Holy Saturday Reflection: Love Wins and Christ's Descent into Hell(Hades)

The one weak point of my confirmation classes was this little bit of the Apostles Creed: "He [Jesus Christ] descended into hell. On the third day he rose from the dead."  We sort of passed over descent into hell on to raising from the dead.  Whatever the descent into hell meant, what was important was raising from the dead.  I think my confirmation teacher mostly treated it as a synonym for death. A way to say that Jesus really died.  But mostly my recollection is that this phrase from the creed, and that it was supported by Scripture, the First Epistle of Peter and the Gospel of Matthew's account of Jesus Death and Resurrection, was simply a point of discomfort and puzzlement.

As Covenanter's both the Scripture and the Creed seemed to cause us a bit of discomfort.  These accounts seemed a bit too Roman Catholic, too close to the doctrine of purgatory.  A contradiction of the scripture that says " It is appointed once to die and then the Judgement" (Hebrews 9:27)  The "second chance" idea of purgotory that has also gotten people so worked up over Love Wins,  suggested by Christ's descent into hell, caused us to squirm even as we said it each communion Sunday.

Today Christ is in the Grave. Today Christ harrows Hades. Christ comes to Adam and Eve, and rescues them from deaths grip, saves them from the devil's grasp.  Love wins for them eternal life.  Here we find I think both the affirmation of our separation from God, that we can't repair by our own effort or even work up in ourselves in our own desires, and the hope of our universal salvation.  Adam and Eve are both particular persons and representative persons of our humanity.  If Christ does not go into hades and defeat death and bring them from up from the grave then we have no hope.  If our parents, if our humanity that first turned from God to our own selfish desires are loved by God so that God in Jesus Christ comes to them in that place of separation then who is beyond the reach of God's love?

Evangelicalism lacks this contemplation of Christ's descent into hell.  Thus to a large extent Evangelicalism must either affirm the existence of hell, or affirm universal salvation which denies hell.  On Holy Saturday when we affirm "He descended into Hell" we both affirm our separation from God even in death, and we can hope for Salvation of all. We can do both of these because, Love descended into the place of absence of love, in the place of the shades, and brings life and love.  Christ comes for Adam and Eve into the depths of Sheol, and thus affirms with the Psalmist that even in the depths of Sheol one can't escape God's love.

Presumably Adam and Even and many other's in Hades longed for and awaited the coming of Christ.  But if we are honest with ourselves we know that we shrink from God, and such a all consuming love.  We know the power of death, of our own destructive patterns, of the ways we hide like Adam and Eve from God, when God simply wishes to walk with us in the cool of the evening.

There is Hades, our separation from God, our willingly saying yes to death and destruction where we are ruled only by our passions.  And there is Christ come with blinding light crushing the gates of our imprisonment, dragging up our humanity, Adam and Eve, out of the depths, and thus the hope that we will like Adam and Eve reach out and grab hold of Christ's hands.

Reflecting on the Passion Masses

The past three evenings Reconciler has had Passion Masses, led also by the The Community of St Francis. The one of the three synoptic passion naratives were read each night. (For my thoughts on why do this and have services every day of Holy Week see this post.)

On one level nothing extraordinary happened. I didn't find them particularly moving services. We kept things fairly simple, one hymn, and only one reading (besides the Gospel) and the Psalm. We did not preach. Yet focused in this way and in simplicity I heard the passion narratives differently. Knowing I was hearing all three at once I was hearing the points of connection, the divergences , and the idiosyncrasies of each Evangelist.  Hearing all three passion narratives in succession of three days in the context of the Eucharist without a sermon, connected up the Eucharist to the Passion in a subtly profound way.

As I here attempt to give some account of my experience of these three services I am finding it difficult to put into words what happened within me.  I feel closer to the passion of Christ. Closer to the apostles as they were puzzled, then bewildered and then frightened.  Jesus appeared to me both as more human and more divine than I had heard before in my reading of the Gospels.  Jesus when put the question directly about his being the Messiah, neither deny's it, nor will he himself say that he is the Messiah.  All three Evangelist have Jesus say something like "You say so." in answer to that question.  This seems so human and yet a resolve and calm that has  different quality to it.

The other significant part of the services was that two of the priests of the community of St Francis and I con-celebrated at the altar.  I had never done something like this, at first I felt a little out of my element.  But it was cool leading a service with those who don't share and having differing liturgical actions from what I am use to.

Rob Bell and Love Wins: I get on the band wagon, though I'm resentful of it.

(Edited 4/21/2011, LEK)
No, I haven't read Bell's book Love Wins. I have seen the promotional video that flitted about the interwebs. I have kept tabs with the controversy. I have read this review.  At some point I'll pick it up, understand its a quick read and kind of like poetry.  I can dig that.

I remember when I first encountered Rob Bell;  I had finished up seminary at NPTS. One day a friend still in seminary asked me if I knew about Rob Bell and Mars Hill (Mars hill had been going about 3 years or so). I hadn't.  My friend showed me a video of Bell teaching on the Song of Songs.  The video was artsy, had high production value, and Rob Bell was compelling articulate and his speech had the cadence of spoken word poetry.  I liked the video.  The message itself, perhaps would stretch a particular type of Christianity one may call evangelical, but on the other hand I found the message itself unremarkable, and more or less typically evangelical.  It was in the presentation, the artistic approach to preaching and theology that was remarkable, and not what he was teaching.

I've had a sense that this pastor and church outside Grand Rapids had grown, and was a significant force, but Mars Hill and Rob Bell are in a segment of Christianity with which I am associated but largely uninterested in, if I am to be honest.  Primarily because as I experience it, founding an intentional Christian community drawing deeply from the well of the monastic tradition and starting a congregation that attempted to be ecumenical by simultaneously affiliating with three denomination just wasn't really in the orbit of the Christianity of Mars Hill and Rob Bell, which is American evangelical.  And for this reason Mars Hill and Rob Bell were simply to me unremarkable, or at least something you'd expect of a Graduate of both Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary. My wife has her MATS from Fuller and I did studies there before coming to NPTS.  Artsy, edgy evangelical theologians and pastors, were for a time the student body at Fuller Theological seminary, and Rob Bell was a lot less edgy than quite a few of the theology students I rubbed shoulders with at Fuller between 1996 and 1999, all claiming to be equally evangelical.

Love Wins then doesn't come out of nowhere and out of the blue.  I am a little surprised Rob Bell didn't write the book years ago, from what I can glean the ideas he puts out in this book where on the minds and lips of a great number of my fellow students at Fuller in the Late 90's, and they were in the air before that.  Granted this irked a certain type of evangelical then, as it clearly does now.  And one must keep in mind that when I told an elder at the Covenant church (that had been taken over by Fundamentalists) in 1995 that I had applied to Fuller Theological Seminary , he respond with "Isn't that a Liberal school?"  I had to suppress my laughter, and  a snide comment, about what he then thought of Claremont.  Of course even in the middle to late '90s Fuller was still reeling from its split from a segment of evangelicalism in the "Battle for the Bible" that occurred in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

This is a ramble but one in which I'm attempting to point out that this controversy is perhaps a battle that has been waging among evangelicals for much of my life, and certainly all my adult life. If this seems like a tempest in a teapot it is because it is. Rob Bell maybe saying some important things as my friend Tripp says, but if it seems shocking to you, either it means you have listened to much to the strident voices of one segment of not only American Christianity but of evangelicalism itself.

I also wonder if this controversy is also, over control of a dwindling population of people that are adherents of this particular form of American religiosity. One of the strengths of American evangelicalism and what makes it "American" is its lack of centralization, it is also what makes for the volatility of these sort of controversies.  There are no institutions or mechanisms for handing on theology and doctrine among evangelicals.  Certain institutions may so proclaim themselves and attempt to make themselves the arbiters of all things Fundamentalist and Evangelical, whether it be an association of groups or denomination or groups of theologians signing declarations.  As Fuller showed in the "Battle for the Bible" one can continue as an evangelical even after such declarations and denominations put you beyond the pale.

So, in the end as I discovered when I was at Fuller: I don't care.  I really don't care if anyone thinks I'm an evangelical or not, and I really don't care if this or that theology is or isn't "evangelical".  What I care about is something else entirely and because of that at times I tire of American Christianity and its tea pot tempests that  in the end misrepresent what I am seeking for as a Christian.

I have been in or on the edge of American Evangelicalism for much of my life.  The way American Evangelicalism raises these question, and navigates these disputes, and asserts theological claims, is irritating and flabbergasting to me because I don't think they actually get us closer to the truth! (sorry Rob Bell as much as I sympathise with your position, and as close as we may come).  I think if one looks at my own theology one would find more affinity with Bell than with his detractors.  But Rob Bell knew this would create controversy and he knew from what quarter of evangelicalism.  His promotional video for the book, was aimed it seemes to me towards two audiences: those who would object (he was sticking it in their theological craw) and those including the media who think evangelicalism and Fundamentalism are monolithic entities, and he has played upon that misunderstanding of the fractured reality of Evangelicalism.  I understand why, but I'd rather American Evangelicalism not be the reference point, whether it's Rob Bell's version or that of his opponents, for what is Christian.  For me this is a distraction from what should be our actual pursuit and questions.  Yet here I am writing on this, and yes I resent it!  I resent it because it makes me tired and consumes us and I don't think it should.

The place of ritual liturgy and worship services in the Spiritual life

The congregation I pastor meets in the chapel of Immanuel Lutheran Church and the community I lead lives in the Apartment in their tower and their old parsonage.   Yet the relationship is deeper than that.  Also, there are to other worshiping communities (besides Immanuel) that also worship in their building.  About 8 times a year we all worship together, Holy Week and Easter is the main time for doing this.
One of the priests of the Community of St Francis suggested some months ago that in addition to the Liturgy of the Three days that we also do Passion Masses Monday through Wednesday of Holy week.  I agreed, and so Reconciler and St Francis are leading these services.

As Holy Week has approached I have wondered why I said yes to such a thing, so that essentially Holy Week is full of worship services.  Sure there are perhaps aesthetic reasons, and that I have been associated with only one other church that had worship every day of Holy Week, and so it is for me a tad novel.  However, I am a person of my time, so I ask the question, what difference does it make? What relationship to life does this week full of worship service contemplating the death and resurrection of Christ have? Initially, I have to admit, I had difficulty answering this for myself.

Somehow it seems to me we, even I who love liturgy and ritual, we find ritual and liturgy to be divorced from life.  We have difficulty connecting a rhythm and cycle that repeats itself with life.  Oddly enough it was reading a book on a Feminist interpretation of the Apocalypse of St John, and reflecting on Apocalyptic that recalled for me why this is all so important and why I intuitively affirmed Father Greg's suggestion.  Partly this is an issue of time, and about a rhythm to time that isn't strictly speaking linear, however it also isn't about a merely cyclical time either.

Holy Week and Easter are the ordering rhythms of time for Christian faith, and thus for the church of the underlying reality of the World.  We return to it each and every Sunday, each Sunday being a little easter, each Sunday we remember the first Eucharist and the Last Supper (one in the same event) Jesus betrayal and death and Jesus' Resurection - its all there in the words spoken over bread and wine, that become for us Jesus Christ the bread come down from heaven.

Even so, time a linear time, time in which I age, time in which I will someday cease to be, time of clock and schedules wears me down.  In this time I can forget.  In this time I forget to live in the rhythms and time of God Holy Trinity and of the Christ.   Yet, in this time I am also striving to live out this other time, these other rhythms, this return to that time, this sabbath, that came before the 8th day of the Resurrection, also the first day of the week.  The Apocalypse shows us this other time, this time that overlays or underlays other time, in which I am to live.  This time of the 8th day, is to be manifest in my life, and thus break into the everyday life and time of the world as we know it.

A Pauline way of saying this is to say that I am to have the mind of Christ, that Christ is to be formed in me. The point of these rituals, of the rhythms and patterns of the Church year and its rites and ceremonies, isn't the ceremonies themselves nor the aesthetics of them, but that they are to reveal and form ourselves, in light of this other time.


I agreed to this intensive schedule of worship services and liturgies this coming week, because in them I enter a time that is to infect my day to day life.  In these liturgies Christ is to be formed in me.  I meditate on the Passion of Christ, for in that I find the mind of Christ and the Character of the God of the universe and time.  Especially in this week that begins with the contradictions of acclamation of Christ as Messiah and then the cries for his death from our mouths, forms us in the way of Christ, the Way of the Cross. This is a dark way that leads to our enlightenment, that forms us for another time and world, that is what this world and time was to be.