Can we really believe in Hell?

Revelation 20:10-15:

10 And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

11 Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. 13 And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. 14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; 15 and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Hell is such a grim topic that an icebreaker is called for. So let’s loosen up a little before we do a swan dive into the lake of fire.

What is the difference between heaven and hell?

In heaven, the lovers are Italian, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the police are English, the administrators are Swiss.

In hell, the lovers are Swiss, the cooks are English, the mechanics are French, the police are German, and the administrators are Italian.

It may be helpful for me to define what hell is. Christians have from the earliest days understood that persons survive the death of the body in some meaningful sense. At some point, God will bring creation to its final fulfillment and human beings will be resurrected into eternity. Heaven is used to describe eternal life in the actual presence of God, while hell is used to describe eternal life apart from God’s presence. Hell has often been described as a place where unsaved souls spend an eternal sentence of punishment for their sin. It has also been thought of as the final destiny of Satan and his cohort after the final triumph of Christ over evil. Today’s passage from Revelation supports this idea.

By asking, “Can we really believe in hell?” I mean nothing more than whether we can both rationally and scripturally say that hell is at least possibly a real eventuality, and whether we should include the existence of hell within the umbrella of Christian faith.

For some persons this is a non-issue. Some persons already believe that hell is real just as surely as heaven is. But many others of true Christian faith have real difficulty with hell, myself included. The problem is this:

God is supremely good and supremely powerful. According to First Timothy 2:3-4, God wants all persons to be saved. And God alone is savior. Through Isaiah God said, “. . . for I am God, and there is no other. I . . . am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior” (Is. 45.22; 43.11).

These things being true, there would appear to be nothing to prevent God from simply exercising his divine power to bring everyone into heaven whether are already “saved” or not. This is the basic theology of universal salvation. It is actually deeply rooted in Christian history. The church in the early centuries included universalists who were quite important. Ultimately, the church officially renounced universalism. Yet the idea that God saves without regard to the wishes or will of persons remains prominent in some strains of Protestant thought, especially those derived from the theology of John Calvin. Calvin maintained that anything God wants God gets. However, Calvin was no universalist. He recognized that some people are saved and others are not. But who is saved and who is not is the totally free choice of God, unaffected by any human action or desire. This kind of predestination was resisted strongly by John Wesley and others, and has never found a home in Methodism. Yet the paradox remains: how can we reconcile an eternal hell with God’s power and desire that all be saved?

A usual response to this paradox has been to point out that God is not only totally good, God is totally pure and totally just. Thus, God’s purity cannot allow unredeemed sinners in his presence, and God’s justice requires that a penalty be paid for sin. I think this solution is severely inadequate. Jesus’ ministered to the worst sinners of his day, proving that divine goodness does quite well in their presence, and Jesus teachings reflect that God’s justice is not the tit-for-tat human kind, but a supremely forgiving justice in which we actually do not get what we deserve. Furthermore, an eternal sentence of punishment for a mere seventy to eighty years or so of sin is not justice, it is mindless torture.

I admit that I am strongly attracted to universal salvation. The best case for this position that I have read is Dr. David Lowes Watson’s book, God Does Not Foreclose. Formerly a professor of theology at Wesley Seminary in Washington, D. C., David recently retired as the director of pastoral development for the Tennessee and Memphis conferences. I find the case David makes for universal salvation compelling, but I do not find it convincing. While I respect that others may intelligently cleave to universal salvation, I cannot sign up for it myself, even though I wish I could.

Methodist thought maintains that God is always at work in the affairs of human beings to bring us into fellowship with God to the greatest degree possible. God’s grace is absolutely essential for salvation. Yet God’s grace is not coercive; we have to accept it. Randy Maddox, past president of the Wesley Theological Society, put it this way: “Without God’s grace, we cannot be saved; unless we respond, we won’t be saved.” Sadly, experience shows that some persons resist this gift of grace and either defy God or deny that God even exists, even unto the day they die. What becomes of them, then?

God does not stop being God simply because we die. If God loves us in this life, God certainly loves us in the next. If God wills to save in this life, he certainly wills it in the next. The hard question is not whether God’s will to save disappears after we die – it doesn’t. The hard questions are:

Why would any of us be more “savable” after death than now?

Why would God’s grace be more likely to penetrate our resistance to it after we die than it can now?

Why would someone be more receptive to God after death than before?

The case for universalism supposes that either human nature or the divine nature, or both, are radically different on the other side of human mortality. Persons either become so enlightened in the afterlife that no matter how corrupted by sin they were at death they accept the full grace of God that they had always rejected before – or God is for some reason able to act more powerfully upon the souls of the dead than the full persons of the living. I can find no biblical basis for either position. In fact, I am terrified at the possibility that I might be just as stupid and ignorant after I die as I am now, and that I might be just as resistant to God as I am now!

The Bible treats physical death as a gateway event. The book of Hebrews teaches that we don’t get a “do-over” in life. We get one life, one death, and after that, the judgment, followed by eternity.

Is it possible that death has a “fixing” effect on our eternal destiny? Here’s an analogy. I once learned how to develop photographic negatives and make prints therefrom. It’s not difficult. Once the negatives have been developed, you make a print by placing a negative frame in a vertical projector. You focus the image on the bottom plate and then turn off the lights. Then you place a sheet of photo paper on the bottom plate and expose the paper for a calculated time. Then you immerse the paper a chemical developing solution that brings the image forth. Then you place the paper in another chemical bath known as the “fixer.” The fixer sets the image permanently.

I wonder whether while we live we are “developing,” but death “fixes” us where we are, as far as salvation goes. Even if God’s will to save continues after we die, perhaps it is more difficult, not less, for us to be saved then than now – not because God is less powerful, but because we are less responsive. Freshly poured concrete can be molded, but hardened concrete cannot. It may be that death “hardens” us so that we cannot respond to God’s saving grace.

If God’s salvation is coercive, then this wouldn’t matter. But the Scriptures tell us that God saves from love. Love’s nature is invitation, not compulsion. Jesus called people to follow him, but forced no one. So I am brought to confront hell as a serious possibility.

At one level, we can understand hell as a useful idea. The concept of hell helps us to understand that there is a moral order to creation. The ideas of hell and heaven reinforce human understanding of justice, for if evil is finally destroyed, or at least separated from God’s presence, we can see that what we do in this life has ultimate meaning. Human actions have cosmic significance, and our struggles for justice, mercy and righteousness have some sort of divine sanction. Asbury Seminary professor Jerry Walls wrote,

The doctrines of heaven and hell are the supreme articulation of the claim that we can neither evade responsibility for our actions nor the motives behind them. They represent the epitome of the notion that we never serve our ultimate self-interest by doing what is immoral, just as we always serve our ultimate self-interest by our steadfast commitment to do what is right.

When the Bible speaks of hell (or heaven), it uses highly symbolic speech. The theologically conservative Nelson’s Bible Dictionary says,

Because of the symbolic nature of the language, some people question whether hell consists of actual fire. The reality is greater than the symbol. The Bible exhausts human language in describing heaven and hell. The former is more glorious, and the latter more terrible, than language can express.

So while the Bible does describe hell as a place of fire and burning, we need not take it literally to take it seriously. The New Testament word translated as hell is “Gehenna,” which was a real place. It was a place outside Jerusalem where pagan Canaanites had once burned their children in sacrifice to their god Molech.

In Jesus’ day Gehenna was the depository all the filth and garbage of Jerusalem, “including the dead bodies of animals and executed criminals. To dispose of all this, fires burned constantly. Maggots worked in the filth. When the wind blew from that direction over the city, its awfulness was quite evident. At night wild dogs howled and gnashed their teeth as they fought over the garbage.

“Jesus used this awful scene as a symbol of hell. In effect he said, ‘Do you want to know what hell is like? Look at the valley of Gehenna’” (Nelson’s). So hell may be thought of a “cosmic garbage dump,” the exact antithesis of heaven.

I have come to understand hell not as a place, but as a state of ongoing rejection of God. C. S. Lewis described hell as the “skid row” of creation, where souls have become so intoxicated by sin that they no longer even try to break the chains that bind them there. Their dilemma is that they are captive there because they choose to be. They would rather have a delusion of freedom than salvation. Their delusion, wrote Lewis, is that if they glorified God, they would lose their personal identity, but their choice has really ruined their human greatness. Hell, Lewis said, is “the greatest monument to human freedom.”

Pope John Paul II wrote that hell “is not a punishment imposed externally by God but a development of premises already set by people in this life. The very dimension of unhappiness which this obscure condition brings can in a certain way be sensed in the light of some of the terrible experiences we have suffered which, as is commonly said, make life ‘hell.’” Hell “is the ultimate consequence of sin itself, which turns against the person who committed it. It is the state of those who definitively reject” God’s mercy.

The closest analogy to hell I can think of is that of addiction. There was a twenty-nine-year-old woman named Latisha Lewis in the news who confessed that she murdered ninety-year-old Ella Gilbert, whom she did not know, to steal money to buy drugs. Addiction can become so powerful that it overwhelms the faculty of reason and distorts our will beyond self-control. Latisha Lewis’s tragedy is that she became an addict by her own free will. The first hit of narcotics she ever took was her choice.

So I think of hell as a sinner’s crack house, a state of being that is hopelessly beyond self help. It is a perversion of the will so strong that God is not even hoped for, much less sought. Salvation may be technically possible because God’s grace is still offered, but effectively impossible, because it is not even recognized.

This kind of hell is a photographic negative of heaven – isolation rather than fellowship, apathy rather than love, loneliness rather than caring, desolation rather than richness. The torment of hell is not chiefly that these things are unbearable (even though they are); the worst torment is that hell’s addicts want to escape but will not or cannot accept God’s grace to do so. The damned are tormented by their own self-centered incapability to let God in, and all that results from it.

Hell is thus not a sentence of God imposed on sinner, because God desires all to be saved. Hell is God’s recognition that he has been rejected. Even though God’s grace continues to be offered without ceasing, its acceptance becomes evermore unlikely as the addiction to godlessness becomes evermore concrete.

If this theology of hell works for you as it does for me, then there are still steps to take. One is that the prospect of eternal punishment need not figure prominently in the Gospel of love. The center of the Gospel is not that God wrathfully seeks to condemn all who fail to meet narrowly defined criteria. God is love and desires with great liberality all to be saved, even to the extent that in all eternity, God never gives up seeking out his children. But it avoids what my friend David Watson admitted is the pitfall of universalism, that evangelism is really a pointless exercise if everyone winds up in heaven, anyway. On the contrary, the reality of hell makes a decision for Christ in this life vitally important. “Who is Christ?” becomes not merely one important question among others, it becomes the central question of human affairs. Evangelism is the crucial mission of the church.

This understanding also places a great burden upon us if we are to love God in return for the love God has given us. David Watson wrote,

When even a cursory thought is given to the countless millions in the world who are hungry, who are suffering, who languish under injustice, or are ravaged by war, the prospect of anyone celebrating personal salvation . . . borders on the obscene. There are still too many of Christ’s little ones who are hungry, too many who lack clothes, too many who are sick or in prison. There are too many empty places [at God’s banquet table]. The appropriate attitude for guests who have already arrived is to nibble on the appetizers and anticipate the feast which is to come. To sit down and begin to eat would be unpardonable . . . especially since the host is out looking for the missing guests, and could certainly use some help.

Steven Spielberg’s 1993 movie, Schindler’s List, told the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than 1,100 Jews from death in Nazi concentration camps. Oskar bribed Nazi officials and SS officers with money, gold, diamonds, liquors and other valuables to have them release Jewish families from concentration camps. Oskar took the Jews to his factories where they were put to work producing small items Oskar sold to the German government.

The last 12 months or so of the war, though, Oskar’s factories produced exactly nothing. Oskar bankrupted himself purchasing Jews’ freedom and falsifying production records. When the war ended he knew he would be arrested by the allies as a member of the Nazi party who used slave labor. As he walked to his car to drive west to escape the oncoming Russians he was surrounded by the hundreds and hundreds of grateful Jews he had save from the ovens.

Itzhak Stern, whom Oskar saved early in the war, presents him with a gift. It is a gold ring forged from gold melted from tooth fillings donated by some of thankful men standing nearby. On it Itzhak inscribed a saying from the Talmud, “To save one life is to save the world entire.” As Oskar takes the ring it reminds him that he still possesses two things of value: his car and his Nazi party lapel pin.

“I could have saved more,” he whispers to Itzhak. He lays his hand on the car. “Ten people!” Anguish fills his voice. “Ten people right there. I could have saved ten more people.” Oskar takes a few steps and glances at the lapel pin, made of gold and silver. “Two more people,” he cries. “One more! I could have saved one more.” He slumps on the trunk of the Mercedes, burying his face in his hands. “I could have saved one more and I didn’t do it.”

One day you and I will stand before Christ and be judged - yes, we Christians will be judged. Christ was very clear on that. I am terrified that at the great banquet of the Lord, the place next to me will be empty and it will be my fault. For, as David Watson wrote, should there be even one empty place at the table, even one person whom we have neglected to invite to the banquet as our brother or sister in Christ, “then God’s cry of anguish will rend the cosmos, and the heavenly feast will be eaten in terrible, terrible silence.”

Jerry Walls wrote that God has both the ability and the desire to preserve and perfect his relationship with human beings. God created in us aspirations for divine fellowship. Being good, God does not leave those aspirations unsatisfied.

The doctrine of heaven is the claim that our deepest aspirations can be satisfied in a perfected relationship with God and other persons. However, a loving God does not force this relationship upon us; indeed, he cannot do so if we are truly free. So we can, if we prefer, destroy our own happiness by rejecting the only true means to that happiness.

Let us accept God’s invitation and then be his means to invite others.

To see a Windows Media File of the "Schindler's List" scene, click here. It is a 15-megabyte file so is suitable for broadband streaming only.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

There is a lot of eating in the Bible. Some of the most memorable scenes take place around the dinner table. Mary and Martha bicker over doing the work to prepare a dinner for Jesus. Two travelers in Emmaus recognize the risen Christ only after he broke bread with them. Jesus began the sacrament of Holy Communion at the dinner table in the Upper Room on the night he was betrayed. And there are a number of scenes of kings or great hosts throwing a big party or banquet. What if you gave a dinner and nobody came? Jesus told a story about a host who was snubbed, and what he did about it.

Luke 14:16-24
16 Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many.
17 At the time for the dinner he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’
18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’
19 Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’
20 Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’
21 So the servant returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’
22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’
23 Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.
24 For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’ ”

Believe it or not, a story much like the one in today’s passage really happened in Boston awhile ago. It was reported in the Boston Globe newspaper. There was a woman, Sally, who had worked her way off welfare, gone to school and gotten a degree. She met a man and they got engaged. She arranged for a lavish wedding reception at a swank hotel. Because Sally was employed with a good income, she decided to pay for her reception herself, rather than ask her parents to do it.

Not long before the wedding, the groom broke off the engagement. Sally told all her invited guests the wedding was off. She called the hotel to cancel the reception. The hotel was sympathetic but pointed out that at such a late date, Sally would still be liable for seventy-five percent of the bill.

So Sally had an idea. She paid the entire amount of the bill for the reception and contacted the managers of the mission shelter where she had once lived. On the day she was to have been married, buses pulled outside the hotel and off came dozens of poor, homeless men, women and children. They entered the ballroom and were served fine food and drinks by tuxedo-wearing waiters and were entertained by a chamber quartet.

Sally’s party wasn’t exactly like the great dinner Jesus told about in Luke’s gospel. Sally’s original guests all said they would come, but she uninvited them and then invited the poor. Nonetheless, there was a big banquet to which the original guests didn’t come and poor people did. So it’s pretty close.

In Jesus’ story the host actually sent two invitations to each guest. The first was to invite them to come and the second was a courtesy reminder on the day of the dinner. There is a repeated invitation: not just come, but come now. Everything is ready!
So this dinner was no surprise to those invited. Obviously, the host was a man of means because his friends are buying land and cattle. This is a blue-blood dinner and only the best people will be there.

Or will they? The guests all give excuses why they cannot come after all. The first fellow said he had to inspect a piece of land he had just bought. The second said he had to try out some oxen he had just bought. These excuses are clearly absurd. The guests certainly wouldn’t buy land and cattle sight unseen. Their replies remind me of Mark Twain’s observation that when you don’t want to do something any excuse will do. Kind of like the girls in college whom I asked out. I don’t really think they were washing their hair on Friday night and drying it Saturday night. Likewise, the first two guests just gave social excuses.

Even so, they explain they have their affairs to manage. As we shall see, this dinner doesn’t seem to be a business dinner. There are no deals to be closed and no financially useful contacts to be made. So why go?

It seems that these first two excuse-makers are too tied down by material management just to let their hair down and have fun. They cannot see that fellowship and community are justified on their own merits. Just to enjoy the company of the host and the other guests isn’t a good reason for them to decide to go.

The third man doesn’t really offer an excuse. He says he has just been married and cannot come. At least the other two said they had something else to do while the party was in progress. Maybe the newlywed had something else to do, also, but it’s not very clear why his recent marriage prevented him from coming to the party.

This fellow thinks his family obligations prevent him from responding to the invitation. We are reminded of the man whom Jesus called to follow him and who responded, “I must first bury my father.” The father wasn’t even dead yet, but the man felt his family obligations prevented him from answering Jesus’ call.

We can easily get tied up in business or other human systems that bind us to immediate concerns. We fail to see we are invited to a new kind of community and we turn down the chance to join the party.

The host’s servants report that all the guests have refused to come and have given silly excuses for their refusal. The host is unhappy—angry, actually. He tells the servants to go into the streets and back alleys of the city and bring back the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. Socially, it’s a big step down for the host. He could have just given the banquet for his servants, who were a better class of people than the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. At least, the servants would have known which fork to use first and which wine went with which course. But the outcasts the servants bring to the banquet know none of the social graces that would make them fit in at the dinner table. They’ll show up and take a seat without believing they have a rightful place at the table.

And they’ll be right. These poor and marginalized people have done nothing at all to earn a place at the host’s banquet. It’s not possible that they could earn it. The host invited them because, well, because that’s what he wants to do. Just as he issued a double invitation to his well-off friends, he sends his servants out twice to bring back the poor. Not only the city poor will be there, but the country poor as well. That pretty much includes them all.

In fact, the host tells his servants to compel the poor to come. The host is determined to fill his house with guests. He will nourish those who cannot nourish themselves. But he is quite clear on one point: none of those originally invited will get a morsel. Not a crumb, not a taste. They had their chance and they turned it down.

Well, that’s the story. What it means depends on where you see yourself in it. If the host stands in for God in this story, then who are the original guests who stayed away? Maybe they are all persons of wealth, prestige and status. If so, then this parable is a diatribe against anyone of above average net worth. It’s true that Jesus had rough words about selfish wealth, but I don’t think that’s the context here. Jesus told this story while he was having dinner at the house of a prominent Pharisee. He had just observed the other guests jockeying for the places of honor next to the Pharisee.

So the original guests in the parable could stand for anyone who thinks he or she has a right to the honor of a banquet with God. These excuse makers thought their standing with the host was secure enough for them to snub him most rudely. Did they think they would be invited again, at another time when it suited them to go? Maybe. But at the end, the host was determined to keep them out. They got dropped off the A-list and were kicked off the social register.

So if you identify with one of the original invitees, the parable calls you to swallow your pride and join the banquet of God. You’ve been invited, not just once, but over and over. The only way to starve is to make excuses. The excuses we make to stay away from God’s banquet must seem to God to be awfully like the excuses these fellows made. I would join your party, God, but I’m just too busy right now. My business demands are greater than ever and the kids sports season is in full swing. My elderly parents need my care and I have to look after my family. God’s heard them all.

Choices have to be made. We can go in to the banquet hall or not, by our own choosing. But the party will be held anyway, if not with us, then with others. God doesn’t call off his banquet just because some people stay away. So accept the invitation now and join the party!

Maybe you identify with the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. If so, then the parable calls you to thankfulness for God’s mercy and generosity. We are all beggars for grace. We would settle for the leftovers of such a banquet but instead we get all seven courses, served by tuxedo-wearing waiters while a chamber quartet plays in the background.

In the entire story, we hear the voice of every character except the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. The host has several things to say, his servants announce the invitations and tell the host there is still room for more people. The original invitees speak to make excuses. But the poor are voiceless and silent. Perhaps Jesus left their voices out to help us understand that the poor are usually without voice in the world. Or maybe they are so overcome by the magnificence of the grace they are given that they have no words to express it.

A congregation might identify itself collectively as the servants. The servants have an important role in the parable, but it’s in the background. The servants seek the ones to come to the banquet. They invite everyone, but make no decision on their own who gets in and who doesn’t. Clearly, people decide for themselves whether to come. The servants’ role is always to carry forth the host’s invitation. Everything is ready! Come now!

The servants need no invitation to the banquet because they are already in the host’s household. They ask for no reward, but seek only to do the will of the host. The servants’ most important act was to tell the host, “We have brought in everyone you said, but there is still room for more.”

If we congregationally identify with the servants, the parable calls us to faithful service. We cannot jockey for position at the table, because we are to serve the people whom God invites. We announce the grace of God to all people in all places. And when we have brought people into Christian fellowship, we see there is still room for more.

It’s surprising to discover that the Bible often compares the Kingdom of God to a big party. We are not invited to somber, sour Christianity, but to a gala affair of joy and noisy celebration. If you listen, you can hear the host laughing merrily with everyone who accepted his invitation. Don’t stand out in the dark and cold. You’ve been invited! Go in! The host’s servants will find you a place. They party will go on, and before long, you too will be welcoming others in, and serving them in joy and gladness.

In the beginning, God

Genesis 1.1-5

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

In the beginning, God. The opening verse of Genesis is one of the best known in the whole Bible. It has become boring in its familiarity. Why does the Bible begin here? After all, the Jewish Scriptures are primarily a record of the Hebrews and Jews. Before long, the Bible leaves creation behind and dives straight into the story of the first covenant people. Then our Bible tells of the founding of the next covenant people, we Christians.

In the beginning, God.

If the Scriptures are the record of the Jews and Christians, then why start here? It would make more sense to start with Abraham’s story, or perhaps the story of the Hebrews groaning in slavery in Egypt. But instead we are told, in the beginning, God.

The Bible never tries to prove God exists, it simply accepts that God does exist and moves on. Whenever we try to use the Genesis creation story as somehow proving God exists, we use it for a reason it was never intended. I know that Genesis’ accounts of creation have dropped from sight in our popular culture, long ago replaced by the Big Bang theory and Charles Darwin. The ongoing fights between religious creationists on one hand and scientific fundamentalists on the other continue to entertain me; I’ve spoken about the fallacies on both sides before and so won’t dwell on them today. Yet the scientific-materialist understanding of reality is so strong, I feel compelled to speak very briefly about it. I quote Dr. B. B. Warfield, long dead now, who was a scientifically educated professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. Warfield wrote:

A glass window stands before us. We [may] raise our eyes and see the glass; we note its quality, and observe its defects; we speculate on its composition. Or we look straight through it on the great prospect of land and sea and sky beyond. So there are two ways of looking at the world. We may see the world and absorb ourselves in the wonders of nature. That is the scientific way. Or we may look right through the world and see God behind it. That is the religious way.

To understand the world in religious terms is not wrong, nor to understand the world in scientific ways. Both reveal truth, but neither reveals all the truth. But we don’t put windows in our homes in order to see windows. We use windows to look through, not at.

The story of creation in Genesis is a window through which we see that, In the beginning, God. So when scientific fundamentalists say that Genesis can’t be true because science thinks otherwise, I reply, no, science is only a window to see creation, but I look through Genesis to see that in the beginning God.

There is a contingency to existence, meaning that our existence is contingent on something else. Or someone else. We have to assume that God didn’t have to create the universe. One of the things Genesis shows us is that God is purposeful. For the rest of the first chapter, God follows a rather stately procedure. On the first days this thing was done, the second day another, and so forth. God is not haphazard, he knows what he is doing.

For centuries Christian thought has held that the creation story of the first chapter shows the power of God, while the different creation story in chapter two shows the near presence of God. In chapter one, God is indeed powerful but seems a little remote. God acts, God speaks, God moves, and things just happen. But in chapter two, God walks on the earth, God stoops in the dust, God breathes his Spirit into the nostrils of Adam and shapes Eve from his rib.

Together, these creation accounts show that God is both powerful and close. The stereotype we have of “God in his heaven” while the rest of us struggle here on earth. No, from the very beginning, God has been here with us in power. It should not surprise us, therefore, that God would come to be born as a baby in a manger. A God who stoops in the dust to form humankind, and whose Spirit breathes life into us, would find it neither difficult nor improper to put flesh on and live as one of us - with the same determination and purposiveness that God showed in the beginning.

The creation of everything was an activity of the entire godhead, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The verses from Genesis tell us that God the Father was active, obviously. The “wind from God” in verse 2 is translated as the Spirit of God in the King James Version and almost every version since. It can also be translated as breath. The Jews connected breath with spirit. After Jesus was resurrected, John reports he breathed on his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).

John’s Gospel also says of the Son in its first chapter: “He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people.” So all three persons of the Trinity were active in the creation.

The ongoing work of God is salvation righteousness, and it started right here. Isaiah describes the Lord “striding forward in the greatness of his strength” and saying, “It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save” (Isa 63:1). Zephaniah said, “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save” (3:17). The activity of the Son, through whom all things were made, shows that the very acts of creation were saving acts. Some Christians have thought that the world was created perfect, but the Bible never says that. Genesis says the world was created good. I think that because the world was created with and through the Son, the goodness of the physical world means that the world cooperates with the saving grace of God. Our physicality aids rather than hinders the saving work of the Son in our lives. The saving activity of God is built into creation itself.

Genesis says the earth was a formless void when God’s Spirit moved over it. The Bible does not actually say that before the universe existed, there was nothing. It simply says that God began creating with a formless void. If anything did exist, it was like a blank slate upon which the Creator would write. Michelangelo said that when he sculpted, he started with a block of granite, formless if you will, void of any particular shape, and then simply removed all the granite that didn’t look like the statue he wanted.

What, if anything, existed before God gave it form and shape is beyond our knowing. What we do know is that God shapes that which is formless. For centuries the formless void has been thought of as chaos, a state of being that is uncontrolled and purposeless. “The deep” may be an expression of the wildness of the oceans, for God’s Spirit moved over “the waters.” In the rest of the Jewish Scriptures, the sea does represent chaos and being apart from God, see Jonah for example. But God tames the deep.

So many people today are living formless lives, void of godly purpose. Genesis offers them a word of hope and assurance: the Spirit of God can bring order from their chaos. God can bring shape to formlessness. God can take any life and from it make something good. “He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing,” said Zephaniah (3:17).

On the seventh day of creation, Genesis says God rested. But it does not say God stopped. Thanks to God we exist, and in God we live and move and breathe and have our being. Creation was not a static event, it is a dynamic process of bringing forth the image of God in humankind and the world at large. The Genesis stories of creation show that the realms of the divine and creation overlap. God is powerful, but not exclusively so, as creation unfurls. Creation has power too, a certain degree of independence and freedom built in God’s very acts of creating.

“God moves over, as it were, and makes room for others. Creation [results in] . . . openness and unpredictability wherein God leaves room for genuine decisions” on our part as we exercise our God-given free will. But the way God has given - and is giving - his creation its being and power also commits him to relationship with us. God is no laborer on a factory floor, churning out worlds that mean nothing to him once they roll out the door. There is only this one created order, and God never waves it goodbye, never simply wishes the best for it. God remains in it.

But God’s will is not the only will in place or at work in the world. We have a will also, and evil prowls, thwarting creation. God’s sovereignty in creation is not absolute divine control, but one that gives power to the created order to some degree.

Yet at the end, God’s will does prevail, according to the Scriptures, and creation really is brought to perfection. In the beginning, God, and in the end, God. And always, the grace of the Son and the work of the Spirit, by which we are given life and life eternal. Creation is an ongoing process. I think it is reasonable to say that creation is not finished until the prophecies of the book of Revelation are fulfilled, when God’s justice is established over all the created order, evil is finally overcome and death is defeated. Our calling as a people of God is to assist the divine creativity. Discipleship is a cooperative work of creation with God. We are, like the world, a work in progress, moving on to perfection.

A shepherd's story

Luke 2:8-20
.....And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
.....But the angel said to them, "Fear not! I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."
.....Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to all people."
.....When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."
.....So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.
.....But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
.....The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.


My name is Isaac. I was one of the shepherds on that first Christmas night. I had been a shepherd all my life. My father, Abraham, had also been a shepherd. There were five of us on the top of a low rise in the ground when the angels announced the Messiah to us. We were tending our sheep. We had brought together three flocks for the night. It was safer for the sheep for them to be brought together and easier for us to watch them. Three of us would keep watch while the other two got some sleep, taking turns, of course.

Just before darkness fell we made a makeshift pen for the sheep by setting out rope strung between stakes to make a broad circle. The sheep could have jump the rope or pushed through it, but sheep are fairly dumb animals and all had been raised from birth staying in pens like that at night. When a lamb is small you simply whack it if it tries to cross the rope. After a few whacks it will not try any more, even after it is grown.

So we built a fire near one side of the rope pen to give us light and warmth and we warmed some broth to sip. You might wonder how we planned to separate the sheep the next morning into their own flocks. After all, sheep all look alike. How could we tell one from another? Well, we couldn't tell them apart, but they could tell us apart. Come morning we would open a gap in the rope and Eleazar, the youngest of us and with the smallest flock, would stand outside the gap and call his sheep. Every shepherd has a distinctive voice and a unique call. When Eleazar's sheep heard his voice they would respond. A shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger. Our sheep would remain inside the rope until we each called them.

Around us were the hills of Bethlehem. King David had been a shepherd in these same hills about a thousand years ago, so Bethlehem was nicknamed the "City of David." The grazing areas had been wilder in David's day. He had contended with wild bears and lions. We never faced those beasts but there were plenty of wolves to prey on our sheep. There were plenty of sheep rustlers, too. At night the wolves and the thieves liked to come out. So two of us would sleep while three of us stood watch: one standing close to the fire where in the firelight thieves would know we were alert, and the other two walking quietly around the pen, armed with hefty staffs.

Halfway to midnight I had spent two shifts patrolling the perimeter of the sheep pen and it was my turn to stand by the fire. Then I would get some sleep. We would walk around the pen for two shifts then stand by the fire for one shift. That way would go to bed warm. I stood with my back to the fire, scanning the sheep pen. Occasionally in the starlight I caught a dim glimpse of Benjamin or Jacob walking their posts. All was normal. The heat from the fire behind me warmed me well, but it diminished as the wood burned. The flames began to flicker low. One reason for the fire was to show my silhouette standing guard, so I decided that when I saw the shadowy figure of Jacob reach the left side of the sheep pen I would put more wood on the fire.

Before Jacob reached that point I noticed the light from the fire began to increase, so I knew that either Gedalya or Penuel, sleeping behind me, had stirred enough to add some wood. I kept watching into the darkness.
Something was odd. The firelight had increased quite a bit now but there was no more warmth. If the fire was burning more brightly there should have been more heat. Just when this thought occurred to me I heard Benjamin's urgent voice come from the darkness:

"Isaac! Isaac! Behind you! Behind you!"

My heart leapt to my throat. Someone must be approaching me from the rear! Without a thought I lunged quickly to my left, whirling and bringing up my heavy staff, ready to strike.

I stopped frozen with astonishment. I was struck dumb and almost blind by what I saw.

Gedalya and Penuel were sitting bolt upright, hands raised before their faces, shielding their eyes. Without thinking I was raising my hands before my eyes, too, because from a single point about five feet above the fire shone a light of such white purity and dazzling intensity that I could not look directly at it. It seemed to grow larger and even brighter until it shone round about us.

There was no sound except the pounding of my heart. I was suddenly aware that Benjamin and Jacob had run up and stopped, open mouthed, beside me. I was more frightened than I had ever been in my life. In fact, I was terrified.

Penuel found his voice and gasped, "It's the glory of the Lord!" And then my terror almost overcame me, for I remembered suddenly the words of Isaiah: "And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

Gedalya must have also been thinking of the prophets; he uttered the words of Haggai: "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts; Yet once, a little while and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come."

The light began to change before our eyes. Its blinding brightness became softer until we could look directly at it. As we watched the light expanded in size. In mere seconds it took a shape much like a human being, but far larger. It hovered above the ground and then the light actually spoke to us:

"Do not be afraid! I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the city of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

I caught my breath. Our visitor was an angel of the Lord God Almighty! A messenger announcing a Savior born of God! It was too glorious to comprehend!

Suddenly another, tiny point of light appeared beside the angel, incredibly bright though as small as the tip of knitting needle. Another appeared, then all at once so many shining points burst into view that I could not keep up with their advent. They swirled and swarmed about us in every direction, up, down, right, left, back and forth - a small galaxy of angelic visitors!

We were only shepherds yet we were encompassed in every direction by thousands of heavenly lights! I laughed aloud and I heard my friends laughing, too. I raised my arms giddy with joy, astounded that the God of all creation would favor such lowly ones as we shepherds with the announcement of the birth of the Savior and this celebration by angels too numerous to count.

I raised my face toward Heaven, overcome by joyous excitement, and shouted, "Glory to God in the highest!"

Immediately, the multitude of the heavenly host took up my phrase . They sang in the purest tones of praise, "Glory to God in the highest!" Then they added, "And on earth peace, goodwill to all people!" I have never heard voices like those before and I know that in this life I never will again. But that night was enough. The angels sang it again and again and we joined in, too, beside ourselves with amazement and thanksgiving, nearly delirious in our rejoicing. In a time - I don't know how much time - we noticed the lights were dimming. Their singing grew growing softer until at last there was only darkness again and the whispers of the chorus, "goodwill to all people."

We stood speechless for moments, warmed all the way through even though our fire was only embers. At last Jacob said with softly, "We need to go the Bethlehem."

"Yes," I breathed, "Let us go down to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."

With no further thought we hurried off to the city of David. "What of our sheep?" Penuel asked halfway there. Benjamin huffed while we trotted, "The Lord will never abandon them. The angel told us to go." That was good enough for us. Was not our Lord a good shepherd for his flock?

We found the manger quickly, almost as if we were led to it. And I suppose we were. We found Mary and Joseph and the baby, who was lying in the manger, just as the angel had said: Christ the Lord.

"Angels sent us," I said to Mary.

"In a dream or in person?" asked Joseph.

"In person," I answered, puzzled at the question.

"Only in dreams for me," Joseph muttered, but I didn't know what he meant.

Mary smiled. "We don't doubt angels sent you here," she said. "We've had some experience with them ourselves."

I said, "The angel told us that this child is our Savior, who is known as Christ the Lord. What does it mean?"

Joseph said, "When an angel appeared to me in a dream, he said that this child was conceived from the Holy Spirit. We have named him Jesus, as the angel said to do, because he will save his people from their sins."

Mary added, "The angel Gabriel told me, 'He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.'" She fell silent for a moment, then said, "That's really all we know."

We stayed no longer, for it was late and the Savior was sleeping. Mary and Joseph looked like they wanted to sleep, too. We had seen the child and so we left the manger. But it was impossible to keep this amazing thing to ourselves. We went about the Bethlehem spreading the word concerning what had been told us about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what we said to them. Then we returned to the fields, where our sheep safely waited, and we glorified and praised God for all the things we had heard and seen, which were just as we had been told.

When our Christmas season is over and we have returned to our usual routines, let us remember that the gospel we have and the salvation we are given is just that which we have been told. The grace of God is not mysterious or incomprehensible. It is just as we have been told in God's Word: A savior was born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.

Like the shepherds, we live in a world when the memory of Christmas will be overcome by other events. The shepherds' sheep would still get sick or be attacked by wolves. Our cars will still break down and we'll still have bills to pay. On the outside, everything will seem the same. But now our lives are different. God is with us!

The glory of the Lord has shone around us, and through our doubts and fears there are heavenly words: Fear not, for behold, there are glad tidings of great joy. Unto you is born a Savior!

Merry Christmas!

Advent 1B - Are we awake?

Today is the beginning of the Christian New Year. The first Sunday of Advent always begins four Sundays before Christmas day. Surprisingly, the point of Advent is not Christmas. It is expectation, hope and preparation for the coming of Christ. The celebration of Christ’s birth comes during the Christmas season, which begins, as you might expect, on Christmas day.

The Scripture for the first Sunday of each Advent season always looks forward to the return of Christ. The Advent season, celebrating Christ’s incarnation, is always begun with passages to remind us that the reign of God over human affairs is ultimate and for all time. Advent thus does not celebrate only Christmas, Christ’s first coming among us. It also looks ahead to the completion of God’s redemptive acts in the coming again of Christ in judgment. Advent’s first question is quite properly, “Are you ready for Christ?” rather than “Are you ready for Christmas?”

Yet the coming of Jesus in the manger and Christ’s coming again in judgment are not so very different. The world of two thousand years ago was one of business as usual. After all, Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem in the first place because their taxes had been raised. There sure isn’t anything unusual about that!

The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was an act of God’s judgment on the world. No savior would have been born if the world had no need for a savior. When we celebrate Christmas we are celebrating the judgment of God on each of us. To visit the manger is both to be "indicted and invited" - indicted by God for our fallen world but invited by God to be reconciled.

Hence, the passages for first Sunday of Advent always emphasize to some degree the judgment of God, because the coming of a savior into the world is proof that the world needs saving. We who are being rescued from sin and death are under prior judgment as being in danger.

The more violent our world becomes, the more timely the Bible seems. After the Soviet empire fell in the 1990s, historian Francis Fukuyama published a book called, The End of History, in which he announced that liberal, Western-style democracy and free markets constitute the end point of human ideology and therefore is the "final form of human government.''

Doesn’t that now seem like a quaint idea? The Islamist terrorism of today almost makes us nostalgic for the Cold War. At least we could understand the Soviets, who displayed some degree of predictability and reasonableness. There were certain rules to the Cold War game. We never thought that Soviet air force pilots would fly Aeroflot airliners into the World Trade Center.

That we do not live in a peaceful world is self evident. Judging by the recent polling and surveys, most Americans thinks things will get worse before they get better – if they get better. It is today the same sort of world Isaiah lived in, and on behalf of his people he uttered this prayer to God:

Isaiah 64:1-9: O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence – 2as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 5You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.

When Isaiah said this prayer, the ancient Jews had been conquered, killed, enslaved, exiled. Their capital had been destroyed and foreign armies had occupied their land. They cried for deliverance, but in the midst of their prayer what did they ask for? That God burn their enemies with fire? No. They repented of their own sin and confessed that their own righteousness was really like filthy rags in God's sight. So they begged God to remember that they were his people.

There are wars today and rumors of more wars to come. We do not yet know whether the peace and stability will come to Iraq, whether al Qaeda will lash out mass destructive weapons at our homeland, or terrorists have deadly plans for other parts of the world or what Iran is really up to with its defiant nuclear program.

Some Christians believe that the apocalypse is near, some think not. Last summer when I was shopping for a new car, one of the salesmen told during a test drive that he thought the whole world was coming apart and that as a Christian he believed the return of Christ was just around the corner.

Some of you who have been coming to our Wednesday night Bible study may remember that I am personally not terribly concerned with trying to figure out when God will bring about the true end of history and Christ will return to put all things under his feet. God continues to work within the affairs of humanity. In Mark’s Gospel passage for today, Jesus describes the end of the age:

24 ‘But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
25and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

26Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. 28 ‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

35Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’ Mark 13:24-37

The apocalyptic warnings of the New Testament call us not to fear but to confidence. With even with such a grim topic Jesus is encouraging. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” he says, “but my words will not pass away. . . . Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.”

What do we expect from the future, and how do our expectations shape our activities in the present? Mark says that one day the end will come but that the end is one of hope for everyone who follows Christ. Having a hope for the future requires there be a point to the present. The present day is an in-between time, when we are working out our salvation, as Paul put it Philippians. Advent should make us face how we understand the fundamental condition of humankind, that there is something about human existence that makes salvation, however defined, necessary.

Even in the darkest hours of human history, God is mighty to save. The promises of God are true and the word of the Lord stands forever. This is not to say that all will be sweetness and light for Christian people; Jesus never promised that – quite the opposite in fact. It is to say that even violent times and uncertain hours, we are still expected to live according to Christ’s example and commands. We are not to put our ultimate trust in any power or principality of this world – not the government, not the United Nations, not one political party or the other, nor even in the Church itself. Our ultimate trust can only be in the Lord. It is Christ, wrote the apostle Paul, who will strengthen us to the end, so that we may be blameless at the end, whenever that comes.

Thus, to keep awake, as Christ admonishes, is more than simply being alert. It is to stay the course of discipleship, to be bold in our faith rather than cower in uncertainty. Our task is not to try to figure out when God may ring down the curtain, which Jesus says we cannot know anyway. It is to pray, to worship, to act in deeds of love, to do, in fact, what we should be doing all the time whether in peace or war. There is no fear where godly love exists.

Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. The return of Christ is the “God-provided goal . . . toward which all life should be directed.” “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” That day has come in the person of Christ. Prophecies have already found their fulfillment already in the life and work of Jesus Christ, in whose grace we await the culmination of God’s history with the world.