Hot Sauce Jesus: What do we do with fire and brimstone texts?

Also known as: if the point isn't scaring the hell out of people ... what do we do when we read about what has been branded as "hell"?

Every week we hear passages from the Bible proclaimed in worship; these are not chosen specifically by me as your priest or even just by the Episcopal Church as a denomination -- they come from something called the Revised Common Lectionary, which is used by millions of Christians all over the world in many denominations, and you can always see what is coming at this website. 

And this is really cool! It means that even people with whom we may not see eye-to-eye on things like women's ordination or LGBTQIA+ belatedness still hear the same liberating texts. We still worship the same God, with the same Bible. I take a lot of heart in that, actually. That the things we share in common remain. It gives me hope for the future and hope for now, too. 

But it also means sometimes, the lectionary hits a hardball when we are well into July and all I want to do as the preacher is kick back and talk about Jesus loving us, or maybe foray into some wild Old Testament stories for a fun time.

Alas, nope.

This week our assigned Gospel text is another spicy take from Jesus about weeds and wheat growing up together, and how "Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

Like, good grief Jesus, way to hit us with the hot sauce my dude! 

So what do we do with this fire and brimstone texts? How are we to make sense of God's love for all of us, and radical welcome for the vulnerable, when there are also passages like this in the Bible? 

I think the answer is multi-faceted; for one, I do not ever want to replicate systems of only hearing what I want to hear -- about God or anything, really. That is a fast track to living in an echo chamber of my own making. So that means I have to hold the discomfort of passages of Scripture that I just don't like. Now, there are times when this is easier or better for me to do than others. When I am in times of great grief or transition or loss, that's not really the best time (usually) to go whole hog on "embracing the additional discomfort of unsettling Bible verses."

But when I am able to hold them, I try to hold these passages with one goal:

I can receive these words without them being all I know of God. 
I can hear this story without it being the only story I hear of God.

And if I am really leaning in I ask this question: 
What might my discomfort at this story teach me? 
Where is God in this?
God, will you guide me? 

Just as we people are complex, multi-faceted, and at times hard to be around, so too are the stories of our Maker and the creation She has woven.

But this passage is just not the only story we get about "the end of the age," or even the only story about burning away one crop while the other flourishes. A parallel parable in Luke, for example, talks about wheat and chaff being burned, and the chaff is a husk that protects the wheat until it is ready to grow and be harvested. That's a different story, but a parallel one, to this parable. 

So just as I do not want to shy away from difficult stories or live with my head in the sand, so too I want to be very clear: if the only or main story we tell of God is one of fire and brimstone, of an end of the age where there is only weeping and gnashing of teeth, that is a single story. 

As feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie famously said: there is a danger in a single story. 

And the Bible is not a single story. It is a lush textile mill full of different fabrics, different yarns woven first orally for thousands of years before being written down initially, largely, in the wake of terrible exile and war. 

The Bible is holy and authoritative, yes, but it is also passed down and translated by human hands in human language and held with human agenda. Remember: a single story is dangerous. To say the Bible is only human is hubris; to say the Bible is only God is idolatrous. It is a Living Word with us, but the Word is also bigger than the words therein. 

And this is all part of the life of faith, the water we wade into together, holding all the threads that have made up our own stories, not knowing what greater story is unfolding but choosing to trust it's one worth telling and one worth hearing.