It must be an ecclesial form of the Stockholm Syndrome that crowds will flock to prophets of the wrath to come.
One of modern literature’s most vivid preachers of doom is Amos Starkadder, patriarch of a seedy Sussex farm in Stella Gibbons’ book Cold Comfort Farm.
Sigmund Freud was still alive when Gibbons wrote the novel in 1932, but Freudian analysis is not required to know Amos is angry because he is trapped in a dead-end existence on a depressing piece of sod. He is held captive by his invalid mother who took to her bed decades earlier because “I saw something nasty in the woodshed” and holds family members hostage to her angst.
Amos sublimates his anger by serving as pastor of a surprisingly large congregation called the Quivering Brethren. Asked how the congregation got its name, Amos explains the people quiver when they think about where they will spend eternity.
Amos’ sermons are virtually identical each week:
You’re all damned! Damned! Do you ever stop to think what that word means? No, you don’t. It means endless, horrifying torment! It means your poor, sinful bodies stretched out on red-hot gridirons, in the nethermost, fiery pit of Hell and those demons mocking ye while they waves cooling jellies in front of ye. You know what it's like when you burn your hand, taking a cake out of the oven, or lighting one of them godless cigarettes? And it stings with a fearful pain, aye? And you run to clap a bit of butter on it to take the pain away, aye? Well, I’ll tell ye, there’ll be no butter in Hell!
Amos’ congregation, which fills the church, quivers but remains glued to their pews, in abject submission to the bad news. Later in the book (as in the 1995 film starring Kate Beckinsale and Ian McKellen), Amos does escape the farm and takes his quivering message to the United States, where it continues to attract large crowds. Hell is obviously a popular concept.
Modern theologians debate whether Hell, a place of eternal punishment for bad souls, actually exists. Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton of the Evangelical Lutheran Church raised eyebrows recently when she was asked if there is a hell. “There may be,” she said “but I think it is empty.”
But according to pollsters, including Pew and Gallup, most Americans believe in Hell. Gallup notes an interesting political angle in that 83 percent of Republicans say they believe in Hell as opposed to 69 percent of Democrats. Clearly most Americans think there is a Hell, and most would like to avoid it.
If you grew up in the evangelical or Pentecostal traditions, you may be familiar with this hermeneutic. I once attended a World Council of Churches conference on Pentecostals and Orthodox in Costa Rica and met a Church of God professor named Tom. Tom dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and was shaggy haired and bearded like Jerry Garcia, but it was clear he was a highly intelligent academician. Even so, his fellow Pentecostals spun tales about Tom’s rebellious youth.
“When Tom was a teenager he’d sit in the back of the church,” said one woman, now a Pentecostal pastor. “When the preacher started talking about Hell, Tom would hide his hands behind the pew and light matches. After church, people would grab the pastor’s hand and say, ‘My goodness, Preacher, your description of Hell was so vivid I thought I could smell the phosphorous!’”
Many traditions, indeed, depict Hell as a lake of fire with no butter to take away the pain. John the Baptist, in his own efforts to attract the attention of quivering brethren, refers to “unquenchable fire” (Luke 3:17).
Sometimes Hell’s punishments are assumed to correspond with sins committed during life. The actual punishments would depend on the imagination of the demon in charge, but one can envision slave masters condemned to an eternity of slavery and whipping posts, tabloid editors forced to endure an eternity of pillory and humiliation, the ill-begotten rich damned to shiver forever in squalor and hunger, or proof-texting preachers fated to listen to endless sermons – perhaps their own – devoid of points, poems, and exegesis.
Other traditions depict Hell as cold. Tibetan Buddhists, whom I suspect endure cold weather for longer periods that many of us, believe in a cold Hell. Dante’s Inferno describes the innermost ninth circle of Hell as a frozen lake of blood and guilt. It is in that frigid ring to which persons who never take a moral stand are sent, belying President Kennedy’s assumption that “the hottest places in Hell are for persons who maintain their neutrality.”
Each of us has an image of Hell in our minds, just as we try to imagine what Heaven is like.
NBC’s The Good Place, an entertaining and often thoughtful
comedy series, imagines an afterlife so skewed that every human being is
consigned to the Bad Place because no one is good enough to win entry into the Good Place. One
character, Chidi (played by William Jackson Harper) is a professor
of philosophy who examines the views of every known ethicist to learn
how to lead a good life. He falls short of the Good Place because he can’t
decide which value system is the best. It’s too bad Chidi didn’t read Saint
Paul who said everyone falls short, or Martin Luther, who said every one is
simultaneously a saint or sinner.
These are useful mental exercises because they keep us focused on important things, particularly gospel message of repentance and salvation. No one knows if John the Baptist had any special insight into what Hell looks like or whether he was depending on a common tradition, but his promise of deliverance comes with a terrifying threat of scalding punishment: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Luke 3:17)
Luke adds: “So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people.” (Luke 3:18)
If you read that too fast, it sounds like John is demanding a choice between salvation and unquenchable fire.
Put that way, it seems more like extortion than good news.
But the message of John is more like the mission of first responders in any disaster: a rescue operation to deliver us from the fire, and open our hearts and minds to the coming of the Messiah.
Each Christmas my soul is lifted by the music of artists no longer living: Bing Crosby, Nat Cole, Rosemary Clooney, Gene Autry, Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, Eartha Kitt, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley. Each of these great talents sang wonderful old chestnuts, and I sing along with them when I am alone. I rejoice for all these wonderful talents who were such a powerful presence in my youth but are now gone. What dynamic lives they led, what vibrancy, what joy they gave to so many listeners (and what fortunes they made selling their albums).
But in darker moments I wonder: what happened to them when they died? Were they simply extinguished? Did their sentience, their personalities, their talents disappear as if they had never been? And what about the rest of us who don’t leave behind electronic recordings of our faces and voices? Do we pass into oblivion as if we had never lived?
These pensive moments brought me face to face with my own concept of Hell: not unquenchable fire, not frozen lakes of blood, not eternal pillories. Hell is that moment when all that we love, all that we know, all that we are, disappears. Hell is when our consciousness ceases to be, just as was the case in those years before we are born. Hell is when all that we are in life is erased as if it had never been.
Some people say there is no need to be afraid of non-existence. I disagree. Non-existence is Hell to me. Hell is the end of awareness of those we love, a total separation from the God of love who made us and loves us beyond our ability to comprehend it.
That must be the Hell John is talking about.
But John is not pointing to Hell as a threat. John is offering us a way out of Hell.
Of course John tells us to be good and to act justly; he tells tax collectors to take no more money than required of them, and he tells soldiers to be just to others and be content with their wages.
But John is also pointing to a way that goes beyond good behavior, where no lists are made of those who are naughty or nice, where the way out of Hell is wide open and available to every person created and loved by God.
That way out is offered by the Jesus the Messiah whose coming John foretells, and it comes with no conditions, no entrance exams, and no inquisitions. And no quivering.
It is a wide-open door that never closes.
And all that is required of us to escape Hell is to walk through the door of grace.
Heaven, like star systems millions of light years away, is unreachable without a special means of getting there.
Jesus is the holy wormhole that makes the voyage possible.
A wormhole, as Star-Trekkers know, is a hypothetical and unobservable phenomenon related to Einstein’s theory of relativity. While no one has ever seen a wormhole, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and other science fiction doyens posit they exist.
Wormholes are conceived as celestial corridors that enable one (if one is so inclined) to travel incalculable distances in an instance, as if the fabric of space was folded together like a blanket to unite distant point A with unreachable point B. Star Trek Deep Space Nine fans will recall (as if we could ever forget) that the space station is positioned near the Bajoran wormhole that provides passage to the distant Gamma Quadrant, making it possible for starships to travel to places normally beyond their reach.
The science makes sense to me but I must stipulate that long-buried New York State Regents records will reveal I understood less than 30 percent of Mr. Palmer’s high school physics lectures. (Oddly, my high school yearbook picture lists me as a science major, but I long ago concluded that was a practical joke by the editor.) Be that as it may, I find the whole idea of celestial wormholes to be wonderfully mysterious and even miraculous.
But not quite as miraculous as the Transfiguration, which revealed Jesus as the bridge between earth and Heaven.
Luke tells the story:
Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” - not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. (Luke 9:30-36)
The Transfiguration of Jesus knocked the disciples’ out of their loin cloths. Suddenly awake and perplexed by what he had seen, Peter was reduced to gibberish. He convinced himself, at least temporarily, that it would be a good thing to build three grottos around Jesus and the apparitions of Moses and Elijah.
But soon the light faded and Peter returned to his senses, gaping tongue-tied and pantyless as the voice of God ordered everyone to shut up and listen.
What exactly had they seen? And what did it mean?
Today, simulating a transfiguration is a tedious special effect. Shine a spotlight, open the camera lens, and everything becomes dazzling white.
But how did Jesus do it without a gaffer and grip? What did it mean? And why was he in such a foul mood afterwards? Beaming one day, cursing the disciples the next?
On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God. Luke 9:37-43a.
Why the mood swings? These are the FAQ’s of the Transfiguration. The answers depend on your faith tradition.
According to Luke, the event took place eight days after Jesus revealed himself to his disciples as the “Messiah of God” and charged them to say nothing about it. Together with Peter, James, and John, Jesus climbed a mountain to pray.
No one is sure which mountain, although the Franciscans built the Church of the Transfiguration atop Mount Tabor in Israel, and their guess is as good as anyone’s.
If it was Mount Tabor, a wheezy climb of 1,886 feet was required to get to the summit and the disciples may well have been drenched in sweat and a little light-headed as Jesus began to pray. When the ambient light intensity was magnified around Jesus, Peter may have felt he was passing out.
If, indeed, the Transfiguration of Jesus marks a rare occurrence in which a portal to Heaven is opened and Jesus is transformed into a luminous bridge between earth and Heaven, it’s an incomparable event. The disciples know they are peering into Heaven because God is there, and when God speaks, the luminosity is so painfully penetrating that a cloud is required to shade the intensity.
The idea of Jesus being a bridge between heaven and earth works fine for mainline Protestants and evangelicals. Jesus is, after all, the gatekeeper who makes it possible for us to pass through to eternal life.
The intriguing notion of a divine bridge between two distant and otherwise unapproachable dimensions also makes some of us faith-based Star Trek fans wonder: have we encountered an unexpected connection between theology and astrophysics?
The special effects of the Transfiguration were far beyond that which could be duplicated on three-dimensional, high density IMAX screens. As the disciples watched dumbstruck, Jesus began to metamorphose before their eyes and the portal to heaven was opened.
As Jesus stood in the heavenly portico, Moses and Elijah came to his side. For the metaphorical minded, the appearance of the Law Giver and Premier Prophet neatly symbolizes the fact that God’s Son has been elevated over the Law and the Prophets.
But the casual manifestation of two dead guys denotes another theological reality. Contrary to traditional Jewish concepts of Sheol, where the souls of the dead retreat to a semi-conscious existence, Heaven is revealed to be the place where the dead not only continue to live but cavort intelligently and bask in God’s reflected glory.
The presence of Moses and Elijah may be problematical to Christian traditions that believe the souls of the dead sleep, as in a providentially induced coma, until they are raised on the last day, when Jesus comes again. If you believe that, you might have to conclude that because the souls of Moses and Elijah were comatose, their images must be hallucinations in the minds of the apostles.
But to other Christian traditions, it seems illogical that this one aspect of the Transfiguration would be hallucinogenic while all other aspects would be real. And there is something about the appearance of Moses and Elijah that seems very real indeed.
Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. (Luke 9:31)
According to Luke, the Law Giver and the Prophet talk to Jesus about a topic known to heaven but incomprehensible to his disciples: Jesus’ death and resurrection. It seems hardly likely that the disciples were hallucinating Moses and Elijah or their conversation about what was to come.
And if Moses and Elijah ambled out of Heaven to chat with Jesus, it is convincing forensic evidence that Heaven is occupied by the living souls of humans who have been liberated from their earthly bodies.
The implication is clear: Jesus is the Lord of the living, not the dead.
Of course, Jesus had been trying without success to get that message across to his obtuse disciples. The Transfiguration offered a glimpse into Heaven rarely seen on this side of the grave: and it was full of the living.
And just to be sure the disciples didn’t miss the message, God put in a cameo appearance behind a cloud:
Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35)
For Peter, James, and John, the Transfiguration was a stunningly disorienting experience. Luke, a physician, understood that their human brains are poorly equipped to take it all in. That’s why a dazed Peter slipped over the edge of reality to suggest dwellings be constructed for the dazzling troika.
For Peter, James, and John, this is the rapturous “Mountaintop Experience” we humans often seek to compensate for the doldrums of life.
But mountaintop experiences are rare in life. And Peter, James, and John descended from the ecstatic warmth of the mountain to a cold shower of realty in the valley below.
And if Jesus mood turns bad the very next day, we may see this as one basis for the Christian platitude that one must not seek to spend a lifetime on the blissful mountaintop or at Star-Trek conventions; real life is often lived in the stark reality of pain and misery and failure.
Luke’s anecdote tells it like it is. Sometimes we, like the disciples, don’t have enough faith to do what God has called us to do. Sometimes, in fact, we are so faithless we can sense Jesus’ annoyed rebuke: “How much longer must I bear with you?”
That’s what daily life in the dreary valley can be like, and often is.
And that’s why a mountaintop experience, however rare, is so much to be desired. Such experiences renew our faith and keep us going.
That’s also why the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mount is one of the most important events in the gospels.
The message of the Transfiguration sets a firm foundation for faith and strengthens our sometimes-beleaguered souls:
Jesus is our wormhole to an otherwise unattainable Heaven.
Heaven is the eternal home for the living souls of the faithful.
The passage from earth to heaven is occasionally turbulent and our human failures may leave us wretched and despondent while we wait for the gateway to open.
But the day of our own transfiguration will surely come, as Jesus promised.
And we will all be astounded by the greatness of the God of life.
