PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

First Peter 3:13-22                                                              The Harrowing of Hell

Sermon April 27, 2008:  People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  the Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            Have you ever read a passage of scripture, then gone back and read it again slowly, and then wondered out loud, "What on earth is this talking about?"  Like this—

 

 

Huh?  The very same puzzle stands right in the middle of the Apostles' Creed:

 

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord,

. . .  and then  . . .

 

In the traditional wording it says "He descended into hell."  Huh?  Jesus went to hell?  What on earth is this talking about?  I went back into early Christian literature to see how Irenaeus and Tertullian, Origen and Rufinius understood this.  There was a Bishop Euodius in the fifth century who wrote asking Saint Augustin what on earth is this talking about, and Augustin's letter back goes on for pages and pages, but he starts out by admitting that he didn't understand it either; and most of his answer just lists the difficulties he sees in the text.  Luther and Calvin thought Augustin knew everything!  I think the big problem all the early writers had in explaining it was that they took it literally,[1] when in fact First Peter was using it metaphorically to connect the story of Noah's ark with Christian baptism:  this is, after all, part of a baptismal sermon. 

            But these words, "he descended into hell," became important in the earliest explanation of how Christ's cross redeems us from sin.  This explanation is called "the harrowing of Hell."  Roget's Thesaurus tells us that the word "harrow" as it is used here means "affliction, stroke, vexation, plague, wound, hurt, inflict pain, pierce, cut."[2]  Christ tore Hell open—that's what it means.  There's a UCC minister named Robert Haertig out in Washington state who has created a bas relief of the face of Christ at the resurrection, with his eyes wide open and his hair standing on end, because he has just returned from "the harrowing of Hell" and you can see it in his visage.[3] 

            Now let's see:  Christ's crucifixion and death, burial, then something in the realm of spirits, then his resurrection; and we are liberated from the power of sin, death and the devil.  There's something going on here that touches us—something useful to our spiritual lives.  But what on earth might it be?  Here's my point:  Jesus' victory at Easter redeems more than just your sins. 

 

            One of the suggestions Saint Augustin made in his letter might help us get started.  He wondered if it might refer not to people of long ago but rather to people now:  that Christ has torn Hell open for people now who believe in him.[4]  What about "the spirits in prison"?  Modern psychology has discovered that there are many more dark corners in a person's mind than can be lined up as "good" or "bad."  Carl Jung wrote a lot about the importance of "the Shadow" in a person's reaching maturity:  each one of us has a part of ourselves that we don't like, we push away, we don't want to BE that; and then one day (or maybe one night in a dream) that Shadow-self becomes a friend; and this turn of mind releases all kinds of energy and new self-understanding. 

A little boy growing up in the ghetto of an American city, playing basketball, hoping like a million other little boys playing basketball that somehow, some day, he'll make it to the pros.  He goes to college on a scholarship and plays basketball:  he's that good, but in his mind he's still that little kid in the poor part of town.  He continues to improve his game, and after basketball season his senior year a professional team picks him.  Now he's the new boy—just like he was every time his family had to move; but he works at making his game better, and he makes friends on the team.  In a few weeks he's shooting more baskets per game than anybody else on the team; but inside, in his heart, he's still that little boy shooting hoops at the park.  The team offers him a contract, ten million dollars.  He thinks, "Am I really worth that much?"  And then he goes to buy a car.  What's he going to buy—a Cadillac SUV?  a Mercedes-Benz?  a BMW?  No—he buys a Volkswagen Beetle.  They put him in a Volkswagen commercial, and somebody asked him, "You can afford any car in the world:  why are you driving a VW?"  And he smiles and says, "I'm rich, so I can buy any car I want, and this is the car I want."  The little ghetto kid is gone:  all that child's love and desire and hard work and energy have been released into the successful career of a star player, and he no longer needs to put on a front for anybody:  he can drive a Volkswagen without feeling small.  Isn't that a parable of salvation?  The Shadow that followed that young man around for years has its chains broken, gets released; and he is now whole. 

            The Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches released a book titled Confessing the One Faith.  This is one of the things they said about salvation in Christ's death and resurrection:[5]

 

 

 

            What is it within you that's in chains?  What is it that's holding your spirit in prison?  Not good enough?  Not worthy?  Something failed?  Every one of us is bound in some private hell of our own, and we can't get out.  We need a liberator.  When Jesus died on the cross and was laid in the tomb, he didn't just lie there:  "he descended into hell," your hell.  He holds out his hand to lead you out.  Unworthy of heaven, you are made to be right with God and with yourself and neighbor.  Christ tore a hole in hell for you to get out.  Let the Shadow out and follow him!  Jesus' victory at Easter redeems more than just your sins. 

 

            But there's more in this text.  I go back to Carl Jung again, this time to his essay Answer to Job.  The Book of Job asks the question:  How can a good God allow good people to suffer?  And when you get to the end of the book you have four or five different possible answers, but none of them really satisfies the human heart.  Jung, the great analytical psychologist, was the son of a Swiss clergyman—grew up in the parsonage, knew the Bible and the power of faith; and Jung suggested this "answer to Job."  In the Book of Job there is no answer to human suffering —everything is left dangling.  We are left to ask how a good God can allow African children to die by the tens of thousands from AIDS, and so many refugees to lose everything and never again have a settled life.  Why is half the population of New Orleans still living in Houston, Jackson and Atlanta?  We are left to ask why people have to suffer at all.  Is God so uncaring, so hard, that God simply lets us suffer—feels nothing at our aging, our losing, our inability to do that one last thing?  Is God so uncaring?  And Jung's answer?  Jesus Christ died on the cross:  God also suffered and knows your suffering, knows that secret part of your soul, your private hell; because "he descended into hell."  Jesus' victory at Easter redeems more than just your sins. 

 

            This is the Sixth Sunday of Easter Season, when the church devotes fifty days to the celebration of the empty tomb.  When you were baptized, Paul says, you were baptized into Jesus' death, and you came away from the water to a new life[6]--a life symbolized by Jesus' resurrection:  it happens in you.  But such a life is costly.  It's expensive to live in this world as a disciple of Jesus—maybe not so much in money, but in the cost of your soul.  When you take a job, "Is this where Jesus wants me?"  When you choose a life partner, "What does Jesus want of our love?"  When you become a parent, "Where is Jesus in all this clutter and all this joy?"  When you are faced with a moral choice, "Where can I go with this that Jesus will go with me?"  In the middle class of a rich country when so many millions of people, millions of children, are homeless, naked, facing famine as orphans:  "What does Jesus want of me?"  In retirement, "Now I'm going to really be busy, so how shall I stay in touch with Jesus?"  And always, always in that private hell you think you suffer alone:  "He descended into hell."  Jesus' victory at Easter redeems more than just your sins.  He redeems who you are.  That is what's going on in baptism, and it grows in you as your life goes forward. 

 

            So who are "the spirits in prison" to whom Jesus the crucified descended, and for whom he tore hell open?  Augustin suggested this just might be talking about you.  Jesus' victory at Easter redeems more than just your sins.  Thanks be to God. 

AMEN