John 18:1—19:42
March 21, 2008
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the CCU Good Friday Service at First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
On this day Jesus was horribly, brutally crucified, but what about tonight and tomorrow? What was Jesus doing in that dark, silent interim time between his crucifixion today, Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter? Where was he? Was he simply lying in the grave? He was crucified, dead, and buried. Those are the grim facts that gather us here tonight. But what comes next?
We in the Baptist church rarely use creeds to summarize our Christian faith. We like to say that our faith is contained in the entire Bible. But many other churches in the CCU use the Apostles Creed. You can read this creed in the inside back cover of one of our Chinese hymnals. It reads,
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
Jesus not only suffered, not only was crucified and died, but they also say, “He descended into hell.” This idea comes from 1 Peter 3:18-19 which says that Christ was “Put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit in which also he went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison.” While it may be difficult to say precisely what Peter means by this statement, from a very early time the church interpreted this to say that Jesus went to hell in that time between the Friday of his death and the Sunday of his resurrection.
Hell
Some of us here find it difficult to use the word, “hell” thinking that it is often used as a swear word. Hell is that place where God is not. Hell, a place that is characterized by the absence of God, is the opposite of heaven, the place of the presence of God.
Jesus descended into hell. What was he doing there? The church believed that Jesus went there to preach, to proclaim good news to the captives, to those who had died, before he had come to earth.
Some of the Protestant reformers said that Jesus went there to rescue those who had died, those who had lived and died before his Incarnation. Martin Luther said that Jesus went to hell to fight with the devil, as the leader of a military expedition sent out against the “prince of evil.”
John Calvin took the phrase “descended into hell” more metaphorically. Calvin thought the phrased referred to the doubt, the fear, and the questioning that Jesus went through before his death. When he prayed in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was in virtual hell. Hell is separation from God, the agony of having to face suffering and death without feeling the near presence of God.
The twentieth-century Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar said that in that time between Good Friday and Easter, on Holy Saturday, Jesus descended into “solidarity…with those who have lost their way from God.” On Friday, on the cross, Jesus deals with all of those who have estranged themselves from God in this life. Those on the top and those on the bottom, the rich and the poor, all of those who turned away when God offered them the hand of grace, these are the ones who now become the objects of God’s special care. For instance, Jesus reaches out to the two thieves who were crucified with him, reaches down to his mother, the other women, and to the Roman soldiers, and again offers the hand of grace.
According to Von Balthasar, on Saturday, Holy Saturday, this work of Christ continues, as Christ descends into the loneliness, down into the darkness, and in the total absence of God. Jesus descended into hell.
In due respect for other religious traditions, I wonder sometimes how could one worship a God who was immune to pain and suffering? As Chinese Christians, we have a heritage of coming from Buddhist roots. When we enter Buddhist temples, we see the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing around his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world.
Every time I see a statue of Buddha, I am reminded of that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through his hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness when he descended into hell.
This is the God for me. This is the God for us. Jesus Christ who experienced the hellish cruelty on earth and descended into hell and laid aside his immunity to pain. He suffered for us. I want a God who can understand what we are going through and would even descend into hell to find us.
Even in Hell
While we don’t talk today much about this rather obscure Christian belief and while this belief is not much discussed in scripture, it’s a wonderful affirmation of faith for us to ponder on this Good Friday. Within this belief that Jesus “descended into hell” is a great affirmation of God’s love.
No matter how dark, mysterious, and difficult life gets, Christ is there. No matter how messed up you are right now, Christ is here for you. No matter what you do to remove yourself from the loving reach of God, you cannot do anything that will utterly, irretrievably remove you from God. Even in hell, even there, there is God’s loving reach. Because Christ is there, even in hell, so is the love of God.
Fred Craddock tells a story about playing “hide and seek.”
In the gathering dark of summer evenings, in the great yard, amid the circling woods, we played, “lost and found.” There was always one kid who spoiled the whole game by being too good at hiding himself. Every kid ought to know that in lost and found, you want to hide well, but not too well. Eventually, you must be found. But this kid was great in hiding. He went away out beyond the bounds, out into the dark woods. Or he would slither down into the basement, where nobody would go to look for him.
Do you know somebody who, even though not a kid, is really good at hiding?
Well, anyway, one by one, people would be found.
“Why, shucks, you found me,” each would say. But this kid would never be found. And so we would go on with another game.
He would eventually come back, furious.
“The purpose of the game is hide and seek” he would lecture us, “Not hide and give up.”
But there are some people who are so good at hiding, so good at camouflaging themselves, so good at tucking themselves away where nobody would dare look, that they just ruin the game.
Jesus would not give up looking for you until he finds you. Even when you might not know him in this life, Jesus would descend into hell to rescue you with God’s hand of grace. Even in hell, even there, there is God’s loving reach. Because Christ is there, even in hell, so is the love of God.
On the cross Jesus demonstrates that there are absolutely no limits that he will go in order to get us, to grab us and find us and save us, to bring us home. That Jesus would descend even to hell to reach out to us is an affirmation that there is no place to which you can descend that Jesus will not descend to reach you.
Let me end with this parable. Once there was a man who had not lived as he should have. He eventually died and found himself in hell. When word got around that he was in hell, all of his friends came to the gates of hell and stood there, banging upon the huge locked gates saying, “Let him out, let him out!” Still, the huge gates remained firmly locked. Finally there appeared Jesus at the gates of hell, dressed in royal robes, saying, “Let me in! Let me in!” And the gates of hell swung wide open and he entered. This is our salvation.
Even when you might not know him in this life, Jesus would descend into hell to rescue you with God’s hand of grace. Even in hell, even there, there is God’s loving reach. Because Christ is there, even in hell, so is the love of God.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, on this somber day that we call “good,” we see what lengths you will go in order to save us. You reached toward us, suffered for and with us, stood beside us, shared our lot, bore our death, and even descended into hell to rescue us. While it would have been remarkable for you to just teach us, be patient with us, walk with us, suffer for us, what is most remarkable of all, Lord, you died for us.
Therefore, we gather to give thanks for your supreme sacrifice. Although we, by our actions and thoughts, are unworthy of such a gift, we praise you for your love for us, your love made manifest to us on this day, your reach toward the cross, and in turn granting us our salvation. Amen.