William H. Willimon - "Hell, No" (October 1, 2000)

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-	Today's gospel has some stark alternatives.	0:13
	Jesus says make a choice.	0:20
	Choose this day where you will be.	0:24
	It is better to mutilate yourself,	0:28
	to cut off your arm, to pluck out your eye	0:31
	than to end up in hell.	0:34
	Why does Jesus speak thus?	0:39
	I will remember a few years ago we have a Sunday	0:43
	called a Student Preacher Sunday	0:47
	and Jesus was in a very similar mode in another gospel,	0:50
	the text assigned for that Sunday	0:54
	where Jesus says if I tell you	0:57
	you've heard it said you shouldn't commit adultery,	0:59
	I say if you've looked at a woman lustfully	1:01
	you've committed adultery.	1:04
	If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out,	1:06
	if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.	1:08
	The student preacher selected for that day	1:13
	began his sermon, I stand before you as a one eyed,	1:15
	one handed preacher.	1:20
	Why does Jesus talk like this?	1:24
	Scholars reassure Jesus often spoke in hyperbole,	1:28
	exaggerated overstatement to grab our attention.	1:35
	Rabbis often spoke in hyperbole.	1:39
	Jesus says it is better to go	1:44
	into the kingdom of God mangled	1:46
	without an eye, without a arm than to have	1:48
	your whole body cast into the fires of hell.	1:52
	A whole healthy body is good.	1:58
	But Jesus says even this is an asset worth sacrificing	2:03
	in the tug between the kingdom of God and hell.	2:09
	Now of course around here we don't talk much about hell,	2:15
	hell is not one of the more uplifting Biblical themes,	2:20
	but in today's gospel Jesus undeniably gives us hell.	2:26
	He doesn't really call it hell.	2:32
	In the text it is Gehenna, the Aramaic name,	2:35
	place name, Gehenna.	2:39
	Gehenna is an actual place just outside the walls	2:42
	of Jerusalem, this isn't Dante's Inferno.	2:45
	He's talking Gehenna.	2:50
	It's a place in the Hinnom Valley South of Jerusalem	2:53
	just outside the walls.	2:57
	Centuries before Jesus Gehenna had been a place	2:59
	of pagan idolatry, human sacrifice occurred there,	3:02
	and maybe that's how it got its first bad name.	3:07
	And maybe that's why by the time of Jesus	3:11
	Gehenna had become for Jerusalem the town dump.	3:14
	Rubbish, bones, decaying carcasses, smoldering fires	3:19
	filled this desolate valley of Gehenna.	3:24
	And Jesus says it would be better for you	3:29
	to pluck out your eye and go into the kingdom of God	3:32
	sans eyes than to have your whole body thrown	3:37
	on the rubbish heap of Gehenna.	3:42
	I can't imagine in Jesus day there was that much	3:48
	rubbish to be thrown away before plastic bags	3:51
	and old tires.	3:54
	If Gehenna was a detestable rotten smelling	3:57
	disgusting place in Jesus day	4:00
	I'm sure it would pale in the comparison	4:04
	with the Durham Dump.	4:07
	Each year each of us produces something over	4:10
	two tons of rubbish.	4:13
	Years ago Vance Packard wrote a book, The Waste Makers,	4:17
	in which he first noted we are a throw away society.	4:23
	A society that not only produces and consumes,	4:28
	but because of that also wastes.	4:31
	We cast off, our economy is a waste producing mechanism.	4:36
	As a teenager my friends and I would sometimes drive	4:44
	to the dump outside of town and when the wind was right	4:48
	and we could stand it we would wander amid the refuse	4:52
	of this culture.	4:56
	It was amazing to us what people would throw away.	4:59
	We delighted in discoveries, a perfectly good bicycle	5:04
	needing only a chain, two new tires, a handlebar.	5:09
	A stack of vinyl records someone had thoughtlessly	5:14
	heaved away, most of them cracked.	5:16
	A crate of mayonnaise hardly used.	5:20
	Later in a course in Biblical Archeology	5:25
	I learned that the most important thing	5:29
	at an archeological dig is broken pottery.	5:32
	Archeologists use these pot charts to date	5:37
	the various levels of a city's refuse.	5:41
	What will future archeologists poking around	5:46
	in our garbage think of us?	5:49
	I don't know if you've ever been to a rubbish site,	5:53
	perhaps even the thought repulses you.	5:56
	We desperately attempt to keep piles of rubbish	5:59
	out on the edge of town far from view,	6:03
	not in my backyard.	6:06
	However, there is something fascinating to me about a dump,	6:10
	'cause here is the end of the line,	6:14
	here is where everything finally ends.	6:17
	All objects of our affection, all household goods cast off.	6:22
	Everything ends here.	6:28
	Everything that having lost any shred of dignity or beauty	6:31
	or usefulness, everything ends in the garbage, Gehenna.	6:35
	At the town dump one may find something worth saving	6:42
	occasionally, but not often, 'cause things go to the dump.	6:46
	After they're so mangled and broken	6:51
	that there's no longer any shred of dignity	6:54
	or beauty about them.	6:58
	And Jesus says, you've got to take care,	7:01
	you've got to make your choices wisely.	7:05
	Choose this day where you are headed.	7:10
	Better to let go of some aspect of body or soul	7:13
	than to have both body and soul thrown	7:19
	to the garbage dump of eternity.	7:22
	Your life is precious, don't let your life be discarded	7:28
	upon the trash heap, God doesn't make garbage, people do.	7:31
	God made you.	7:36
	I once was in a place in one of our once great	7:40
	American cities and old Victorian houses lined the streets,	7:48
	but now the windows were boarded up	7:55
	and the doors and there were rotting cornices	7:58
	and trashy yards.	8:03
	This has once been a neighborhood where people had life.	8:05
	How can we do this to our cities?	8:11
	And what are the people that are forced	8:14
	by economic necessity to live in such ugliness?	8:17
	It does seem as if this society just has a way	8:23
	of producing Gehenna.	8:26
	I remember visiting a church member	8:31
	who had been committed to our state's hospital	8:34
	for the mentally ill.	8:37
	I found her after walking down circuitous sterile corridors,	8:39
	foul smelling, locked doors where periodically	8:46
	there came frightening sounds,	8:51
	and I found her sitting in a room,	8:54
	a room with only one steel bed and one steel chair.	8:56
	I forced a cheerful, well how are you today?	9:03
	And she responded, I've been dumped here.	9:07
	This is the end of the line for me.	9:13
	It filled me with horror.	9:19
	She had become refuse.	9:21
	The hospital was located in the Eastern part	9:24
	of the Capital City, but its address was Gehenna.	9:26
	And I've been in shoddy nursing homes,	9:33
	I've been in wards where we kept the chronically	9:36
	mentally ill, in places for the severely retarded,	9:40
	in centers for the chronically addicted,	9:45
	all the euphemistic names like North Side Care Center	9:49
	or Oak Hill or something like that,	9:53
	but in the light of today's scripture call them Gehenna.	9:56
	Gehenna is any hellish place where human beings	10:06
	are discarded left to rot, treated as refuse.	10:10
	And Jesus says no child of God's good creation	10:16
	is meant for Gehenna.	10:21
	Jesus stares our hellish possibilities in the face	10:23
	and rebukes them, he speaks words, it sounds strong, stark,	10:27
	but let's be honest, life has got its grim, hellish places,	10:33
	and right there Jesus plants his flag	10:39
	and sounds his clear call.	10:44
	If you, then it is better for.	10:49
	Do you remember that phrase in the ancient apostles' creed	10:57
	been long since removed by Methodist sensibilities.	11:02
	Where we say that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate,	11:07
	he was crucified, dead, and buried.	11:11
	The phrase he descended into hell.	11:15
	The third day he rose from the dead	11:20
	Jesus descended into hell.	11:24
	And the creed is referring to that ancient Christian belief	11:28
	that in those three days between his death	11:31
	and his resurrection he descended into hell.	11:33
	But when you think about it Jesus was always	11:37
	entering those places that we avoid,	11:40
	those places out on the margins, out on the edge of town.	11:45
	Those places that we put far from view	11:50
	so we don't have to see them and the people trapped therein.	11:53
	The shotty nursing homes, the pitifully ill equipped places	11:57
	for those suffering.	12:00
	These human warehouses for those who can't cope,	12:03
	the town dump, Gehenna.	12:07
	This year we've been in the lectionary	12:12
	in the Gospel of Mark, and in the Gospel of Mark	12:15
	we have seen Jesus confronting demons	12:18
	and touching the untouchable and rebuking devils	12:20
	and possessed people and healing and driving out	12:23
	all that dehumanizes and degrades.	12:26
	And when you think about it he spent most of his earthy life	12:31
	with those who had reached the end of the line.	12:34
	That's where he was.	12:41
	Once upon a time there was a man who wasted his life,	12:46
	wasted his God given talents,	12:50
	he abused himself, abused others.	12:52
	When he died, relatively early, body and soul,	12:55
	mind broken, he woke to his horror,	12:59
	trapped in the misery of hell.	13:04
	Let me out he plead, let me out he cried night and day	13:09
	banging against the locked gates of this place of torment.	13:15
	Let me out, let me out.	13:19
	Then he became aware on the other side	13:22
	outside there was a voice.	13:26
	Outside the door to Gehenna he heard a banging	13:29
	against the gates and a voice saying, let me in.	13:33
	Let me in.	13:39
	And it was the voice of Jesus.	13:42
	Jesus not only warns against but actively struggles	13:47
	to save us from Gehenna.	13:51
	Jesus uses strong language, hyperbole,	13:56
	to seek out the lost in hell.	14:01
	And those of us attempting to follow Jesus	14:05
	are not permitted resignation saying,	14:08
	well this is the end of the line for me.	14:11
	We must be faithful to the treasure that God entrust us	14:18
	in our lives, our talents, our responsibilities.	14:22
	A hand, an eye, a foot is meant as a gift	14:27
	to be expanded for glorious work,	14:31
	and yet corrupted by our sin better to cast it off.	14:34
	The church is made up of people who treasure their lives	14:41
	and not only their lives, but they are determined	14:46
	that we will not let our lives slide into nothingness	14:49
	and despair simply because some aspect of our lives	14:53
	we find difficult to control.	14:56
	I know a man that grew up in a family that had wine	15:01
	with each special meal.	15:06
	From time to time he enjoyed what he called	15:08
	a social drink at parties.	15:10
	In college he enjoyed the pleasures of alcohol	15:13
	and its sociability.	15:19
	But in midlife he found he was developing an addiction.	15:21
	He said while it was okay for him to take a drink,	15:27
	he thought, now it was like the drink was taking him.	15:31
	He became what we call a teetotaler.	15:37
	To this day he never touches the stuff.	15:40
	Even though he enjoyed fine wine	15:43
	and its attended pleasures he discarded this gift	15:45
	rather than risk losing his life.	15:50
	The church is to be the sort of place	15:56
	that keeps people from going to hell,	15:59
	keeps attempting to salvage, to rescue people,	16:02
	to preach to people that they are precious and beautiful	16:07
	and not destined for the ash heap of the world.	16:10
	And with Jesus we who follow Jesus	16:14
	ought to be instruments in bringing people back from hell.	16:17
	I once served a church that had been built	16:22
	over the town's early garbage dump.	16:25
	In the early days when the community	16:31
	was just a little cluster of houses	16:34
	with some residence people began dumping refuse,	16:36
	mostly beer cans from town bars	16:40
	in a swampy area out on the edge of town.	16:42
	Eventually as the town grew the city fathers	16:46
	prohibited dumping in the area.	16:50
	When it finally came time to build a church	16:53
	the only land that the church could afford	16:55
	was that land over the town dump	16:59
	graded over beer cans and other rested refuse	17:03
	and they built a church.	17:07
	And whenever you would plant a piece of shrubbery	17:09
	around that church you would dig down about six inches	17:12
	and hit beer cans.	17:15
	And I always took that as a parable,	17:17
	not only for that church, but the whole church.	17:20
	One of the best things the church does	17:24
	is to take the refuse of this world and build on it,	17:26
	making something beautiful out of that	17:30
	which the world has discarded is beyond redemption,	17:34
	'cause no one is beyond God's ability to redeem,	17:38
	and that includes you.	17:44
	There are things in your life, good things,	17:48
	that you maybe ought to think of discarding	17:53
	lest they be for you your destruction.	17:56
	And so I have two points, point one,	18:01
	choose this day whom you will serve,	18:06
	decide zealously to guard the good life	18:09
	God so graciously has given to you.	18:13
	What do you need to discard in order that you may	18:17
	salvage that best self that God has given you?	18:21
	Point two.	18:28
	Is there somebody you know that you need to go tell	18:31
	this message?	18:33
	Is there some great Gehenna you need to enter	18:36
	to bring out and redeem with Jesus the lost?	18:41
	Later after this stark teaching	18:50
	Jesus himself would reach the end of the line.	18:53
	He would be put up on the cross at a place called Calvary	19:00
	and if you stand even today at Calvary,	19:06
	if you get a high enough view which Jesus certainly had,	19:11
	you can see all the way over to Gehenna.	19:16
	If you want to meet Jesus the first place	19:24
	to look for him is in hell.	19:28

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "Hell, No" (October 1, 2000)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 0:14. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 19:36.
After describing the miserable status of hell, the preacher argues that Jesus doesn’t want anyone to go to hell, the place of waste and end; this is why Jesus went to hell himself, to save people from going there. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4bk1743j

Date:

October 1, 2000

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Biblical Book:

Mark

Chapter and Verse:

Mark 9:38-50

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-1033
ref10223_q51
uachapelsermaud
duke:321063
dcrau001677
ark:/87924/r4bk1743j
a0ec8525-18c7-4205-8ad5-98054e2bca1e

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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