Good Friday March 21, 2008 My daughter, Laura, was born in Valdosta, Georgia. That was where the closest OB/GYN and decent hospital were from Live Oak, Florida where we lived. While I was in the hospital, in labor, we had an excellent nurse who we could tell was a pro at coaching and knowing what to do. As things progressed, we could tell that she was wondering why the doctor hadn’t arrived. In the meantime, a big storm brewed up and the lights went out in the hospital. The generator lights came on and we could hear good size hail popping against the windows. Just as my baby was being born, the doctor came bursting through the door saying, with great theatrics, as the nurse held the baby, “Y’all, I came through HAIL to get here and it looks like I’m just in time!” I hadn’t thought of this story in a long time until I began to focus on the obscure words that are quietly settled into our Christian creeds. In the older form the line reads, ‘He descended into hell.’ Now it says, ‘He descended to the dead.’ He descended into hell. This creedal statement from the Apostles Creed originates in I Peter 4:6 which says that Jesus took the good news of God’s forgiving love even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in their earthly lives as everyone is judged, they could be alive in the spirit as God is. He descended into hell. What is hell to you? There are many images. Old paintings from medieval times of black rocks and red flames, human bodies writhing in red, hot agony. I remember one painting in which all you could see was human arms reaching up out from a dense blackness. There is a parable about hell that goes like this: Once there was a man who had not lived as he should have. He eventually died and found himself forlorn in hell. When word got around that he was in hell, all of his friends came to the gates of hell that had him locked away. And they stood there, banging upon the huge locked gates saying, “Let him out, let him out!” Still the huge gates remained firmly locked. Finally there appeared One who said he also was the man’s friend. This friend had come on the man’s behalf. He went up to the gates and said, “Let me in! Let me in!” And the gates of hell swung wide open and he entered. What is hell? It is when you can’t get to God and you feel like God can’t get to you, or sometimes in our darkest moments, we feel like God won’t come to us. Jesus was in virtual hell in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was in agony and was having to face suffering and death without feeling the near presence of God. He was in hell when he cried out in the words of the psalm from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ He was in his own hell on the cross and he cried out from there in solidarity with all those who have lost their way from God. On this day and tomorrow, when our church is stripped of all signs of the living Christ, it is natural to feel his absence. But this time, his time on the cross and in the grave, is a time actually when we can realize his love extending to us with its greatest ferver. We believe that God, our Creator, reached out to us in entering into our humanity in the person of Jesus. We believe that God in Spirit continues to extend to us in the resurrection that raises us to a new humanity. But, today and tomorrow, we can be assured that God in Christ reaches out to us and enters in with us to our places of death and separation. The next time you are in hell – A hell of your own making, The hell of a wrong done against you, The hell of a broken heart, The hell of being alone, The hell of having no hope, The hell of being enveloped in fe Of being in a hospital bed, Wounded somewhere in this world in a ditch Tortured for your beliefs, Imprisoned for killing someone Imprisoned by your own secrets… The next time you are in hell, you can pray the prayer amended by Jesus on this Good Friday: Our Father who art in hell… with me and with this world, Our Father who art in hell, Hallowed be thy name. (Holy is your presence here) Thy kingdom come. (Open these gates and enter in.) Thy will be done. (Bring in with you your love and forgiveness and healing.) On earth as it is in heaven. Perhaps that silly south Georgia doctor was a prophet in disguise. Now I hear Jesus borrowing his words: I came through HAIL to get here and it looks like I’m just in time!