THE APOSTLES' CREED
"HE DESCENDED INTO HELL"

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"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."

I will give you a descent into Hell. A late spring night, June 7, last year. East Texas. James Byrd, Jr. had been to a party. He had had a bit too much to drink. Now he was making his way home...on foot. Staggering a bit.

A pickup truck pulls alongside. In it, three white men, roommates, out for some fun after an evening of drinking at home. They slow for conversation: "Hey, buddy. Wha's Happenin'? Need a lift? Climb in the back."

"Yeah. Hey, thanks."

James climbed in. The speed picked up. Hey, wait, this isn't the way home - this is the woods east of town. HEY!

Only the participants know exactly what happened next, but the evidence indicates Byrd was severely beaten, bound, then finally chained by his ankles to the back bumper and dragged along the rough asphalt logging road. Three miles at high speed until his body was literally torn apart. A pathologist testified that Byrd had been alive and probably conscious during the horrible torture - marks on his body indicated that he had tried to use his elbows to keep his head above the pavement as he was dragged along. That ended abruptly when he bounced into a roadside concrete culvert pipe that ripped his head and shoulder from the torso. Neighbors found the main part of Byrd's body dumped in front of a black church cemetery.

Sure sounds like Hell to me.

Why? We have all heard the news reports. Young John William King, in a perverted effort to show that he had the right stuff to lead a racist gang, wanted a trophy. What kind of trophy did not matter, as long as it was black. Whether or not King and Byrd had ever seen each other on the streets of Jasper, Texas no one knows. Made no difference.

Hard to imagine in America in 1999, isn't it? In years past, yes - between 1882 and 1968, we know of 4,752 people who were lynched. Most of them were black and most were killed here in the South. It was a vile chapter in American history.⁽¹⁾ But that was then; this is now. For John William King, we hope it was bitterly ironic that the foreman of the jury that convicted him was a black man, the only African-American on the panel with eleven whites. The jury finally decided that this world did not need the likes of Mr. King, and sentenced him to death. After the obligatory appeals, a lethal injection awaits.

Some comfort for James Byrd's family, no doubt...but only some. They say they would rather remember his life than his death. They hark back to a 2-year-old home video showing James playing a piano as he sings a favorite gospel song, "I Walk With God."

Really? Then where was God on the night of June 7^th? Our faith...James Byrd's faith...says RIGHT THERE ON THAT ROAD! As the psalmist insists, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...yea, though I am dragged behind a pickup, chained to the bumper, through the valley of the shadow of death, THOU ART WITH ME!" And it is precisely here that we begin to understand this affirmation from the creed, "He descended into Hell."

An aside for a moment. Some housekeeping details about these four words. First, as we at St. Paul well know, every congregation does not repeat them. We don't. Even our old red hymnbook sets them apart in brackets with an asterisk noting, "Some Churches omit this." (Our current blue hymnal makes no such note; more about that in a minute.)

As to why we have not said these words in this congregation, I am grateful to Herb Reese [a charter member of St. Paul] who described what happened to our Midweek Study a few weeks ago when we encountered this clause in the new Presbyterian Study Catechism. Herb explained that, in the early days of this congregation, there were a variety of denominational backgrounds that had come together. Some had little or no experience with reciting creeds in worship, some had reservations about certain affirmations in THIS Creed (in particular, "He descended into Hell," and one we get to a bit later concerning belief in the "holy catholic Church.") After rousing discussion, Herb says a compromise was reached: no "descended into Hell", but we would keep the "holy, catholic church" since the affirmation only referred to the universality of the church and not any tie to the Catholic Church of Rome.

All in favor say AYE. Opposed NAY. The AYE's have it. The motion is agreed to. And THAT, good friends, is precisely the way difficult doctrinal issues have been settled in the church for centuries. If you had the votes, you were a winner; if you did not, not only did you lose, you were a heretic. Literally.

I suspect that this is the way the affirmation made it into the creed in the first place. It was NOT in the earliest versions of the creed. In fact, we do not run into it at all until about 400 years after Christ. The other ancient statement of faith, the Nicene Creed, makes no mention of any descent into Hell. Why not? Perhaps two reasons: one, "Hell" is really a mistranslation of the original statement which only affirmed that Christ descended to the DEAD - the early church made a distinction between the place where dead folks went before judgment...HADES in Greek, SHEOL in Hebrew...and this place of eternal punishment - and two, because a statement such as this could be seen as simply a redundancy since we already have a word saying he was "crucified, DEAD, and BURIED." Either way, at some point, some theologian in some church council, somewhere, called for a vote, and the result is what we have now.

Again, we ask why. The answer goes back to our lesson from 1^st Peter where we read, "For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He 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, who in former times did not obey..."

What those who want to use this as biblical warrant for "He descended into Hell" in the creed would have us believe is that between the time of Christ's death on the cross and resurrection from the tomb, he was busy. He went to this place of the dead...Hades, Sheol...proclaimed the gospel and led these "prisoners" to paradise. There is even a famous painting by Baldovinetti that hangs in the Museum of San Marcos in Florence showing Christ standing on the gate of Hell which has been knocked off its hinges. Under the gate lies the struggling Devil as crowds of people stream happily through the gateway. In the Middle Ages, this was known as the "Harrowing of Hell."⁽²⁾

Is that what happened? REALLY? To be painfully honest, we have no idea. The attempts at interpretation of this passage are all over the lot and if we deal with them it would be better in a teaching rather than preaching setting. One of these days, God willing, we will. Meanwhile, let this commentator's note suffice: "This statement is one of those New Testament passages from which contemporary readers realize that the first Christians lived in a world with radically different presuppositions from their own -- some of them so different that they cannot be reconstructed with any confidence."⁽³⁾

That is the easy way out. But I am not content to leave you there. Listen to the wise old William Barclay:

Many in repeating the creed have found the phrase "He descended into hell" either meaningless or bewildering, and have tacitly agreed to set it on one side and forget it. It may well be that we ought to think of this as a picture painted in terms of poetry rather than a doctrine stated in terms of theology. But it contains these three great truths--that Jesus Christ not only tasted death but drained the cup of death, that the triumph of Christ is universal, and that there is no corner of the universe into which the grace of God has not reached.⁽⁴⁾

One of my friends tells of a minister who went fishing with several of his parishioners on a lake in Oklahoma.⁽⁵⁾ It was the middle of the night, the hour when the most determined fishermen stalk their quarry and everyone but the minister seemed to be catching something. Finally, he asked one of his comrades for advice.

"That lure you are using is no good," the fisherman said. "It is too bright and shiny. You need a dark one." Then the man pulled out a black lure, and gave it to him.

It was night, the minister thought to himself. What possible good is a black lure? How could the fish even see it?

The fisherman, reading his thoughts, explained: "It is the moon. Tonight is a full moon, and that moonlight shimmers down through the waters but it is still not bright, like the sun. A shiny lure, like you would use in the daytime, will not work at night; but a black lure stands out in silhouette against the moon."

There are seasons of life when the bright optimism of good times will not do. At times like those, only a black lure, a silhouette, will succeed. We find our comfort in a Lord who was himself "crucified, dead and buried; [who] descended into Hell."

For some, the life that is "living Hell" is obvious to all. Innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of Kosovo. Starving children in Africa who are denied food and medicine simply because of the tribe into which they were born. Masses of oppressed peoples all around the globe whose lives are stripped of dignity, denied freedom, living in constant fear.⁽⁶⁾ And on one June night last year, James Byrd, Jr. His sister Mary told reporters, "He always said, 'When I leave this Earth, the Earth will know James Byrd, Jr. has been here,'" We know. And because of him, we know a bit more about Hell.

Some of you may be in your own Hell right now. Perhaps it is an addiction...alcohol, drugs. Hell. Perhaps it is a relationship, one that started with the promise of springtime now struggling to survive the bleakness of winter. Hell. Perhaps it is physical infirmity - the sore that will not heal which carries a message you are afraid to hear; perhaps it is the pain that persists and pervades and allows no relief. Hell. Perhaps it is an emotional state - the landscape of life is utterly bleak, and nothing you or anyone does can brighten it. Hell.

In his book Guilt and Redemption, Lewis Sherrill has a chapter entitled "The Descent into Hell."⁽⁷⁾ It is a description of psychotherapy, or of what psychotherapy ought to be. Sherrill says the therapist descends with you into your private Hell, goes with you, a step at a time, as you dig into what you have been unable to deal with and unwilling to face. The therapist never condemns, but understands. And because the two of you TOGETHER see these unspeakable horrors, they are robbed of their power to terrorize. Down and down and down, and when the bottom is finally reached, up and up and up again to health and wholeness.

Is there a hint there of what we have in Jesus? "He descended into Hell," we say. Even yours. As the psalmist said, "If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there."⁽⁸⁾ And perhaps there he can remind you that neither his story nor yours ends here. You see, the creed continues. The next word is...RESURRECTION.

"I believe...He descended into Hell. The third day he arose..." Hallelujah!

Amen!

1. Greensboro News & Record, "Southern justice: Brutality gets the reward it deserves," 2/26/99, p. A8

2. John Killinger, You Are What You Believe: The Apostles' Creed for Today, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), p. 61

3. David Bartlett, "The First Letter of Peter," The New Interpreter's Bible, CD-ROM edition, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998)

4. William Barclay, Daily Study Bible Series, CD-ROM edition, ( (Liguori, MO: Liguori Faithware, 1996 used by permission of Westminster/John Knox Press)

5. Carlos E. Wilton, "Through The Darkest Valley," unpublished sermon, delivered at Point Pleasant Presbyterian Church, Point Pleasant, NJ, March 31, 1996

6. Albert Curry Winn, A Christian Primer: The Prayer, The Creed, The Commandments, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p. 131

7. Quoted by Albert Winn, pp. 132-133

8. Psalm 139:8

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