This week saw the passing of the season and now it is fall.  Fall is about comfort. Favorite sweater in the evening.  Hot chocolate, and something made with apples.  Hamburgers give way to stew,  shepherd’s pie hearty soups.  The occasional cool evening fire.  Fall, just so cuddly.  We like comfort things. We work hard we should have some comfort things in our lives. 

We get used to comforting things. 

We get so used to words of comfort to be found in the gospels nice stories, of healing and being made well, the image of Jesus nice white robs lovely blue mantle, and fluffy beard,  that sometimes it becomes very hard for us to hear the challenging words of Jesus. 

It can be the challenges that push us to grow. To move us forward. That is what today’s Gospel does

We find today a continuation of the theme we say last week.  Last week the disciples had a disagreement on who of them was the greatest. This week we see an expansion who should and should not be invoking Jesus’ name.   They are like kids almost climbing over each other to get to Jesus to tell him that some else is casting out demons in his name not even a follower.

You can almost see Jesus shake his head and wonder at these guys. 

He says do not stop him for no one who dose a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.

Then the language gets gritty.  Many scholars will argue that Jesus is now speaking metaphorically at this next point and newer versions of the Bible start doing so editing leaving out vs 44 and 46 which state “Where their worm never dies, and fire is never quenched in reference to hell.  This line finally appears in vs 48.  So in older version comes after each of the cutting off and plucking statements.  Pleasant stuff for a Sunday Morning.

Someone this week asked me if I believed in Heaven and Hell. 

My off the tongue answer was I don’t know. 

What is hell.  It is what we make of it. 

Dante in the Divine comedy has the inscription at the entrance to Hell say. 

Through me is the way to the sorrowful city. Through me is the way to eternal suffering. Through me is the way to join the lost people.  Abandon all hope, all ye who enter. 

T. S Eliot writes What is Hell? Hell is oneself, Hell is alone, the other figures into  it merely projections. 

And still another States. Hell Madame, is to love no more.

A woman came to see her minister. She was sobbing uncontrollably, and in between her sobs told her Minster that she had just had a horrible argument with her husband. She said, The last thing he said to me was you can go to the Devil the pastor said What did you do? And the woman replied I came straight to you.

The Devil himself had probably re-designed Hell in the light of information he had gained from observing airport layouts. 

Hell is what you make and the Hell Jesus Speaks was a place just outside of Jerusalem 

It is a deep narrow gorge southeast of the city called the Valley of Ben Hinnom in which it was said that rebellious and unfaithful Israelites once offered up child sacrifices to the pagan Gods.   It was forever condemned by Josiah as an eternally unholy place. 

    Later the valley was used as a garbage dump by the city dwellers.   Thus the place of destruction by fire in Jewish tradition The Greek word Gehenna Hell commonly used in the New Testament for the place of final and eternal punishment. Comes from the Hebrew name for this valley.   Because it is a dump it is a place of rot of criminal corpse and rotting carcasses  Hell is a dump, Gehenna.

Jesus is the one who seeks to save the lost, to rescue from the tragedy that is hell.   To not see us wasted, used up and tossed away.

   God does not spend his time creating garbage. You are not to be wasted, used up and tossed away. In some garbage heap of humanity. 

God sees in us great potential  As Charlie Brown states The greatest burden in life is to have a great potential