The Third Sunday after Pentecost
‘Much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
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‘So farewell Hope, and with Hope, farewell Fear,
Farewell remorse: all Good is lost to me;
Evil, be thou my Good; by thee at least
Divided Empire with Heav’n’s King I hold.’
Thus speaks Satan in Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. It is the poet’s attempt to understand the inner life of the devil, as the enemy of mankind first contemplates his decision to rebel against Almighty God.
I have been reading a fair amount about hell in recent days. The Church’s doctrine of hell is an unpopular one these days, and an unpleasant one in any day. Yet that it is taught by the faith, and that it is unpopular puts upon a pastor a demand to understand it more deeply, that it might be rightly taught to a new generation.
There are many who reject the Christian faith because they find the existence of hell to be an intolerable abomination. They that reason that a good God would not create a hell of interminable suffering and punishment. How could a good God allow anyone to be in pain and misery forever? Either He is not good, and thus not worth believing in, or He is not all powerful, and thus is not really God, at least not to any meaningful extent.
Others who seek to retain their membership card in the ol’ time religion get around this difficulty by rejecting that hell exists at all; or perhaps they say that hell exists, but that no one is in it; or that hell exists, but it is not eternal, that all those in it will eventually get out and get to go to heaven. It is not so much a pit of fire and an outer darkness, but a British reform school. Sure it may be painful, but of course it would be, especially if it were run by the Brits.
Some, of course, try to defend the Biblical teaching of hell as an everlasting place of punishment. Generally they defend it by claiming that those who are there choose somehow to be there. It clears God of any guilt in the demise of sinners by saying that He really didn’t want to send anyone to hell, rather people wanted to go there of their own accord.
Granted, this is an idea that is drawn from the Bible itself, and is thus much more theologically defensible. But I have noticed in all this reading that many believe this begs the question: who would want to be in hell? And even if people did want to go there, would they really deserve it?
It is here that him that sitteth in the heavens laughs, and the Lord holds them in derision.
For it is laughable to think that man does not desire hell, and only more so that he does not deserve it.
Our whole life is a desire for the abolition of God, and in every action we prove our loyalty to the kingdom of the devil. We do not seek to fulfill our human nature, as God intended, by living outside ourselves in love toward our neighbor, and in faith toward and in God. Rather, we seek only ourselves. In our selfishness, we no longer extend out into all the world, but become truly individual, alone, a lonely being seeking only its loneliness.
We may not think so; we go to work, we have friends, we have wives and families. Yet all these things we rarely seek because of the good of the business, the acquaintance, the spouse, or the children. We never have.
I work so that I can eat. I have friends so that I won’t be lonely, and so that they will be there for me. I have a wife because I want companionship, both emotionally, but too often physically. I want kids because I want my legacy to live on, or because I think I will enjoy parenthood.
Go ahead and disbelieve this, but even the lives of Christians prove this true. If a job doesn’t pay the bills, we look for a better one. If we win the lottery, we quit our work.
If friends become a burden, and no longer please us to spend time with them, we cut them off, and label them ‘toxic.’
If a spouse will not give us what we demand, we file for divorce, and then immediately look for a new model.
And children. Well, we no longer know exactly what children are for, and it is no coincidence that so many couples ‘choose’ to no longer have them. What was once considered either a blessing from God, or a matter of nature, is now considered a choice, an accessory to making our own life a fulfilling one; and when a kid comes along that we do not deem to be conducive to our own selfish goals, we kill it. And we call that killing a ‘choice.’ And it is rightly called a choice, for all our choices we do for our own gain. We rarely choose to give our life for another, as St. Paul today teaches.
We want to be alone, we want to be separate. We do not tolerate well the burden of being put upon by others, and being looked upon by God.
So we deny that others really have any reality to us, and we deny that God has any reality at all.
Almost no one denies the existence of God because they think that logic and reason and science have proven Him not to exist. To the contrary, logic has always insisted there was a God, and reason has failed to prove otherwise. Science, once thought the citadel of atheism, now day by day is having a little chapel built in it.
But it does not matter. People deny God now for the same reason they always have: because they find the weight of the glory He placed on human existence too much to bear.
We do not want to live as immortal beings; we do not want to think our bodies have an equal share in eternity as our souls. We much less want to think that our neighbor is an everlasting creation of God, and so our every action towards him is not merely a single thing we did in time, but a way in which we have touched eternity, and an eternal, holy thing, either worshipfully or blasphemously.
It is one thing to say you no longer want to play cards with Bill or Susan or Ahmed. It is another to say that you no longer wish to be around the Image of God; but that is exactly what we are saying when we no longer send out the invitation.
The weight is too heavy. But ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ Indeed, we feel this weight, because we are the crown of creation. But instead of embracing the wreaths of empire, we, like a princess in an old fairy tale, seek to cast it away and dwell among the commoners; among the filth, for at least in that, we feel, we can be free of responsibility.
It is for this reason that so many are enthralled by the theory of evolution. Whatever merits it may have as a scientific theory, it gains its popularity among unscientific people precisely in that it claims that man is not man, but just an animal. We want to be animals for the same reason that the atheist wants there to be no God; not that he finds God offensive, but that it implies that we have a soul, and that if we have a soul, it must be cared for.
We desire to be nothing more than soulless animals, for then we could live without glory or shame. We would be nothing special, and nothing special could be asked of us. We would worship creeping things, and give ourselves over to unnatural desires. We would no longer be free to do anything, for to be free is something given to gods. Rather we would be free FROM many things: from responsibility, and virtue, and light, and life.
So it is that we can understand the words of Satan that we began with:
‘So farewell Hope, and with Hope, farewell Fear,
Farewell remorse: all Good is lost to me;
Evil, be thou my Good.’
If there is no hope of eternal life, then at least there is no fear in this life, there is nothing to love or to fear, nor anything worth trusting in, for life is meaningless and empty. There is no Good in heaven, and so there is no evil on earth. There is only desire, my desire, unguided and mutable, changing from moment to moment to be indulged, like cattle in a field.
It is by no means the case that we do not desire hell. In fact, every moment of our life, we affirm our desire to go exactly there. And surely, we deserve it, for if we forever demand that there be to us no God, then God will give us over to our reprobate mind, and we will have the desire of our heart.
‘For the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness.’
Yet what if we want hell? So what if we deserve it? If God were truly good, he would not let us have it! We are like silly stupid children. We never want what is good for us. Shouldn’t God, if He is a good Father, keep us from what is bad for us, and give us what is good?
I have heard many make this argument. Little do they know that they are doing nothing but proclaiming the Gospel.
Today our Lord goes throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
He gathers to Himself twelve disciples, that they too might go forth; and of them are born tens of thousands of others who take up the shepherd’s rod and staff to go out into the harvest. Ones who put on the black of the clergy; who read books about hell.
These He sends out, that they might take those who have chosen hell, and give to them heaven; that they might find those who have forsaken God, and bring them to Christ.
These lost sheep may not want to come to the Father. In fact, no sheep ever has. So they must first die, that they might be reborn. They must be drowned in water, that they might be born of the sea of creation.
This day, now, Christ has come before you, this house full of the unwilling mass of humanity, that you might witness the Father of Lights; He has come to remind you of who you are, and the glory that will be placed upon you. He has come to make you, an unthinking animal, into a man. And He will do so by feeding you the flesh and blood of a Man, the only true Man to have ever lived, that you might become what you eat.
For God will not in fact rest, nor will He leave you to your reprobate mind. For God shows his love in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Who then shall be saved? And who then shall with a sneering smile go down to hell? This is a question we are forbidden to make by the Scriptures, for we are not a judge of souls; we cannot know the Divine Will of Our Crucified Lord Jesus, nor of His Father.
Yet this alone we know, that even now the Father is still working, even as Christ still works. Even now His emissaries scatter across this fallen world, that by His Word and Holy Sacraments, those who are perishing might be gathered in, to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
This we know, for He is the God of all Creation, He who desires the death of no man. He is the God of all Creation, He who will not let the least slip from His hand. He is the God of all creation, and the word of the Lord is right, and all his works are done in truth.
Therefore:
‘Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
God, our own God, shall bless us.
God shall bless us,
And all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.’
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Preached by Pastor Fields
Sermon Texts: Exodus 19:2-8; Romans 5:6-15; Matthew 9:35-10:8.