Isaiah 53:9-10; 1 Peter 3:18-20, 4:6
He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead.
(Preached January 16, 2022)
In this third week of diving into the Apostles Creed we start to hit a part of the creed that has been problematic for centuries. There have been debates about its addition and in some cases if it belongs in the creed at all.
He descended into hell.
We say this every week, have you ever thought to yourself, what does this mean?
We understand that after the crucifixion there were days between his death and the resurrection. Jesus makes no mention specifically of what happened in those days between. There are only glimpses of the mourning that happened for the people still alive.
So of course, as people who have to think through what happened with Jesus, the words were added to the creed, probably around the 4th century as a way to theoligize and speculate what was going on between the death and resurrection.
It was sometime around A.D. 400, in the writings of Rufinus, a monk and theologian, that the first mention of Jesus’ descent appeared. In A.D. 750, the Latin church made it an official part of the Creed. (Jodi Craiglow)
So what was the meaning and scripture that helped support this claim?
The Peter verses claim the descent was the place of the dead to preach the good news to all those who had died before him. It was a way of bringing all the people into redemption of God that lived before the time of Jesus. This was a time for Jesus to reclaim the place of the dead. It was also a claim that Jesus went to the underworld because he was really dead.
In those times there were a few ideas of what happens when you die. The Greek and Roman understanding of going to Hades (underworld) which was not a place of punishment. in Jewish culture the Sheol, the place under the earth, or Gehenna which was like the lake of fire, it was also a literal place, a dump outside Jerusalem. This is where the wicked live both body and soul.
Another view of the descent was about Jesus fighting the powers of evil in this time. Famous paintings particularly from Bosch hit Europe in the 16th century of the fiery pits of hell and Jesus breaking free from hell. Jan Van Eyck had a diptych (a three panel painting) of the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Again breaking the powers of hell and evil. These paintings are a victorious Jesus who freed himself and others as they follow him from hell.
Artists were all about the Latin and Catholic understanding of hell taken a little from scripture, with this tiny set of verses but apocryphal texts as well such as Enoch and the Gospel of Nicodemus, that helped spurn the ideology of hell that gets closer to the notion that is seen today.
The Reformation was partly started because the idea that hell and keeping people out of hell by paying a price for themselves and others went too far, so they challenged the church to look again at scripture, return to the Bible and see where it is that this is talked about. Do we need to focus so much on hell?
Jodi Craiglow stated, “John Calvin’s as well as that found in the Heidelberg Catechism, assert that “hell” shouldn’t be understood literally. Instead, Jesus’ separation from God on the cross constitutes ultimate suffering.”
So before we go to the next part of the creed.
What does hell mean?
If hell is a separation from God isn’t there a lot of hell on earth. The depths of human pain and suffering. The hell we put ourselves through the hold on our own notions of what is right and wrong. The hell that we have put others through by our judgement and leaving others to suffer.
John Howell points out that, We did not follow Christ safely behind the stonewalls. God calls us to follow Jesus into the teeth of evil itself, to find the lost, those who do not believe. And we dare not bore them, or live lives where our faith is only pasted superficially on the outside. Jesus goes to hell, and if we love him and want to be near him, we, too, go to hell, trusting that hell itself now belongs to Jesus, the abyss miraculously transformed into a road (Gregory the great image), Dantes “abandon hope, all who enter“ sign torn down.(79)
Jesus has redeemed us back to God and bore the paint of the world. God is a God With Us, a God For Us. Not just for one person but for the world. Not just for those who check all the right boxes but those who are the last and the least.
Whether there is a literal or symbolic hell, we proclaim that Jesus descended, but did not stay there.
On the THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN FROM THE DEAD.
We are a faith that believes in resurrection. Believes in the new day and that death is not the final answer.
Jesus rose again from the dead. As scripture tells us it was not done in a highly public way, but appeared first to the women who came to do their duties to the body of their friend and teacher. That Jesus was risen from the dead in body and spirit.
What is amazing is the stories that come after the resurrection of the encounters Jesus has with the women, the disciples, and others. Jesus entered rooms, disappeared, was able to be touched, and ate a meal with his friends. Jesus wasn’t a disembodied spirit but was present and yet the Spirit allowed him to be more.
Last week we read from Philippians and there is where the scripture continues: “therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bend, and heaven and on earth and under the earth“ ( Phil 2:9-10).
The grave was not the final word and that is meaningful today as we have said goodbye to loved ones. As we have seen death in people and even in churches. But as resurrection people with death comes opportunity for life.
Theologian Karl Barth who lived during WWII said this about resurrection, in his commentary about the Epistle to the Romans, he. “Understood the church is an empty hollow space, a canal through which flows Living water. Wherever graves are, there is resurrection. Where the church ends, there is it’s beginning. Where it’s right unrighteousness is exposed, there its righteousness dawns. The divine demolition of any church means that every church arises as a sign post, threshold, a door of hope…. Broken, the church can bear it’s message, for the gospel belongs to the church that is lost.”
Broken, Jesus was able to understand the brokenness of the world, the depths of human suffering so that he could bear our suffering as we are redeemed to him, with him, and because of him.
We are set apart as believers of the good news. Of the Love that was so deep that God separated Godself to live and die. To feel separated, isolated, fully alone, and then to rise and conquer that for the sake of the whole world. Not because of anything we have done but by the sheer grace of God.
We are the church that proclaims a risen Lord, there is trouble. There is suffering. There is loss. But then there are those words. And on the third day he rose.
Though sorrow may last for the night, JOY comes in the morning.
Jesus broke the power of sin and death. Jesus brought that which was separated from God, back to God.
We are to proclaim this good news, in our own lives and to share that all that breaks the world apart can be redeemed in Christ, all that is separate, is redeemed in Christ. We are embraced by a God who gave it up and then showed out. An Almighty God, who was God with us in Jesus, was born, suffered and died, was completely cut off and then rose from the dead. Jesus in those moments was the fully divine on earth as it is in heaven between the resurrection and the ascension.
Thanks be to God for what God did, is doing, and continues to do in the act of redemption through Jesus.
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