Good Friday: The Cross as Descent into Hell

Scripture:

Then Pilate handed Jesus over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Judeans.” Many of the Judeans read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. 

 

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it.” This was to fulfill what the scripture says,

“They divided my clothes among themselves,
    and for my clothing they cast lots.”

And that is what the soldiers did.

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

~John 19:16-19, 23-30

If by chance you grew up in the Presbyterian Church, and learned the Apostle’s Creed as a young person, you may have memorized the traditional version. In it, Jesus

suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell…”

I’d never heard those last words until I was a Presbyterian in my 30’s. I was shocked. I could not imagine what it meant. How could it be that Jesus had descended into hell? I’d grown up with the Ecumenical “descended to the dead” language and the idea that Jesus for any reason might have spent his time in hell was not something I’d ever heard before.

Soon, it began to make some sense to me. Subjected to one of the most painful modes of execution, Jesus did indeed descend into the kind of hell that the Roman Empire imposed on those found guilty of the most egregious crimes, crimes against the state. Jesus, according to the gospels, suffered on the cross for about six hours, but it was not uncommon for the victims to linger there for days.

It was not unlike the lynching tree, so well-known to Americans, especially the American south. Except, we’ve largely forgotten. But it was startlingly like the cross. People were lynched for any reason and for no reason. They were lynched because the authorities were afraid of them or because they looked at someone—usually a woman—in the “wrong way.” Like crucifixion, lynching was a public spectacle. People made a day of it, like going to the carnival, packing their lunches, all to watch a Black person (usually a Black boy or man) being tortured to death in ways that are too horrific to recount here.

“The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other,” according to late theologian James Cone, “… instruments of punishment reserved for the most despised people in society.”[i]  We American Christians need the lynching tree to remind us of the hell on earth to which Black Americans have subjected, to keep before us the reality of suffering, and to call us, as Cone advises, to take the crucified one down from the cross; to take the lynched ones down from the tree. Release the captives from hell.

Which leads us to the other meaning for this image of the cross: “descent into hell” means that other hell, too. The history of hell is a complicated one. God’s people in the Old Testament had no concept of an eternal place for punishment. “Sheol” means the realm of the dead—a place of sleeping with the ancestors, and forgetfulness. Even God forgets them, once the dead are gone to Sheol.

The New Testament presents a different understanding. One word for hell we find there is “Gehenna.” It comes from the Hebrew name for the valley of Hinnom, a place near Jerusalem where child sacrifice was once practiced, where, in Jesus’ day, garbage and refuse were burned—surely, hell on earth. By the time the gospels were written, “Gehenna” had come to mean a fiery place of judgement and punishment, a place where the souls of ungodly were sentenced to reside for all eternity.

Here is what the creed means, when it says, “Jesus descended into hell.” The first letter of Peter describes it: “[Christ] was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,  in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison…” (1 Peter 3:18-19). In other words, Jesus Christ brought the Good News to those who were trapped in eternal punishment. He brought them release.

And so we stand—or perhaps we kneel—before the cross, on which is hung our salvation. And we know that even if we are in hell—the kind of hell we can experience on this earth in the midst of illness, or grief, or betrayal, or estrangement… the kind of hell that results from abuse, or prejudice, or vile injustice…the kind of hell that takes its toll on our heart and soul, and on our mind and strength… whatever sort of hell we find ourselves in, we can know this. There is no place, either on earth, or in the heavens above the earth, or in the hell below the earth, where God’s love and presence can’t be found. On the cross, Jesus joins us in whatever private hell we may be enduring, and will not leave our side, but instead whispers in our ears the truth that cannot be eradicated by anyone or anything:

Beloved, beloved, beloved.

So lay your hell at the foot of the cross. Lay your grief there, your pain and your loss. Your anger and your hurt. Your sore but still-beating heart. Leave it all there, and remember: you are Beloved. Hell is no barrier to Jesus. He will stay with you there. And then he will take you home.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 


[i] James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 161.