First Sunday after Trinity, 2010

Text: St. Luke 16:19-31

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“The Harrowing of Hell”

Where do we go when we die? Isn’t that the question of questions? What happens to our souls when they depart from our bodies at the point of death? That is the age-old question. For the believer in Christ it seems like an easy answer: we go to Heaven. Isn’t that obvious? But when we read passages like the one we had as our Gospel lesson this morning, we aren’t quite as sure.

Remember the story. A certain rich man, who is anonymous in the text, but who has come down through the ages to be known by the name of Dives, died one day. And while his body was buried, the text says, his soul went to a place called Hades. Not Hell, but Hades, although the part of Hades where this rich man’s soul was confined was yet a place of fiery torment. A poor man named Lazarus also died, and his soul was carried by the angels to a place of blessing and peace called “Abraham’s bosom,” and there was father Abraham, along with, presumably, the souls of all the other Old Testament patriarchs and saints: Isaac and Jacob, and so on and so forth. And apparently these two places—or these two sides of this one place—were within eyesight of each other, because Dives cries out to Abraham to send Lazarus that he might dip his finger in water and cool his tongue. But Abraham responds that that would be impossible, for a great chasm was fixed between them, and neither could Lazarus pass over to him, nor could he pass over to them.

So what is this place? Does it still exist, and is this where we go when we die?—hopefully to the one side and not the other.

Well, as we read in the text, Jesus calls the place Hades—at least that’s what He calls the part of the place where the rich man’s soul was imprisoned. Hades is the Greek word that translates the Hebrew word Sheol in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament Sheol is where all people go when the die—the righteous and the unrighteous. We remember Jacob saying, when he thought his son Joseph had been killed by wild animals, “I shall go down to Sheol to my son, morning” (Gen. 37:35). It’s kind of a nebulous concept, and it’s not always clear how the word should be translated in the Old Testament. Sometimes it seems to be used simply as a synonym for death or the grave. But at other times there’s a least the hint that it’s referring to a realm or an existence beyond the grave—often as a place of punishment. Job says, “Drought and heat snatch away the snow waters; so does Sheol those who have sinned” (Job 24:19). God says in Deuteronomy, “A fire is kindled in my anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol...” (Deut. 32:22). But it’s also the place from which the righteous have the hope of being redeemed. The psalmist writes, “But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (Psm. 49:15). Later in the prophets you get the idea that it is a place of holding before the great Day of Judgment. Isaiah says, “On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth. They will be shut up in a prison, and after many days they will be punished” (Is. 24:21-22).

None of this is to say that concept of Sheol or the afterlife in the Old Testament always had the element of punishment attached to it. God promised to Abraham that when he died he would go to his fathers in peace (Gen. 15:15). When the saints died in the Old Testament it was said that they were “gathered to [their] people” (Gen.35:29; 49:33). There’s at least the beginning of the idea of the souls of the departed saints being brought to the bosom of Abraham.

By the time of the writing of the apocryphal books, that is during the time between the Old and New Testaments, the idea of Sheol or the afterlife had developed to the point that it very clearly resembles what we have described for us in Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus. In the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras there is long description of the torments of the souls of the ungodly and the blessings of the souls of the godly during the period between death and the Day of Judgment that will usher in the age of the world to come. There’s even an apocryphal section of the book of Jeremiah that speaks of the Lord going down into this place of death to deliver his people. “The Lord, the Holy One of Israel remembered his dead ones who slept in the dust of the earth, and descended to them to preach his salvation and save them.” Keep that in your bonnet for just a minute.

So by the time Jesus came on to the scene, many of the Jews of His day believed in state of being after death, before the final resurrection, in which the soul existed apart from the body in a condition of blessing or of misery, called in Hebrew Sheol or in Greek Hades—the abode of the dead, the underworld. Additionally, that part of Sheol or Hades where the souls of the righteous dwelt was referred to as Abraham’s Bosom or Paradise. Isn’t that interesting? For what did Jesus say to the thief on the cross just before He died? “This day you will be with Me in Paradise.” He didn’t say, “This day you will be with Me in Heaven,” but “in Paradise.” What do you think he meant? He meant that He, Jesus, was really going to die, and that, like all human beings before Him, His soul was going to be separated from His body and go to the place that all souls went after death—to Sheol, to Hades, to the abode of the dead, to the underworld. The promise to the thief was that, because he believed in Him, he would go with Jesus to the side of blessing and peace, to Abraham’s bosom, to Paradise.

We give expression to this part of our faith that Jesus went down to the abode of the dead in the Apostles’ creed. Unfortunately there’s a little bit of a translation problem, because there we say, “He descended into hell.” Well, Jesus did not descend into hell in the technical sense. He did not descend into gehenna, which is the word used in the New Testament to refer to the place of eternal punishment—the Lake of Fire, as it’s called in the book of Revelation. The word in the creed is not gehenna, but inferi, meaning “the beneath places” or “those below.” What we’re saying in the creed is that Jesus descended into Sheol, into Hades, and undoubtedly not to the side of suffering and torment, but to the side of blessing and peace to be with all the souls of all the righteous saints who preceded Him. Because Jesus really did die. That’s what we’re saying in the creed.

So what was Jesus doing there in Hades during His short visit between His death and resurrection? Well, He was probably having a good time with Abraham and Lazarus and all the other saints. But more than that, St. Peter tells us that He preached to the spirits in prison (1 Pet. 3:19). He went on a preaching tour. Not that he was preaching a second chance to the souls awaiting judgment. That’s not the word Peter uses. He was not “evangelizing” the souls in prison; literally He was “proclaiming” to the souls in prison. That’s what He was proclaiming. He was proclaiming His victory. He was proclaiming His victory over sin and death—that by His death He had conquered death and the devil who had the power of death. He was proclaiming His victory over the grave, over Hades itself.

So back to our million dollar question: Is Hades—even the part of Hades called Paradise—is that where we go when we die? No. Why? Because Jesus didn’t stay in Hades. Jesus rose again the third day. Jesus didn’t just proclaim His victory over death; he proved it by rising out of Hades and being resurrected in His glorified body. And the apostle Peter proclaims, in his great Pentecost sermon, that this was all in fulfillment of a prophecy of David in the 16^th Psalm, where David, speaking in the name of Christ, says:

“I foresaw the Lord always before my face,

For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.

Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad;

Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope.

For You will not leave my soul in Hades,

Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.”

Forty days after His resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven to the right hand of the Father. And with Him, we believe, went all those Old Testament saints who had been looking forward to Him and had been waiting for Him to open the way into heaven. You see, before His death, resurrection and ascension, the way was not yet open. The one perfect sacrifice that could bring us near to God had not yet been offered, had not yet ascended to the Father. But now it has. So the apostle Paul says, “When He ascended on high, he led a host of captives…” For “In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? (Eph. 4:8-9). Did you get that? “When He ascended on high, he led a host of captives” with Him. It’s called “the Harrowing of Hell” by ancient tradition, and that’s the title of the icon on the front cover of you bulletin this morning. If you can hear it: Jesus brought Paradise with Him into Heaven when He ascended. Isn’t that an amazing thought!

One little part of the evidence that this is actually what happened is that strange detail that St. Matthew records in His Gospel, that at the time of Christ’s resurrection, “the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many’ (Mt. 27:53). Isn’t that wild! Here’s great-grandpa Joseph and uncle Ezekiel walking around again. Well, what do you think happened to them? I don’t believe they were raised only to die again. For it is written, that “it is appointed unto men once to die” (Heb. 9:27). Once! And so our belief is that they ascended with Christ when He ascended, because the way was then opened for them.

And the way is now opened for us as well. So as it relates to us and to our deaths, the apostle Paul says, “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). Well, where is the Lord? He’s at the right hand of the Father in Heaven forever. That means when we die, our souls go, not to Sheol or Hades, but to Heaven to be with the Lord, and our bodies go to the earth in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection at the last day.

That resurrection will happen, and it will be a resurrection of all souls, including those souls who are still in that place of torment awaiting the great judgment day—the judgment day that St. John looked ahead to and saw in his visions in the book of Revelation:

“Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away… and I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire [as Paradise was brought into heaven]. This is the second death,” says John. “and any one not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:11-15).

That’s gehenna. That’s hell, in its most true and awful sense. And it’s still a future reality for those who are being held against the day of judgment. But for us who die in Christ there is the confident expectation that we will sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven, with all the company of heaven, and with Jesus at the head of the table, as we await the new heavens and new earth and the resurrection of our bodies in glory. That’s where we go when we die. Thanks be to God. +