Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary time cycle C

Luke 13:22-30

President Calvin Coolige was approached by a friend of his who was a senator.  The friend was very angry, foaming at the mouth, red in the face.  “Do you know what Senator Barkely said to me?” he exclaimed.  “He told me to go to hell.”  Coolidge looked at him calmly. “Well,” he said, “I’ve read the rule book and you don’t have to.”  

We don’t think about hell very much these days.  Someone I know says that he doesn’t believe in hell because a good God wouldn’t send any of his creatures to eternal fire.  Another person I know says he doesn’t believe in God because the God in the Bible seems to imply that he is going to send people to hell.  And just recently our President Trump speculated that he might be able to get to heaven if he could bring peace to some of the conflicts going on in the world.  He admitted that he was “at the bottom of the totem pole”.  If hell doesn’t exist, why should the Church send out missionaries?  Or for that matter why should there even be a church?

One of John Paul II’s favorite theologians, Hans Urs Von Balthazar, wrote a book called “Dare we hope that all men will be saved?”  IT’s a very dense book, but I think what he said basically is that there has to be a hell, it says so in scripture over and over again; and the possibility is always there for every living person, but who knows what God’s mercy is capable of, and so we can hope that all men will be saved.  Another argument he put forth was that Christ came to save all men, and if he doesn’t, doesn’t that make him a failure?  And God can’t be a failure.  Today, Jesus gives us some insight into this very difficult doctrine for us moderns to accept.

First, he says the kingdom will be difficult to enter.  Our faith is difficult.  A professional musician needs to be disciplined as does a star athlete.  If you are a Christian, there is a cross for you.  The door is open and we are all invited, but some will not accept the invitation.

Second, he notes that the time is short.  Saint Paul urges the Corinthians “now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation”. The day is coming when we can’t make the choice anymore.  God gives us freedom to reject his grace.

Third, Jesus tells us that there is no favoritism.  In today’s gospel, those who ate and drank with him and listened to his teaching feel that they have a leg up.  But even membership in the Church is no guarantee, even being a cardinal or the pope is no guarantee.  We can’t get to heaven just because we are insiders.

Fourth, Jesus tells us that we will be surprised by who is in the kingdom and who isn’t.  Some of the people you might think belong in hell will be in heaven and vice versa. 

Some of us think of hell as a place where you stand around being poked by demons with pitchforks and there is a lot of fire.  But various saints have given us some alternative visions.  St. Theresa of Avila, for example, saw hell as a dark place where you were completely alone and couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything except that you had a deep sense of dread.  Saint Francis of Rome in her visions saw hell pretty much as Jesus described it in the story of the Rich Man and Lazerus.  And you can find many other visions on the internet.  Dante, in his epic poem “Inferno” traveled to the bottom of hell where he saw Satan frozen up to the waste in a lake of ice.  Below Satan was heaven, and Satan was beating his wings frantically trying to get away from God, so much so that he kept the lake frozen.  

But there are two other ideas to consider.  One is that there will be people who don’t want what God is offering.  Heaven is like a brilliant light that is painful if you aren’t prepared, because it shows you everything that you have to get rid of to enter the kingdom.  So some will not want heaven, preferring their own darkness.  Another is that hell is a place where you get everything you want -- and you realize, maybe after a few years or hundreds of years, that what you really want, God, you can never have.  

The Church still believes in hell, the possibility that we can be separated for all time from God’s love.  But the Church teaches that God gives us the freedom to choose him, and if we don’t he respects that freedom.   The angels, and I think the bible talks about one third of all the angels who followed Satan into hell, had the opportunity to make that choice once and for all, at their creation.  We have the opportunity to make the choice during our lifetimes.  It’s the most important choice we will ever make.