Hard Words: Hell
I should preface this morning's sermon with a recommendation for a book: “Loaded Words” by Heather Choate Davis, which does an excellent job of talking about a lot of the concepts we're looking at this summer and breaking them down and making them understandable. And that goes for the word we're looking at today, “Hell.”
And I'll start on Hell by asking you to forgive the pun, because when it came time to selecting hymns for this week, I had a Devil of a time. Modern hymnals simply don't have a lot to offer when you want to talk about hell. Even the hymnals put out by what we might consider some of the more “fire-and-brimstone” denominations.
There are plenty about heaven.
There are lots and lots of hymns about salvation.
There are hymns about being saved from hell, about Christ's saving work, about assurance that we won't be subjected to hell.
But for really good hymns that describe Hell – that tell us about what it is that we're being saved from – well... I found a couple from the 1600's or so that tackled that subject. But they're written in very irregular meters with notations that I'd never even seen before, so trying to attempt to sing them, let alone sing them well, might well have been its own hell.
And it's not just our hymns where we run into that problem. The scriptures themselves don't really talk about what hell is or what it looks like. There are a few allusions here and there. The bit of the Sermon on the Mount we read this morning talks about being in the danger of the fire of hell.
There's a bit in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and the rich man finds himself in torment in Hades and begs for water because he's in “agony in this fire.”
And Revelation 21:8 gives us a list of people – murderers, sorcerers, liars, among others, whose “portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.”
So fire seems to be an element in Hell. But fire is common in lots of places, not all of them unpleasant, so there's still lots of room for imagination.
And imagine we have. We get passing references to fire, ash, sulfur, in the scriptures. But not a cohesive picture. And arguably, our conceptions of hell are informed by the scriptures, but they're really painted in by poetry, art, and music.
The Italian poet, Dante, filled in many of those blanks and gave us a rich imagery of what hell would be.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...
Here sighs, complaints, groans, sounded through the starless air.
Many tongues, a terribly crying,
Words of sadness, accents of anger,
Voices deep and hoarse... these wretches who never truly lived,
Were naked and goaded viciously by hornets and wasps there,
Making their faces stream with blood, that mixed with tears
Was collected at their feet by loathsome worms.
Muddy people in the fen, naked and all with the look of anger...”
You're telling me we couldn't put that to music and make a hymn out of it?
That's the hell we think of when we think of the Pit – the depths of Hades – eternal torment and damnation!
But is it accurate?
We get those fleeting references to fire in the scriptures, but are our imaginations, the writings of Dante, do the movie-makers and songwriters get it right?
Well, here again, I get to take the easy way out, shrug my shoulders, and say, “I dunno.”
I don't know because I've never been to hell. I've never died before.
And I can trust in the scriptures, but the imagery of hell in the scriptures is so much scanter than the visions of heaven we're given, and even those leave much to be imagined.
But I think part of the reason the scriptures aren't clear on the specifics of “hell,” is because when they talk about it, they use a bunch of different words for it, each with different meanings.
The Hebrew word, Sheol,
The Greek words, Hades, abyss, and tartarus,
The place of Gehenna -
They all get translated into English as “Hell,” but they're all different words.
That Hebrew Sheol, is simply the place where the dead – all dead – go when they are cut off from life; in fact, cut off from God – because that's what an early Hebrew understanding of death was. There's no good Sheol or bad Sheol, there's no heaven or hell. Death doesn't come with a system of reward or punishment. It's just another state of being.
So when the prophet, Isaiah, says that kings and leaders will join everyone else in Sheol, those kings and leaders are mocked by the slaves and beggars, “See! You too have become weak like we are! You are now just like us!” So in Sheol, far from being a place of eternal blessings for some and eternal damnation for others, death is truly the great equalizer.
Yet, because our translations are imperfect, we receive Sheol in English as the Pit. The Grave. Hell.
Hades starts out much the same way, though it seems to go through its own evolution.
Hades first means simply, “death.” The concept and reality of death. With no moral value attributed to it. Good death, bad death, the death of the righteous, the death of the wicked – all encompassed by Hades.
And the concept of Hades slowly evolves to incorporate the place of the dead. But again, like Sheol, it is value-neutral. Good and bad, all go there.
It's only in the third evolution of Hades that it takes on the idea of being a place for the wicked dead only. And it's a word that only comes about in the later New Testament Greek writings, and very sparingly.
Abyss and tartarus are also Greek concepts of Hell. Rarely used in the scriptures, but they show up, and they reference the deepest places of the dead. Tartarus, especially, being that place of eternal prison, the lowest parts of the underworld, where the original gods – the Titans were bound and shackled, along with the damned souls of evil people.
So now we start to get into the places of the dead being not a great equalizer, but a place of great punishment for the wicked. That's some of that famous Greek dualism coming into play. Where Christianity starts getting some Greek influence that our Jewish brethren don't get – and we come to expect good and evil, reward and punishment, judgment on one side of the coin or the other.
And it's the last word for Hell that I really want to look at, and where things really get interesting. It's the one that Jesus uses in his Sermon on the Mount – Gehenna.
Sheol is something of an abstract concept.
Hades is a place of mythology.
Tartarus and abyss are likewise born of Greek legend.
Gehenna was a real place.
You could find it on a map. You could go there. It was a deep ravine that ran below the Western Wall of Jerusalem and to the south of the city. It was the place the city carried their trash to be burned. Where the fires of refuse were always burning. It was also a place of sacrifice. This is where cultists devoted to Ba'al would sacrifice children to their God.
The prophet, Jeremiah, knew this place well, as God spoke through him, saying, “They have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they, nor their ancestors, nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built the high places of Ba'al to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Ba'al – something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.” Jer. 19:4-5.
When Jesus, our Prince of Peace, our Good Shepherd, takes his place on the hill and begins to preach to the people of Galilee, he doesn't talk about Sheol or Hades or even the abyss. He talks about Gehenna.
That was a real hell that people knew. They knew its history. They knew its purpose. They knew the people who lingered there, the smells that came out of there, the filth and the stench and the evil that emanated from that place. Jesus didn't dilly-dally with abstract conceptualizations or difficult moralizations. He made it very plain and very simple.
If you sin. If you break the commandments. If you commit adultery, even in your head... if you murder, even in your heart... if you give into temptations of lust, of wrath, of greed, and idolatry... it doesn't matter if your sin is great or small – that place, that Gehenna – that's what you get to look forward to. A place of ever-burning fires. Of trash and decay. Of death. And guilt. And shame.
And remember what made Gehenna so cursed by God and the good and faithful people of Jerusalem.
It was a place where the people who abandoned God gathered in ungodly sacrifice. Where children were given to the fires to appease a hateful and vengeful deity.
Gehenna was a place where the one true God, our God, the God of Abraham, was made to be absent.
And, at the end of the day, that's what Hell is.
Hell is the absence of God.
If we believe, as we say believe, that God is love,
That God is forgiveness,
That God is compassion and kindness and goodness and mercy,
all of those things that make life not just bearable, but a joy to be a part of,
Then how else do we explain Hell, but the absence of those things?
As a place where there is no love. No forgiveness. No kindness. No mercy.
Hell is what we, as people, experience when we ignore God, reject God, turn away from God, and give into anger and selfishness and cruelty. When we think nothing of hurting our neighbor, or even going out of our way to harm our neighbor.
And it's a tough thing to reckon with.
Because we still have Jesus's words hanging over our heads,
That it's not just murder, but “anyone who is angry with a brother or a sister will be subject to judgment.” And, “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
And so Jesus wants us to think about our actions – big and small – even our thoughts. And think about that fiery grave, that place of filth and disease, that valley of Gehenna, and think about what could be in store for us.
And it doesn't make us feel very good about who we are or where we might be going. And it might give us reason to worry. To feel anxious. Maybe a little sick to our stomach.
And I'm tempted to leave us in this place this morning, to think about the hell that could await us. Except I won't, because if you've peeked ahead in your bulletins you'll see that we're closing our service this morning with Amazing Grace, and the knowledge that even the most wretched of sinners can still find forgiveness in God. And we know God's story is one of promise – promise of love, of reconciliation, of grace and mercy.
And that doesn't necessarily mean we're entirely off the hook, but we'll find out more about that next week when we delve into our next word: Salvation.
Please pray with me.
Gracious God,
You are our only hope in life and in death. We know your house has many rooms and we look forward to being with you in that place you have prepared for us, when our time comes and we are called. Lord, we thank you for the saving grace of your Son, Jesus Christ, who saves us from the deep places of the dead, from the lake of fire and sulfur, from the pits of Gehenna, and ultimately, from being separated from you. Your faithfulness to your people has been great, and so we pray to always be remembered into your heavenly kingdom, by the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
I should preface this morning's sermon with a recommendation for a book: “Loaded Words” by Heather Choate Davis, which does an excellent job of talking about a lot of the concepts we're looking at this summer and breaking them down and making them understandable. And that goes for the word we're looking at today, “Hell.”
And I'll start on Hell by asking you to forgive the pun, because when it came time to selecting hymns for this week, I had a Devil of a time. Modern hymnals simply don't have a lot to offer when you want to talk about hell. Even the hymnals put out by what we might consider some of the more “fire-and-brimstone” denominations.
There are plenty about heaven.
There are lots and lots of hymns about salvation.
There are hymns about being saved from hell, about Christ's saving work, about assurance that we won't be subjected to hell.
But for really good hymns that describe Hell – that tell us about what it is that we're being saved from – well... I found a couple from the 1600's or so that tackled that subject. But they're written in very irregular meters with notations that I'd never even seen before, so trying to attempt to sing them, let alone sing them well, might well have been its own hell.
And it's not just our hymns where we run into that problem. The scriptures themselves don't really talk about what hell is or what it looks like. There are a few allusions here and there. The bit of the Sermon on the Mount we read this morning talks about being in the danger of the fire of hell.
There's a bit in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and the rich man finds himself in torment in Hades and begs for water because he's in “agony in this fire.”
And Revelation 21:8 gives us a list of people – murderers, sorcerers, liars, among others, whose “portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.”
So fire seems to be an element in Hell. But fire is common in lots of places, not all of them unpleasant, so there's still lots of room for imagination.
And imagine we have. We get passing references to fire, ash, sulfur, in the scriptures. But not a cohesive picture. And arguably, our conceptions of hell are informed by the scriptures, but they're really painted in by poetry, art, and music.
The Italian poet, Dante, filled in many of those blanks and gave us a rich imagery of what hell would be.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...
Here sighs, complaints, groans, sounded through the starless air.
Many tongues, a terribly crying,
Words of sadness, accents of anger,
Voices deep and hoarse... these wretches who never truly lived,
Were naked and goaded viciously by hornets and wasps there,
Making their faces stream with blood, that mixed with tears
Was collected at their feet by loathsome worms.
Muddy people in the fen, naked and all with the look of anger...”
You're telling me we couldn't put that to music and make a hymn out of it?
That's the hell we think of when we think of the Pit – the depths of Hades – eternal torment and damnation!
But is it accurate?
We get those fleeting references to fire in the scriptures, but are our imaginations, the writings of Dante, do the movie-makers and songwriters get it right?
Well, here again, I get to take the easy way out, shrug my shoulders, and say, “I dunno.”
I don't know because I've never been to hell. I've never died before.
And I can trust in the scriptures, but the imagery of hell in the scriptures is so much scanter than the visions of heaven we're given, and even those leave much to be imagined.
But I think part of the reason the scriptures aren't clear on the specifics of “hell,” is because when they talk about it, they use a bunch of different words for it, each with different meanings.
The Hebrew word, Sheol,
The Greek words, Hades, abyss, and tartarus,
The place of Gehenna -
They all get translated into English as “Hell,” but they're all different words.
That Hebrew Sheol, is simply the place where the dead – all dead – go when they are cut off from life; in fact, cut off from God – because that's what an early Hebrew understanding of death was. There's no good Sheol or bad Sheol, there's no heaven or hell. Death doesn't come with a system of reward or punishment. It's just another state of being.
So when the prophet, Isaiah, says that kings and leaders will join everyone else in Sheol, those kings and leaders are mocked by the slaves and beggars, “See! You too have become weak like we are! You are now just like us!” So in Sheol, far from being a place of eternal blessings for some and eternal damnation for others, death is truly the great equalizer.
Yet, because our translations are imperfect, we receive Sheol in English as the Pit. The Grave. Hell.
Hades starts out much the same way, though it seems to go through its own evolution.
Hades first means simply, “death.” The concept and reality of death. With no moral value attributed to it. Good death, bad death, the death of the righteous, the death of the wicked – all encompassed by Hades.
And the concept of Hades slowly evolves to incorporate the place of the dead. But again, like Sheol, it is value-neutral. Good and bad, all go there.
It's only in the third evolution of Hades that it takes on the idea of being a place for the wicked dead only. And it's a word that only comes about in the later New Testament Greek writings, and very sparingly.
Abyss and tartarus are also Greek concepts of Hell. Rarely used in the scriptures, but they show up, and they reference the deepest places of the dead. Tartarus, especially, being that place of eternal prison, the lowest parts of the underworld, where the original gods – the Titans were bound and shackled, along with the damned souls of evil people.
So now we start to get into the places of the dead being not a great equalizer, but a place of great punishment for the wicked. That's some of that famous Greek dualism coming into play. Where Christianity starts getting some Greek influence that our Jewish brethren don't get – and we come to expect good and evil, reward and punishment, judgment on one side of the coin or the other.
And it's the last word for Hell that I really want to look at, and where things really get interesting. It's the one that Jesus uses in his Sermon on the Mount – Gehenna.
Sheol is something of an abstract concept.
Hades is a place of mythology.
Tartarus and abyss are likewise born of Greek legend.
Gehenna was a real place.
You could find it on a map. You could go there. It was a deep ravine that ran below the Western Wall of Jerusalem and to the south of the city. It was the place the city carried their trash to be burned. Where the fires of refuse were always burning. It was also a place of sacrifice. This is where cultists devoted to Ba'al would sacrifice children to their God.
The prophet, Jeremiah, knew this place well, as God spoke through him, saying, “They have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they, nor their ancestors, nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built the high places of Ba'al to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Ba'al – something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.” Jer. 19:4-5.
When Jesus, our Prince of Peace, our Good Shepherd, takes his place on the hill and begins to preach to the people of Galilee, he doesn't talk about Sheol or Hades or even the abyss. He talks about Gehenna.
That was a real hell that people knew. They knew its history. They knew its purpose. They knew the people who lingered there, the smells that came out of there, the filth and the stench and the evil that emanated from that place. Jesus didn't dilly-dally with abstract conceptualizations or difficult moralizations. He made it very plain and very simple.
If you sin. If you break the commandments. If you commit adultery, even in your head... if you murder, even in your heart... if you give into temptations of lust, of wrath, of greed, and idolatry... it doesn't matter if your sin is great or small – that place, that Gehenna – that's what you get to look forward to. A place of ever-burning fires. Of trash and decay. Of death. And guilt. And shame.
And remember what made Gehenna so cursed by God and the good and faithful people of Jerusalem.
It was a place where the people who abandoned God gathered in ungodly sacrifice. Where children were given to the fires to appease a hateful and vengeful deity.
Gehenna was a place where the one true God, our God, the God of Abraham, was made to be absent.
And, at the end of the day, that's what Hell is.
Hell is the absence of God.
If we believe, as we say believe, that God is love,
That God is forgiveness,
That God is compassion and kindness and goodness and mercy,
all of those things that make life not just bearable, but a joy to be a part of,
Then how else do we explain Hell, but the absence of those things?
As a place where there is no love. No forgiveness. No kindness. No mercy.
Hell is what we, as people, experience when we ignore God, reject God, turn away from God, and give into anger and selfishness and cruelty. When we think nothing of hurting our neighbor, or even going out of our way to harm our neighbor.
And it's a tough thing to reckon with.
Because we still have Jesus's words hanging over our heads,
That it's not just murder, but “anyone who is angry with a brother or a sister will be subject to judgment.” And, “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
And so Jesus wants us to think about our actions – big and small – even our thoughts. And think about that fiery grave, that place of filth and disease, that valley of Gehenna, and think about what could be in store for us.
And it doesn't make us feel very good about who we are or where we might be going. And it might give us reason to worry. To feel anxious. Maybe a little sick to our stomach.
And I'm tempted to leave us in this place this morning, to think about the hell that could await us. Except I won't, because if you've peeked ahead in your bulletins you'll see that we're closing our service this morning with Amazing Grace, and the knowledge that even the most wretched of sinners can still find forgiveness in God. And we know God's story is one of promise – promise of love, of reconciliation, of grace and mercy.
And that doesn't necessarily mean we're entirely off the hook, but we'll find out more about that next week when we delve into our next word: Salvation.
Please pray with me.
Gracious God,
You are our only hope in life and in death. We know your house has many rooms and we look forward to being with you in that place you have prepared for us, when our time comes and we are called. Lord, we thank you for the saving grace of your Son, Jesus Christ, who saves us from the deep places of the dead, from the lake of fire and sulfur, from the pits of Gehenna, and ultimately, from being separated from you. Your faithfulness to your people has been great, and so we pray to always be remembered into your heavenly kingdom, by the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.