.

Charles Spurgeon once said that we need to preach as “dying men to dying men”. The doctrine of hell was never meant to invoke glee in anyone.  It was never meant to make people guess as to was going to hell and who wasn’t.  It was always meant as a sobering realization and a way for us to better understand the love of God.

So yes, as a Christian, I believe in hell.  I do not dwell on this question or spend too much time trying to figure out who might need to go there.  As a preacher, I want to spur us all on to the paths of life.  So while I may believe in hell, I don’t want you to go there.