A sermon on 1 Peter 3: 13-22 by Nathan Nettleton

Not everyone believes in Hell, not as traditionally described in the church’s teaching and depicted by apocalyptic artists down through the centuries. I don’t know whether you believe in it or not. In fact I’m not even sure how much of it I believe.

But I have never yet met anybody who doesn’t believe in the experience of hell. We speak sometimes, of having a taste of heaven. We probably don’t speak as often about having a taste of hell, but I suspect that’s only because we try not to think about it. You don’t have to live too long or look too far to witness the sickening sight of people trapped in what can only be a living hell.

Turn on the news and listen to the stories told by refugees fleeing Kosovo. See the pictures of ditches full of massacred bodies. See the images of tsunami flattened towns in Ambon, or of smoke rising from burning villages in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Sudan. Hell exists alright.

Sit outside the casino or the pokies on pension day and look at the desperation and despair in the eyes of those leaving, their fortnight’s rent and groceries money already lost. All sense of control and dignity gone with it. Hell exists alright.

Walk down almost any alleyway round Swanston Street or Russell Street and find kids pumping heroin into their veins to numb down the pain of living with no hope, no love, no future. And going out and giving $20 blow jobs to strangers to pay for the poison. Hell exists alright.

Look behind the curtains of many a respectable suburban home and find men, who by day appear to be successful middle management types, but who at night can’t hold in the frustration of working harder and harder for less and less security, who hit the bottle and hit their kids, lashing out in blind fury against the only bit of the world they can still control. Hell exists alright.

Whatever hell is, I’m quite sure God didn’t create it. He wouldn’t have needed to. The human race has mastered the art of creating hell for itself.

The church has always taught that hell is the ultimate alienation from God. We have a tendency to think of that in spatial terms – God’s over there, we’re way down there. But it’s much worse than that. You see God is within us and all around us. As Paul said in our reading from Acts, “In God we live and move and have our being.” As people made in the image of God, if we become alienated from God, we become alienated from ourselves, from who we are. We fragment. We disintegrate. Spirit is torn from flesh and we fall apart. Look into the eyes in those visions of hell and you will see that. Life disintegrating. A whole personality crumbling to dust. Alienation from life and being itself.

There is a limit though to how alienated from God you can be. In our reading from the Apostle Peter we heard that though put to death physically, in his spiritual existence Christ went and preached to the imprisoned spirits. And if we’d gone on another few verses it would have said again that the good news was preached even to the dead, so that they may live as God lives.

There is nowhere you can go, there is no hell you can descend into that is beyond the reach of the love of God in Jesus Christ. There is no pain you can know, no suffering that can afflict you that is beyond where Jesus Christ has been. There is no refugee road or sleazy alleyway that Jesus Christ will not enter to offer love and mercy and healing and freedom.

One person here who knows that better than most of us is Michael. In a few minutes we will be celebrating with Michael as he reaffirms his commitment to Christ and becomes a member of this congregation of Christ’s church. I’ve known Michael for about thirteen or fourteen years, and there have been a few times when we’ve looked into the abyss together, but the one who was always ready to go over the edge and into hell to try to show someone else the way out was Michael, not me. From the horrors of the Vietnam war, to the drug scene of St Kilda, to the streets and squats and park benches where the lost and forgotten of this city find little shelter from their pain; Michael has been there. He knows hell only too well. He’s bearing more than a few scars. And there are more than a few people who could tell you that the reason they are not either dead or in living hell now is because Michael went in, hung in there with them, and inspired them to find a way out. There have been times, even in the time I’ve known him, when it looked like hell might have been going to get the better of him and destroy him, and I’m sure that Michael would be the first to say that the fact that it didn’t and that he’s here doing this tonight says more about the power of Christ than it does about the strength of Michael. And I guess it does, I’m not going to dispute that, but I also wouldn’t want to take anything away from the courage and tenacious compassion for those in hell that saw Michael risking his own safety in the first place.

The icon we have over here during Pascha has a lot to say about this. Traditionally it has two different names, which at first seem to be saying quite contradictory things about it. Sometimes it is simply call “the Resurrection”, which is what this version of it says on the top. But it is also called “the harrowing of hell”, picking up the image from these passages in Peter’s letter. Are these just conflicting interpretations of something which no one is quite sure about? I don’t think so. I think it is saying something really important in holding these two ideas together. The icon shows Christ, robed in white, with the gates of hell trampled under his feet, greeting the dead beginning with Adam and Eve. In this version, the satan can be seen, shackled and pinned beneath the trampled doors. In other versions, the satan is not there, but instead you see the implements of imprisonment and torture – locks, keys, manacles – broken and falling into the black abyss.

That is the truth we celebrate in this Paschal season, the truth of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ has burst through the doors of death to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, sight for the blind, good news to the poor, hope for the despairing. Even when the forces of death and destruction did their worst and cast him into the depths of hell, they could not hold him. When hell seemed to have triumphed, hell itself became the womb of salvation, from which Christ brought forth new life for all. The Apostle Peter compares it to the flood in the days of Noah, when the waters of death and destruction also carried the ark of salvation. And so too, he suggests, it is with baptism that saves us. Jesus too made the link between baptism and the hell of unthinkable suffering. “Can you bear the baptism with which I must be baptised?” he asks a couple of his disciples as his crucifixion drew ominously nearer.

But it is there, when we go under for the last time, there when the flood waters of horror and despair close over us, there when hell sucks us into its dark abyss, there where we think we are beyond the reach of any hope or help; it is there that we find that there is nowhere Christ will not go to find us, and cleanse us and breathe new life into us. Christ is risen, and the powers of hell, in this life or beyond, cannot hold those who will take his hand, allow him to lift them up, and follow him to the promised land of new life. Violence and hatred have done their worst – you only have to turn on your TV to know that, or perhaps take a walk with Michael to some of the streets and hidden hellholes he knows – violence and hatred have done their worst, but death shall have no dominion. The Lord of Life will have the last word, for Christ is risen. Alleluia.