Hot… or cold… as Hell?

I thought today we could indulge in some nostalgia. It is almost Christmas after all. Faux nostalgia for most of you because you weren’t here, but for those of you who were here, ten years ago the question the people in those pews wanted to know whenever I climbed into this pulpit was: ‘why does he keep talking about Essex?’ Well I’d just moved from there and it isn’t all about you… So let’s see if you can do better this time.

Romford. Essex town since the 12th century. Erstwhile home of the Star Brewery, still home to one of the last remaining dog racing tracks in London. It’s a classy, sorry , claaasy place that gave us Frank Lampard, erm Jo O’Meara from S Club,  and, really erm Jesy from Little Mix. The only place I’ve ever seen a BNP stall jostling with the fruit and veg sellers on market day. The town with more pound shops per shopper than anywhere else in Essex. Probably. 

Not the place where one would expect to see, even unwittingly and unknowingly, public displays of existentially profound statements and post-industrial end-of-history irony of the kind that makes a contemporary comedian’s career. But for a while just over a decade ago you could see precisely that, because the rotating sign that perches proudly over the subterranean walkway that allows you to cross from the Liberty shopping centre to  the Mall shopping centre had become stuck midway between two messages. It should have been saying to the world ‘Welcome to the Mall! Hello! ‘  But for two weeks just before Christmas as shoppers descended into the underground shopping centre, they were given  instead the greeting ‘Welcome to….. Hell…’

More than a few harassed partners of an avid shopper must have glanced up at that sign and sighed ‘too right mate’: it can’t just have been me. A courageous few would have even braved the bemused hostile stares of the locals and took a picture of it: it can’t just have been me. But there it was. Six foot high or more ‘Welcome to Hell’. An electrical fault was all it took, briefly to transform Romford into what it had never been before nor has been since: cool and ironic. Probably.

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Tradition can be a peculiar thing. There are, for example, traditional themes for each of the Sundays in Advent for sermons, starting on Advent Sunday,  with the cheery topic of death, moving on the next week, in case you weren’t scared enough to judgement,  taking a brief diversion upwards to heaven on Pinkvent 3 before the sharp jolt that is the traditional preacher’s theme for today, Hell. So much for tradition.

Would you credit it? How would someone ever dream up that one? Talking about Hell three days before Christmas? Downright perverse, especially because by this time in December even the most hardened ‘Christmas doesn’t start yet’ pedants will have got their decorations out and be starting to feel festive. Well I’m not going to try to explain why tradition wants brimstone and sulphur rather than mistletoe and wine today, I’m not that sure myself. However, knowing that some St Mary’s people at least are avowed traditionalists, and in honour of my former neighbours in Romford, we could consider, for today, taking a trip to Hell. Fasten your seat-belts and hold on tight.

Just before we set off we might just want to deal with one possible objection to our proposed  parish outing. There are those who will argue quite cogently that despite occasional mentions of wailing, gnashing of teeth and unquenchable fire, strictly speaking, taking into account modern ways of translating Greek, Jesus himself said nothing about Hell. Well, maybe, but then strictly speaking Jesus said nothing about most of what Christians prattle about loudest most of the time, but it doesn’t stop us droning about this, that and the other till the cows come home, so- important point noted- it shouldn’t stop us climbing aboard the coach, finding our seat and encouraging the driver to get going.      

And what is that driver playing at? The door’s shut, we’ve been sat here an age already, and we still haven’t moved an inch! Well we can’t all go up the front at once, so let me take a look… It doesn’t look good. The satnav seems to have given up the ghost and he’s desperately scanning the map book for some help. Yes, we can find Romford, no problem,  but the road to Hell is not marked on the map: nowhere can we find that path paved with good intentions. It seems this particular magical mystery tour is not going to take us away, because not even the driver knows how to get where we are going. 

Can we help?    Give the poor chap some clues as to what we are looking for?

OK, well Hell is the abode of Satan and his legions, and as the devil is in the detail, maybe we need our magnifying glasses to find the spot on the map. Maybe Hell is very small indeed, a place built from the smallest bricks of our cruelty, composed of those little footnotes of selfishness that, writ large become the vast edifice of evil that is in fact, a trick of the light. Maybe. Not much help there.

A hand goes up. ‘Hot as hell’ they say. Why don’t we get one of those maps the weather forecasters use, the ones with isobars and clouds and temperatures and just look for the place that’s deep red? Go for the hottest spot. Good idea, but barking up the wrong tree, because if we want to find the way to Hell, we need to find the coldest place. The place without a warm welcome. The place where we can experience the cold shoulder, the icy stare, the chill of horror, the frosty reception; the place where we can be frozen out,  given a bitter reception, forgotten  and left out in the cold. So, smart thinking, but no help there.

Could be what we need, if we are to find Hell, is not the weatherman, but a theologian. That’s it! What have we been thinking? We need the Doctor of Divinity to tell us where to go. What does she have to say? Oh. It seems that Hell is best  described as a place where God is not, the place from which  that love that knows no bounds, no limits, no end: is absent. It’s best to think of Hell as what isn’t there rather than what is. So much for the theologian.

Time to take stock. How far have we got? Hell is very small. Hell is cold. Hell is an absence. It’s not a lot to go on is it? Let’s just give up eh? Everybody off the bus! 

No, wait! There is one more little nugget of information we haven’t considered, a mouthful of cud we haven’t chewed, the last piece of the jigsaw that we’ve just found under the table. And no it isn’t norovirus, which is close to hell but to quite there.

Where is Hell? Hell is on earth. And I’ve stopped talking about Romford now. Hell is on earth. What happens  after we have died, and are judged… it’s speculation, it’s guesswork,  we cannot say.

But Hell on earth? Of that we can be certain.  From the fires of the Inquisition to the ovens of Auschwitz, from the Siberian gulags to the Killing Fields of Cambodia to  a bus stop in Eltham; with each Israeli hostage taken, each bomb dropped on Gaza, every child that dies with a swollen empty stomach, hell is a place on earth, of human making. Hell is a place, and we made it.

Here’s the festive cheer, the good news. Seriously good news. Amazingly Christmas Cheer Deck the Halls fa la la la la good news. What is made by humans can be unmade by humans. Human hands can make and they can also break. What has been done can be undone. We can’t turn the clock back but we can build a future, a future where the Kingdom of God is among us. Jesus told us it is, we just have to see it. Lift up your arms and what do you see? Human hands! Amazing instruments of heavenly grace, hell-busters, kingdom-makers. What a gift we have been given, what gifts we can give.

The other Hell has been harrowed. Jesus has seen to that, right before the final triumph of Easter morning. That Hell has been conquered.  The Hell  on earth? That’s up to us.