44 Jesus shouted, “Whoever believes in me doesn’t believe in me but in the one who sent me. 45 Whoever sees me sees the one who sent me. 46 I have come as a light into the world so that everyone who believes in me won’t live in darkness. 47 If people hear my words and don’t keep them, I don’t judge them. I didn’t come to judge the world but to save it. 48 Whoever rejects me and doesn’t receive my words will be judged at the last day by the word I have spoken. 49 I don’t speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me regarding what I should speak and say. 50 I know that his commandment is eternal life. Therefore, whatever I say is just as the Father has said to me.” (Common English Bible)
“The Screwtape Sermons: Exploring
Scripture With C.S. Lewis,” Week Four
The
man sitting before the camera looked pretty much exactly like how you would
expect a homeless, alcoholic army veteran to look: his hair was long and
scraggly on the sides, a thick beard covered every nook and cranny of his chin,
jawline, and neck, and his clothing looked well-worn and tired. He looked like he had been rustled up
straight out of central casting.
And
then, over the course of the next several hours, everything changed: the camera
filmed him getting a haircut and dye job, a beard trim, some makeup to put some
color in his cheeks, and finally, a brand-spanking-new suit and tie, complete
with a tie clip and a pocket square. The
big reveal then happened: they took a mirror and allowed this man to see what a
gem had been lying underneath all that scruff, and he saw himself…and
immediately leaped up, bounded over to the fellow who had just dressed him in
that fine suit, and wrapped him up in a bear hug.
The
video clip simply ended with a title card explaining what happened next: that
was the catalyst. This otherwise
anonymous man, Jim, went and managed to find his own place, and he got sober by
attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for the first time ever. And after watching that video so many times,
what has stuck with me is the cross that hung around Jim’s neck, made of two
twisted nails and held together by a black cord, and I wonder what his pastor,
if he had one, would say about this.
Because the choice he made was nothing short of saving.
It
still sounds crazy to say, even though we are now firmly in mid-November: this
will be the last sermon series before the holidays are upon us. But yep, this is it—the last sermon series
before we spend four weeks on Advent and two more on Christmas. This is a series that I have wanted to do for
a long time, but never quite found the right spot in the calendar until now. And it’s a bit different than my usual
series, which are often about a book of Scripture or a book by a contemporary
author, or some other theme…this series is centered around a person: Clive
Staples Lewis, the 20th century Christian writer and apologist who
wrote a great many books you may have heard of: the Chronicles of Narnia, the
Space Trilogy, and Mere Christianity.
He’s a popular fellow in a great many Christian circles, and so I
decided to use him as the proverbial guinea pig in this new experiment of mine
in taking a slightly different approach to a sermon series. We began the series by touching on perhaps
Lewis’s most famous work, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” which
contained allegory about the most basic of Christian belief: Christ’s
crucifixion and resurrection. We then
turned to not just belief, but practice, in Lewis’s 1942 book “The Screwtape
Letters,” and last week we arrived at Lewis’s most famous nonfiction book,
“Mere Christianity.” This week we pivot
from practice once more to otherworldly matters in Lewis’s 1946 book on the
nature of heaven and hell, “The Great Divorce,” in which he writes:
There have been men before now who got so
interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for
God Himself…as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in
spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man!
Ye see it in smaller matters. Did
ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed
copies had lost the power to read them?
Or an organizer of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares…
But what of the poor Ghosts who never
get into the omnibus at all?
Everyone who wishes it does. Never fear.
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy
will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no
Hell. No soul that seriously and
constantly desires joy will ever miss it.
Those who seek find. To those who
knock, it is opened.
The
Great Divorce is—full disclosure—probably my favorite of all Lewis’s
books. Part of that is because I think
it follows the format of my favorite Dickensian story as a child, “A Christmas
Carol,” in that a man is taken by a kindly spirit guide to watch and observe
things that it all results in a revelation…except instead of Scrooge and Jacob
Marley (who my mom, when she was reading the story to me as a child, always
mixed up with Bob Marley…yah, mon), it’s an unknown narrator—possibly even
Lewis himself—and he actually begins his life in hell.
Except
he doesn’t call it that, and it isn’t anything we would recognize, because
there is no fire. There is no
brimstone. There is no devil with horns,
hooves, and a pitchfork. Instead, hell
is nothing but gray dreariness. Like the
weather we experience six months out of the year, on steroids. Until suddenly, a bus appears in the middle
of this gray town, and Lewis boards it, and this bus, amazingly, drops him off
at the outskirts of heaven, where everything is vibrant again.
And
while touring heaven, presumably while wearing a fanny pack, pith helmet, and
knee-high socks like he’s out on safari (“Observe the exotic angels in their
native habitat. Truly it is a treat to
get to see them this up close in their natural state…”), Lewis wants to know
why anyone could possibly prefer hell, and Lewis’s guide—not the Ghost of
Christmas Present, but a Scottish minister named George MacDonald—explains that
for many people, when hell is all they know, it is incredibly difficult to let
go of…like someone who knows only how to argue for the existence of God, so
much so that they forget to experience that wonderful existence. But then he follows up with that great and
reassuring quote: everyone who wishes to go to heaven does.
Now,
yes, I know in my head that is reassuring.
But as many of y’all know in talking to me—heck, it was a big subject of
discussion in this past Monday evening’s Bible study—in all actuality I
struggle a lot sometimes with the notion that heaven exists for whoever wants
it, because I look at people who are so evil in their actions that I cannot
possibly fathom heaven existing for them as well. And many of you have rightly said to me, “No,
pastor, that is not supposed to be frustrating, that is supposed to be hopeful.” And, of course, it really is.
Because
I still get asked—more than I probably care to, if I’m honest—that question
about if non-Christians or non-Disciples or “spiritual-but-not-religious” folks
go to hell even if they are otherwise good, charitable, kind, loving people. And when I get asked that question…well, I
usually point the person who asks it in the direction of this passage from John
12.
Now,
in some translations, this is billed as a “summary” of Jesus’ teaching, a final
epilogue to Act One of John, because this is the end of chapter 12, and chapter
13 immediately begins with Maundy Thursday and the washing of the Apostles’
feet and so on. But calling this passage
a “summary” does not do it justice, because it contains within it a teaching I
hold to be nothing short of revolutionary: Jesus came not to judge the world
but to save the world, because there exists another judge—the Word, the Logos,
is the judge, and that judgment is on the last day.
Despite
the reassurance of the New Covenant—that in Jesus Christ, there is forgiveness
for sin—we still are really good at judging people, to the point that we think
we know better than God and can say who is in and who is out when the score is
up. I am just the same when I teach that
there is no possible way a devil like Adolf Hitler or Osama bin Laden could
possibly be in heaven.
But
what Jesus teaches instead in this passage is, first of all, that I am not the
judge, the Word is. And second, that judgment
does not occur on November 17, 2013, but at the end of time, so who knows what
possibly has happened in the afterlife to folks. Who knows how many of them have awoken in the
gray town of hell and decided that this is not for them, who wished it and
wanted it and desired it so much, they boarded a bus to take them elsewhere, to
take them heavenward?
And
perhaps this removes the urgency for hearing the Gospel in this lifetime, but I
have to admit, it is immensely reassuring to hear Jesus say that those who die
as unbelievers have a get-out-of-hell free card of sorts. It’s reassuring because so often I hear other
Christians say, “Hey, I don’t make the rules.
I’d like for my unbelieving parents or siblings or BFFs or pet goldfishes
to go to heaven, but God says they won’t.”
And here I am, and I’m like, “Whut?
Yeah, um, God—through Jesus—said that people get judged at the end of
time, so how would you know? Has time
stopped? No? Okay. That
settles that. Now, who wants to go get a
calzone?”
And
really, if anything, instead of removing the urgency for hearing the Gospel in
this lifetime, I feel like this passage should bolster our enthusiasm for
hearing the Gospel in this lifetime. To
hear a Savior who existed on such a higher plane than us, who emptied Himself
to become one of us, who allowed Himself to be killed by us, to reassure us
that judgment happens in His time and not in ours, that is the very definition
of Good News.
It
is the Good News because it tells us that it is still not too late. God’s grace does not operate on human
timetables. God’s grace is simply too
big for that. God’s grace is too
sweeping and powerful to be placed in a box and tied up neatly with a bow. It sure is tempting for us to try to present
it that way, but as with all temptations, it is something we must resist.
And
resist it we will. Because, as C.S.
Lewis writes, there will still be people whose hearts are so hardened that at
some point God has to say to them, “Fine. Your will be done, not mine.” And if our will is to resist the temptation
to play God, I have to think that God will reward us.
Think
of the homeless, alcoholic veteran who made a choice for himself to resist
other forms of temptation: the illness of addiction. Watch the video for yourself, and see his
transformation from a grayed, fraying being into this vibrant, luminous man,
and you will see someone who has boarded the bus from hell into heaven. It is very much possible. And in Christ, it always will be.
May it be so. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
Longview, Washington
November
17, 2013
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