When people ask me what I think about hell, I have a very limited repertoire of images and anecdotes. My favorites is to clump a lot of my bad memories about Easter into how that first day in hell would be spent.
It would begin with the proverbial sunrise service in the high school gym [due to rain on the football field] with the junior high band playing “Up from the Grave He Arose!” This would be followed by a men’s breakfast in the church kitchen with sordid stories from their worst Easters ever. You would move to the morning circle featuring selected readings from The Greatest Story Ever Told. You would then drive for hours without a bathroom break to attend the nearest meeting of Presbytery, accompanied only by an Elder who would cancel your every vote. That would be the beginning of a day when I would have hell to pay for Easter.
All this seems to fit one version of the Apostles’ Creed in which Jesus was “crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell. On the third day, he rose again from the dead…” Many congregations omit the hell phrase to keep from using a bad word in church. And it’s a phrase not to be found in the Bible per se.
Some of us are confused by the different cosmology with hell below in which to “descend” and heaven above in which to “ascend”. Without benefit of Galileo or Copernicus, the biblical stories are full of such ups and downs. Even our Lord’s Prayer has heaven up there and earth down here. Others refuse to use the phrase because they don’t believe that Jesus had to pay such an atonement, while the “elect” believe Jesus died only for them and their kind.
There’s an old legend that emerged in the Middle Ages that pictures Jesus descending into hell to release Adam and Eve from torment. Another writer took the story and made it more radical. Jesus shows up at the gate of hell. Satan meets him in a rage, trying to forbid Jesus entering. Jesus cannot be restrained. He tears open the gate and begins his search. As he probes the darkest and most sinister recesses of torment, he releases everyone he finds, but it is clear that he is in quest of some particular one. He hunts even deeper, ever more strained into the bowels of ultimate treachery. Finally, far back and away from all other prisons, Jesus finds a cage of horrifying isolation. He approaches it, and as he does, Satan cries, “No, not that one! That one is my prize!” Oblivious to Satan’s objections, Jesus wrenches open the door of the cage and sets the prisoner free…sets Judas…free.