Isaiah 28:14-22
Psalm 46
Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-29
Luke 13:22-30

Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem.  Someone asked him, ‘Lord, will only a few be saved?’ He said to them, ‘Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. When once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, “Lord, open to us,” then in reply he will say to you, “I do not know where you come from.” Then you will begin to say, “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” But he will say, “I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!” There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.’

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let’s talk about — hell. Jesus seems to be talking about it. He’s on his way to Jerusalem (and we all know what that means), so he’s really not in a mood to beat around the bush, when someone asks him, "Lord, will only a few be saved?" As usual, he doesn’t answer directly, but he does reply:

"Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many will try to enter and will not be able. When it’s time to shut the door, many people will knock, saying, ‘Aw, come on! Open up.’ And the owner of the house will say, ‘I don’t know where you come from.’ They’ll say, ‘Wait, wait, we saw you around; we ate and drank with you and you taught in our streets.’ And the owner will say, "I don’t know where you come from — beat it!’

"Then it will be terrible for them because they can look inside and see the celebration with the people they expected to be there, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. But to make it worse, they’ll see lots of people from all over, the people whom they never expected to see there, the people they thought would be the last ones to be there."

Jesus is painting a picture of hell. It will be like people who are shocked to find themselves left outside in the freezing snow as they will peer through the windows and see all the wrong people in the warm glow of the party inside.

I remember a time when I had a conversation about hell. I was in law school, and I had a classmate named Allan Levi. (Incidentally, it turns out that Allan is not a lawyer any more either.) Allan and I were friends and we shared our faith together, although Allan was from a much more conservative background than I was. One day he invited me to a Bible study his pastor was conducting. I went, mostly out of curiosity.

When we got to the small apartment off campus it was very crowded and, ironically, very hot. The pastor started the Bible study, which didn’t seem to me to be Bible study at all, but rather a mixture of preaching and haranguing. Well, I made a big mistake: I thought that if you went to a Bible study class, and the leader asked a question, it was okay to answer. Not there it wasn’t, because (I realized later) all of the questions were intended to be rhetorical. You were supposed to just accept what you were told, not think or discuss. Boy, was I the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time!

Well, the preacher went on about hell for a while (which you could tell was one of his favorite subjects), and then he asked, "Is there anybody here who does not believe that hell is a literal place where God punishes unbelievers eternally?" I raised my hand. It never occurred to him that I might be answering his question. He looked at me and said, "Yes?," like he thought I was going to ask where the bathroom was or something.

I said, "I don’t believe that hell is a literal place where God punishes unbelievers eternally. I believe in the traditional Christian definition of hell as separation from God, which is such a terrible thing that the Israelites dramatized it by saying that being in hell is like living at Gehenna, the garbage dump outside Jerusalem where people who had been banished had to scrounge for rotten food amid fires that never went out. That’s a very graphic way of saying how horrible it is to be isolated from God, isolated from love. But God doesn’t do the isolating; we do. So God doesn’t send us to hell; we choose to live there."

Okay, I have a piece of advice: if you ever find yourself in that situation, keep your mouth shut! Unless, of course, you enjoy charging machine gun nests or jumping in front of cement trucks. For the rest of the time in that crowded, hot living room, where I was on the front row, by the way, the preacher turned up the heat on his rhetoric and used me as an example of someone he was sure was going to hell, which, he assured his flock and me, was a quite literal place where God punished unbelievers eternally. (To his credit, my friend Allan was very embarrassed that I had been treated that way.)

Well, hell gets used like that a lot as a way of scaring people and as a way of saying that if you don’t follow the rules, God will send you to a place of eternal damnation. I remember praying with a family right after the mother of two teenage children had died of a brain tumor. The father turned to his fifteen year-old son and said, "Boy, your mama’s in heaven, and you’d better do good and live right or you’ll go to hell and you’ll never see your mama again, you got that?" As the boy nodded while trying to hold back tears, I wondered how anyone could believe in a loving God when they were raised in an environment in which hell was used to associate God with nothing but fear and threats.

Hell is no laughing matter, but I don’t think it is a literal place where God punishes unbelievers eternally, and I don’t think the threat of it should be the basis for anyone’s faith. Let me tell you a story that I think gives some insight into what it might mean.

When I was at All Saints’, I conducted a funeral service for a man named Bob Stansell. Bob was a good friend of mine. Although he died relatively young, he had been very active in the parish for many years before he got sick. He was in a long-term, committed relationship. He taught Sunday school, and he loved the kids and they loved him. He volunteered for lots of committees at the church. Bob was friends with everybody. In short, Bob was one of those people you could be around and know that he just knew about love, and he lived love in the community.

When Bob died of AIDS, the church was packed with all sorts of people from the church and from outside the church: children, their mothers, gay people, elderly people, business people, everyone. It was (and I think you’ll understand this because we’ve had some here) a wonderful funeral. Sad, of course, but just wonderful. And the reason it was so wonderful was because Bob knew so much about loving God and loving his neighbor, and, of course, Bob understood that to mean everybody.

Unbeknownst to me, attending that service was another young man who was dying. He didn’t go to the church, and I didn’t know him, but he called me about six months later when he was very sick. I went out to his apartment to meet with him and plan his funeral. The first thing he said broke my heart. "I want a funeral just like Bob Stansell’s," he said. It broke my heart because I knew what he wanted, and I knew he couldn’t have it. I knew he wanted the wonder, the love deep and wide that made Bob’s funeral so wonderful and that had made it so clear that the Holy Spirit was there giving us the joyful hope of the resurrection.

What I said to that dying young man was, "We will do everything the same way we did it at Bob’s service." What I wanted to say was, "Where have you been? What have you done with your life? What do you think, that we have an instant, "just add water and stir," version of deep, meaningful, loving relationships?" And so when he died, we had a funeral just like Bob’s. And it was not at all the same.

Sound harsh? It’s not, really. It’s just reality. It’s just the reality Jesus talks about. Jesus came so that we, through faith in him and through loving him, might be in deep, meaningful, loving relationships with God, and with other people, and with ourselves, and with the creation. And deep meaningful, loving relationships take commitment, and time, and care, and shared experiences, and shared vulnerabilities, and shared joys and shared sorrows, and anger, and pain, and laughter, and shared silences. There just isn’t an instant, "just add water and stir," version of deep, meaningful, loving relationships.

So, God won’t send you to hell to punish you. But isolation and rejection and living for ourselves are always an option, always our choice. And it is usually a choice with attractive packaging and a counterfeit promise. It is a choice that God leaves with us because authentic loving relationship must always involve free choice. And God will not cheapen authentic loving relationship by saying that any casual thing, any "but we ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets," will do. It won’t.

So, hell, isolation from God, isolation from love, is a sobering thought. It should make us take stock of our lives. It should make us strive to enter through the narrow door. But as you’re striving to be in authentic loving relationships, there’s something to remember, I think, that helps a lot. And Jesus seems to think so to.

As you’re striving to enter through the narrow door, be sure that you’re ready to be very — surprised. Because the party begins, I think, when we’re very surprised at who gets in, and our response is to laugh with joy.