What in Hell...?

Holy Saturday

...was crucified, died and was buried;

he descended into hell.

-the Apostle’s Creed

Now let me tell you that the other time

I came down to the lower part of Hell,

this rock had not then fallen into ruins;

but certainly, if I remember well,

it was just before the coming of that One

who took from Hell’s first circle the great spoil,

that this abyss of stench, from top to bottom

began to shake, so I thought the universe

felt love--whereby, some have maintained, the world

has more than once renewed itself in chaos.

That was the moment when this ancient rock 

was split this way--here, and in other places.

-Virgil, from Dante’s Inferno, Canto XII

“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.  He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison...”  1 Peter 3:18-19

__________

For most Christians, Holy Saturday is a great pause.

Everything stops, everyone holds their breath and waits for dawn on Sunday.

Jesus has been killed.  He has been laid to rest.

We wait for him to start up again.

But, Jesus did not rest.

He did not spend one moment lying in that tomb.

Jesus descended into hell.

It is one of the most controversial statements in the Christian creed.

No one wants to picture Jesus in the agony of Hell’s fires.

Surely God would not send Jesus to the torment reserved for the Adolf Hitlers of the world.

So we have changed the wording.  Now we say: “he descended to the dead.”

We have made the creed more palatable to our sensibilities.

But it is a big leap from the original ad inferna or ad inferos to “to the dead.”

Even if one doesn’t know Latin, one can discern the proper translation: into hell.

So what?  Why is it important to confess that Jesus descended into hell?

While I was Out East, I suffered a deep clinical depression.

I couldn’t enjoy school or work or reading or people or anything I had loved doing before.

I started to cut myself off from people--classmates, colleagues, friends and family.

I would go to class and little else.

And I would always go straight back home and crawl into bed.

I was chained in a prison of self-loathing and loneliness.

I felt...I was...I made sure I was...utterly alone.

Anyone who has experienced such times of extreme loneliness, who has felt cut off from the world, will tell you that it is a hell.

Indeed, Hell is that place where people are cut off from God’s presence.

It is a place of torture, loneliness and self-torment.

There are other “hells” in this life:

War. Rape. Molestation. Drug abuse. Cancer. Pain. Genocide. Tyranny. Natural disaster. Fear of death. Fear of hell.  Hatred.

But just as Jesus suffered great torment on the cross in the land of the living, Jesus also suffered the worst human fate in eternity: Hell.

He did it in order to meet us there--so that, truly, nothing can separate us from him.

Jesus suffered everything we suffer.

I believe this is true, because Jesus descended into my Hell to be with me.

When I was at my deepest point Out East, feeling totally alone, I realized that I still did not feel absolutely alone.

I can’t describe it, except to say that when I felt entirely cut off, I still did not feel alone.

At the bottom of the abyss, I landed on a rock.  I can only describe it as God’s presence.

Because Jesus was crucified, died, was buried...and he descended into Hell.

But Jesus didn’t just go to Hell in order to keep suffering.

He had just defeated sin and death on the cross, and now he was going to take the fight to the home soil of the Enemy.

Jesus went to storm the Gates of Hell, and to bust through its walls.

Just as Satan confronted him in the desert, now Jesus was going to confront the Devil in the Wasteland.

When we are baptized, the sacrament begins with an exorcism.

We are asked, “Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?”

And we respond, “I renounce them.”

Behind our words is not our strength and will, but the power of the Second Article of the creed.

Behind our words is Christ’s power, for after he was buried, he acted; he subjected all of the forces that defy God.

Christ’s descent into Hell was the first life-giving act of the resurrection.  

But Jesus did not just go to Hell in order to suffer or to fight the enemy.

Jesus descended into Hell for the sake of those who everyone else had given up on.

1 Peter, Chapter 3 says that Jesus went to proclaim the Gospel to the spirits in prison.

If you read on, he specifically mentions the people around the world who lived during the time of Noah.

These wicked people had provoked God to send the Great Flood.

Even God had, at one time, given up on these humans.

In Jesus Christ, reconciliation and salvation were opened even to them.

This should make us even more uncomfortable than imagining Jesus suffering in the fires of Hell.

Think of all the people today and throughout history that we have looked at and said, “They are evil and they will suffer in Hell for the atrocities that they have done.”

Adolf Hitler is one that comes to mind.

Osama Bin Laden is another.

Jesus even goes to these people and preaches the Gospel of love and forgiveness, even if he has to go to Hell to find them.

Offended?

Me too.

But when Jesus was alive, ministering to the living, he hung out with the worst sinners and outcasts in society.

The Pharisees were offended that Jesus hung out with tax collectors, murderers, lepers, prostitutes--the unclean and criminals of all kinds.

To God, even these people are worth suffering through Hell to find--just for the chance that their suffering might come to an end, just for the chance of reconciliation.

You see, when Jesus descended into Hell, that whole abyss of stench, from top to bottom, began to shake.

And it was as if the whole universe felt love.

And everything was renewed in love’s chaos.

It was the chaos that results when you break down the wall that divides Good and Evil.

It was the chaos that turns people from their set ways, from their anger...turns them in repentance--to become New People.  Because they are first treated like New People.

It was the chaos of a prison break.  Not a riot, but a procession out into freedom.

I believe firmly that Hell is going to be much more sparsely populated than any living human being would care to imagine.

In fact, true victory over Satan means that Hell’s halls will remain empty, unpopulated.

I can believe and hope such things because I confess that Jesus Christ even descended into Hell, and that he did it before he burst from the tomb on Easter morning.

He went to seek the lost first.  He went to those who were most hopeless first.

Jesus went to minister to those that we had given up on...those that even God had given up on once upon a time.  Even God turns from his anger, and finally shows mercy.

This is love, this is the beginning of the Resurrection:

“For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.”   Psalm 16:10, KJV

Tomorrow, when we say “Christ is Risen,” we mean he has been raised up from the very depths.

Risen, indeed.  Amen.  Alleluia.