The Lutheran Podcast

What if Hell is Empty? 

For the sake of transparency, “What if Hell Is empty?” isn’t a question I actually ask during this sermon, but it’s a question I’ve long asked. One reason for this is the idea that the credal confessions that “Jesus descended to hell” occupy an interesting space in Christianity tradition in the form of the idea that Jesus died and then went to take God’s Grace and glory to the famed in what we call the Harrowing of Hell. 

The scriptures this week invite us to wrestle with our imperfection’s and brokenness, and our ability to love each other imperfectly. We ask the question, what does it mean when we say God loves us perfectly? If God loves us beyond understanding, and we sinful imperfect people can learn to love each other, what must God’s perfect love look like? What if Hell really IS empty?

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Being a disciple wasn’t easy in the days but it was even harder being Thomas because the other disciples saw Jesus — and he missed it. I imagine this hurt. Jesus saw Thomas’ hurt and offered what he needed to heal. 

The kingdom of God os a place where love sees our wound’s and gives us what we need to heal.

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Our congregation is taking some bold steps during Letn this year, we're on the path to become a Reconciling in Christ congregation, meaning that we're becoming a congregation who intentionally and actively seeks out and welcomes LGBTQIA+ folks and persons of color.

The ACT of loving folks who have been traditionally eschewed by the Church isn't something new to St. James. We've welcomed LGBTQIA+ persons for a long time now. What's new is that we haven't enshrined it in writing as a core part of our identity as a congregation.

At its heart, while this is very much about learning to be more welcoming of people who society marginalizes, it's also more closely related to our identity as a congregation – one that's much like so many congregations right now. We've been here for over seventy-five years, but we look around our neighborhood and don't see our physical neighbors in worship like we used to. 

Part of what it means to reconcile ourselves to Christ and his welcome is learning to reconcile ourselves to our neighbors and meet them again for the first time. 

This is holy, hopeful work. Here's to a Lenten discipline that we hope will change us all for the better.

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Ash Wednesday is a singular moment, not only in the Church year, but in our culture as well. Very seldom do we feel comfortable engaging our mortality, and there are entire industries devoted to helping us forget that all of us are mortal and time comes for us all.

As challenging as it is to confront this reality, reckoning with our own mortality also brings an air of release. We aren't meant to be eternal in this life, but what we offer is something of the eternal mystery – love. We worship God, who doesn't need us for existence, sustenance, or power; yet God does desire relationship. 

What can we offer but a broken heart to the one who knows how to fix it?

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A prophet, a lawgiver, and the Messiah are transfigured on a mountain. Sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it's more about the identity of the Jewish people in Jesus' construction of the faith. It's about the discples' response and not knowing how to respond.

Faith isn't about morality or being a good person, but the lifelong pursuit of seeking the eternal in order to better understand ourselves. Faith is an exercise in identity. The transfiguration is about the identity of people who follow Jesus or seek faith two thousand years later in a moment when so many of us are wondering whether there's any way that we can share a national identity again.

And in a world that declares the best use of religion is to produce good people and good citizens, what Jesus brings is just as surprising as it was in the First Century – it's not about being good, but through learning to love faithfully, we learn to become human.

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It feels like our nation’s heart is broken by the enduring cruelty of our current leadership. The last two wells include the military takedown of Venezuela’s President and Renee Good’s murder at the hands of an ICE agents. Our conscience faith informs our conscience, demanding action. Yet our faithful action is driven by identity, not simply by the event of the moment. 

What do we do when we have no idea what to do?

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There's a cliché that "bad things happen for a reason," and another, "God makes everything work out for good." Of the two, the first is kind of false unless the reason is, "sometimes things suck and people are evil." The second is more true, but also needs the caveat that the bad things aren't what God designs or wants — as far as I know, and I hold that to be very little on average. 

Ten years after the martyrdom of the Emanuel 9, I had the opportunity to be a guest preacher at Sanctuary South Shore in Plymouth, MA, and participate in the sermon series ONE, which this week was about how we find unity in tragedy and attempted division, and come to a deeper understanding of God, ourselves, and each other by giving up on our differences in ways that divide us, and digging into our differences in ways that bring us closer in our common humanity. 

Sanctuary's a young congregation, around fifteen years old, and the newest thriving mission plant in the New England Synod. What they do well is a lot, but in terms of worship, they do a great job at reflecting the depth of liturgical worship-done-well in a supremely casual way.  It was wonderful to be there!

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Today’s gospel is one in which we find some stunning decisions. Some lead to great increase and new responsibility; others lead to a no good very bad terrible day. 

The Gospel isn’t concerned with what we produce, but that we use what we’re given somehow. The talents given are grace-filled opportunities to do what we can with what we have. How will you respond?

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Psalm 46 speaks of the desolations God brings to the earth, and it’s our habit to think of floods and disasters. What God desolates is the implements of war — the bow, the spear, the chariots — the M-16, the Tomahawk Missile, the tank. 

The ongoing work of reforming our hearts is the never ending process of tearing our wars apart. 

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Jesus calls us to see God’s kingdom, not as a place of easy living, but of living together in good times and in bad. 

What does this vision inspire in you?

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