Sermon for Advent 4, Year A (12-21-25)
Restore us, O Lord of hosts; show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.
Well, folks. Here we are the last Sunday of Advent. This year as we've committed to being clear-eyed about the truth that Advent isn't really about Christmas - but rather Christ's next appearing - we've been focusing on what have been traditionally called The Four Last Things: death, judgement, heaven - and today - hell. Now that I think of it, maybe that has something to do with why I haven't seen too many new faces here these last few weeks...
At any rate, we might as well finish out strong. So, to hell with it!
All jokes aside, this is an important topic to explore even if it feels like a weird time of year to explore it. Because, in my estimation the broader church has developed over the years a kind of theological hellscape, a spectrum of Sheol if you will. On one end we see and hear that hell is - more than anything - God's greatest tool of persuasion. An ever-present, fiery threat of punishment for those who would dare to stray from the teachings of the church, and home to supernatural beings who stepped of line... upstairs, if you catch my drift. This kind of hell is very much used as a weapon in many cases. It does a lot of damage, and (rightfully so) it turns many people away from the faith.
On the other end of this diabolical data set find a) either a purely metaphorical hell, or b) no hell at all. (Only an outdated concept invented by the medieval church to ensure conformity to its social and political agenda of the time, thank you very much.) This is the spot where we'll hear things like: hell is of our own making, hell is here and now, hell is a state of mind. Or, we just don't ever talk about hell at all.
And I'll admit that I was born on one end and migrated my way pretty much all the way over to the other end of this theological spectrum. But like most things theological, my deconstruction and reconstruction journey is pulling me somewhere toward the middle. Maybe that's because I've seen and experienced too much that feels like hell - or at least the power of hell - to be able to remain convinced that it doesn't exist at all.
Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
In his short fictional work The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis invites us to consider that there is a relationship between heaven and hell. Not based on judgment and punishment, but on grace and choice. Here's the SparkNotes version: Every so often, a bus picks up a group from hell (which is basically just a more boring, super-isolating, grey and gloomy version of our world), and this group of souls is invited to go to heaven. However, most of these souls soon find out that heaven is real. Very real. Like, realer than real. So real, in fact, that the grass is like hard, sharp, immovable glass. And the water is so real that it's solid to these un-transfigured souls. And most notably, the further these souls follow their angelic welcome party into that heavenly country, the more it hurts. So, when offered an eternity of freedom, and joy, and perfect union with their Creator, let's just say some of these souls decide to get back on the bus and go back to the comforts of hell.
I could go on all day about this book, but honestly you could read it faster. And you absolutely should. But the point of interest for us today, I think Lewis would say, is that hell is self-chosen. People are not forced into separation from God; they cling to habits, resentments, and self-centered desires that make communion with God difficult if not impossible. Heaven is offered freely, but it requires surrender.
Show us the light of your countenance, Oh Lord God of hosts, and we shall be saved.
The interesting thing about beholding the radiant face of God is that sometimes - like the sun - its warmth also burns. It is ever good, ever holy, ever inviting, and ever healing. But the light of God's countenance seeks the real you. The real us - unblemished by sin and self-deception. So it can have a tendency to burn, and understandably we may choose to look away. The choice is always ours, and hell will always welcome us back.
I caught a glimpse of the power of hell this last week. Not just in the reality and direct aftermath of the Brown University shooting, but more so in the comment section. As a general rule I don't spend much time in the comment section of, well, anything really. Because akin to Dante' famous Inferno each website should post above its comment section "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." And indeed that is what I saw. In the breathtaking callousness and hateful suspicion of so many of these comments, I saw the sheer abandonment of hope. And the assumption that we have been forsaken - that we are God-forsaken. Hell. That's what I kept thinking: this must be hell, or at least a glimpse of it.
This sentiment echoes, of course, the words of a dying Christ on his cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And alas, there it is. The reason why we need to stop at hell the Sunday before Christmas. It servers as a reminder, dear friends, that the powers of hell: the temptation to accept its sinister invitation to be forsaken, to abandon all hope, and to do all in our power to ensure others join us in that forsaken place - these powers of hell were checked the second an infants cry rang out into our world.
God would descend into our hell - of our own making or otherwise - and reach out a hand to invite us back to God's own reality: where hope, peace, joy, and love are realer than real. This act is completed at his resurrection, and it is carried out on his cross. But it is begun at his birth - the first Advent of his transfiguring light, small and lying in a manger.
Show us the light of your countenance, Oh Lord God of hosts, and we shall be saved.
Amen.
