This is a kind of hell.
By Tripp Hudgins, momentary cosmologist
The news reports this morning are saying that the twenty-four year old suspected bomber in Austin blew himself up in a car in a stand-off with police. There is no way to be awake enough for such news. There is no way to be prepared for such news. My cup of coffee will not save me as much as I would like it to.
I have friends, acquaintances, who live in Austin and minister to those suffering from PTSD from their time in the military. Each story of a bombing brought back memories of their time in service and the destruction they witnessed, the wounds both moral and physical, that they endured. They are not ready for such news either.
I have friends, acquaintances, in the African-American community in Austin who were enraged at how long it took for this story to get the attention it needed, for the nation to understand that they were under attack, the focus of violence and hatred. Hopefully, their trial has ended and they feel some relief, but I do not imagine they were ready for such news either.
In my imagination there is the sound of the explosions. The sonic injury wrought to all who heard the bombs go off. A young musician was killed, his music drowned out by the sound of the bomb that took his life. Young people, people of color, people thinking that they had received a package in the mail. Curious, maybe even a little excited like a kid at Christmas, they opened the package.
This is a kind of hell.
The rain is falling in Berkeley and the news is on. The kitchen radio sounds forth the news and the cat beside me purrs and water tumbles off the roof of this old building to the ground three stories below. I wonder if God will rescue us from the hells we create.
There is a story of Jesus’ “harrowing of Hell.” He descends into the underworld, into Hell itself, and rescues all who had been there. From Adam and Eve to the most recent occupants, he rescues them as the cosmos is forever changed. Locking the door when he leaves, the Devil is left alone in his outrage. Conquered.
It is a cosmological tale we’ll hear told again and again in the next couple of weeks in churches around the country. And it is good news. But the question always comes, can God rescue us from the hells we create for ourselves and for one another? This is that old question of theodicy, but it’s a necessary question with which to grapple.
We have free will. We can kill or give life. We can love and hate. We can ignore one another. We can embrace one another. We can create heaven or hell for one another and ourselves on this earth. We do it all the time.
I wonder if God will rescue us from the hells we create.
I like to think that Christ can save us from these hells. But most days I think that, for better or worse, it is entirely up to us to heed Christ’s pleading to end the hells we create, to release the captives of those hellscapes, and let Christ lock that door, too. Christ pleads. This is all he can do. The Spirit leads. This is all she can do. God, the Father, offers salvation, and this is all that God can do because, in the end, it is up to us to treat one another well. God cannot or will not do it for us.
Hell, the cosmological plane of suffering and damnation, has been conquered. But it is remembered. Its echo still rings out. We sound it forth. Like some old addiction we just cannot quit, we recreate it daily for one another. We sound one another’s destruction in fire and pain and sulfury smoke.
I stare into my morning coffee and wonder when we will learn that it is we who can stop this. Jesus waits for us. The cosmos is moving on. Creation has been reconciled. It is we we refuse this grace.
