“H-E-Double Hockey Sticks – A Burning Question ”

“Something bad happened at school today,” the first grader told his parents at the dinner table one evening.  Bracing themselves, eyebrows raised at each other in apprehension, together the parents hesitantly asked, “What?” “Well,” the youngster replied, “one of the kids said the “h” word.” “The “h” word?”, the father asked. “You know,” the son answered, somewhat sheepishly looking down at his plate, “H – e – double hockey sticks.”

            I guess we can laugh, because we all long for the days long gone by when the only four-letter word that our kids used was “h – e – double hockey sticks”.  But I have to admit, “hell” is not a word that gets used much in church these days, and certainly not in this one, at least with any frequency. But hell is all the rage these days, as evidenced by last week’s issue of Time magazine, with its cover story “What if There’s No Hell?”

            Now, the short answer to that question is, if there is no hell, then denial is only a river in Egypt, and we all live in some sort of fantasy world that has no connection to this earth and its suffering peoples. For anyone has to be unbelievably isolated from reality to be oblivious to the fact that for many people hell is not something to be awaited for in the next  life, it is daily existence in this one -- for the refugee facing starvation, torture and death in a world where there is no peace, no safety; for the addict who has lost everything, job, money, family, self-respect, in pursuit of an addiction to crystal meth; for the spouse watching cancer ravage her loved one, robbing them of the future they had hoped for.

            No, anyone who thinks there is no hell has never heard of the three young boys who were bragging about their fathers. The first boasted that his dad owned a farm. The second bragged that his father owned a factory. The third, a pastor’s son, replied, “That’s nothing. My dad owns hell.” “No way,” another boy scoffed. “How can a man own hell?” “Easy’”, replied the pastor’s son. “My mom told my grand mom that the Deacons gave it to him last night.”

            Now the real question, of course, is not whether there can be hell on earth, but on whether there is a hell in the sense that most of us think about it, a destination after death that is the opposite of what we call heaven, a place of eternal darkness, fire and torment. A popular evangelical preacher, Rob Bell, recently sparked a big uproar with the publication of his book “Love Wins – A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.”  Because in that book, he questions the classic evangelical teaching about hell, which is that it is the destination of all who fail to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior is hell, a place of eternal punishment. And don’t think that this is just an academic question – just recently a Methodist pastor in North Carolina was dismissed from his church because he openly voiced his question about whether Jesus condemns to hell for eternity all who have not heard of him and accepted him.

            But the questions go deeper than just “Is there a hell after death?” If there is, then what does this say about God? And how does this square with the God we know in Jesus Christ?

            In his book, Bell asks a lot of great questions. Like, “God is loving and kind and full of grace and mercy – unless there is not confession and repentance and salvation in this lifetime, at which point God punishes forever.” (p.64) Like, “Which is stronger and more powerful, the hardness of the human heart or God’s unrelenting, infinite, expansive love?” (p. 109) Like, when Jesus says he “did not come to judge the world, but to save it” (p. 160), did he mean, he came to save not the whole world but only some, or only some who heard of him, or only some who heard of him and responded appropriately to him, or only some who heard of him and responded appropriately to him and were baptized, or only some who heard of him and responded appropriately to him and were baptized and said the right prayers and did the right things? Like, was Jesus all about heaven and hell and a destination that only comes after this life is over and gone, or was he more about this life and this world and what he called the “kingdom of God”, a kingdom which he proclaimed as already breaking in all around?

            Maybe this Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection, is a good day to ponder these questions. And perhaps do so with the assistance of Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus. (Luke 16:19-31)

            It is a parable, using vivid imagery and a gripping story to make a point that would resonate with his listeners. It is about all the kinds of hells we make for each other. During his life, the rich man had the opportunity each and every day to bring a bit of heaven to earth. Lazarus, a poor man, starving and without access to a food pantry or food stamps, physically afflicted and without access to health care, lies at the gate of the rich man, and yet he does nothing to help his neighbor. They meet again in Hades – the Greek word for a place after death – but this time it is the rich man who is suffering. And yet he has not changed – still he wants Lazarus to serve him, asking father Abraham to compel Lazarus to tip his finger in the water and so cool the rich man’s tongue. Still clinging to the old hierarchy, still thinking he is better than his fellow man, he has learned nothing.

            You may have heard of the fabulously wealthy fellow who, on his death bed, turned to the priest and implored him saying, “Father, I know they say you cannot take it with you, but please, let me take just one suitcase with me to heaven when I go.” Wishing to ease the man’s anxiety, the priest consents. When he gets to heaven, the man is toting a huge suitcase, packed with gold bars. Upon entering the heavenly gates, an angel opens the suitcase and exclaims, “Hey everyone, look, he brought us some more paving stones!”

            Part of the humor of the story comes from the fact that the formerly rich man still does not get it; he must have been incredibly disappointed that his earthly riches did not translate to the next life, and that they would not be available to him so that he might use them to get the “more” that he seemed to crave, and without which he would feel unsatisfied. So for him, like the rich man in the parable, heaven would not be heaven unless and until he learned a change of heart.

            For the rich man with Lazarus, heaven is not heaven because rejecting Lazarus, rejecting his fellow man, rejecting one for whom Jesus came and lived and suffered and died and rose again, the rich man rejects God. He turns his back on the one who offers to lead him to a new life, the life that is really life, a life where all live with and for one another.

            And the point, Jesus is saying, is not about life in the pie in the sky in the sweet by and by. It is about life now, and about the Lazarus that even now lies just outside our gates, and about the opportunity we have now to reach out to give him a hand up, to clean his festering sores, to feed his starving belly, to house his frail frame. It is about not only praying “on earth as it is heaven”, but working now as if heaven were breaking out right here on earth. It is about understanding that if this is how we live now, then surely this also is how we will live then.

            But our hearts are hard, the habits ingrained, the selfish desires so powerful, the short-term gratification from getting our needs met now so strong, how in heaven can we change, can we turn from the darkness we delight in to the light of the One who asks so much but promises so much as well?

Perhaps it is simply just too much for us.

So thank God we have in our corner one who can roll stones away from tombs, raise the dead to new life, and even bring heaven to earth. Amen.

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