Stainglass window
Christmas 2011
3rd Dec Advent Party
12th Dec @ 2pm
Carol Service at Oak tree Court
16th Dec @ 2.30pm
Carol Service at Stratford Court
17th Dec @11am
Carol Singing outside Co-Op
18th Dec Nativity and Christingle Service and Carol Service
24th Dec @ 11pm (Service starts at 11.30pm
United Service at URC Etwall Rd
25th Dec @10am
Christmas Day Service
Hell on Earth’
Dear Friends,
Hell is ‘in’ today: ‘My years in Auschwitz- hell on earth!’ ‘My heart attack was hell on earth!’ ‘My five years of hell with an abusive husband!’ ‘It was hell today on the Centre Court, says tennis star!’
By a strange irony, at a time when the word ‘hell’ has almost entirely dropped from the language of the church, hell is one of the staples of everyday conversation.
Some of the experiences mentioned above were undoubtedly terrible, but literally speaking, they were not ‘hell on earth’. Only once in all history has there truly been ‘hell on earth’- on the first Good Friday when Jesus Christ took our place on the cross and bore the sins of the whole world.
The Bible portrays hell in one simple way: as separation from God. Hell is defined as where God is not. And thus the question wrung from the heart of Jesus on the cross is very poignant: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’(Matthew 27:46).
How are we to understand Jesus’ words?
There have been those who have sought to evade the literal understanding of the question. Wrote T.R.Glover at the beginning of the 20th century, ‘Never was there an utterance that reveals more amazingly the distance between feeling and fact’ In other words, Jesus was mistaken. No doubt he felt abandoned by the Father, but he was not so in fact.
I am not convinced by such a simplistic explanation. On that cross, in his dying, Jesus experienced in real and authentic measure that terrible, indescribable separation from God which sin brings. ‘Christ bears the agony of hell itself on his shoulders, to defend and shelter those who are in Him from it, however deserved (Cardinal Newman).
It was Martin Luther who first drew attention to the phase in the Apostles’ Creed’ He descended into hell’ as describing the events of Good Friday. He suggested that that was exactly what Jesus experienced : hell on earth.
Perhaps we can grasp it better by considering the Bible’s estimate of the significance of death- any death. In Scripture, death is never a neutral or natural fate. Rather death is always portrayed as an unnatural event, introduced into the world because of sin and evil.
Death is not a natural phenomenon which allows us to shrug our shoulders and mutter, ‘Ah well, we can’t live for ever!’. For in truth the Bible says we were made to do just that. We were destined for immortality, everlasting fellowship with God. We see death for what it is- the enemy, the intruder, the result of sin and evil.
So when Jesus dies, God himself takes on the great intruder, this great enemy. And since the death is the final ‘wages of sin’,it is in his dying that Jesus experienced hell, abandonment by God.
By the time you read this, the Mel Gibson film ‘The Passion of Christ’ will have been released in this country. I’m sure you’ve already heard and seen something of the controversy it is causing in the USA. Whether it is a good representation of the last days of Jesus’ life or not (and for that I must reserve judgement until I have seen the film), I find it interesting that a film about Jesus, has the power to cause such a stir on our society which claims to be secular.
This Easter, hundreds of thousands of people will come face to ace with the brutality and horror of the crucifixion. Will you join me in praying that through all that happens, people will also come face to face with what it all means?
Your friend and pastor,