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John 6:35-40. Part of the bread of life discourse. Jesus tells us that he is the bread of life. Anyone who believes in him shall not hunger or thirst. He has come from heaven not to do his own will, but the will of his Father, and he tells us the Father's will is that Jesus should lose nothing of all the Father has given him, but shall raise it up on the last day. "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day."

 

This reading really hits on some deep thoughts I have been mulling over for a few years now about purgatory, hell, eternal damnation, and the last day. My journals are full of ruminations on this, and today I started journaling about this passage, and I am on my fourth page and not even close to getting everything down on paper. I still don't have it fully thought out, so I am not going to post all of my thoughts on this right now. I'm going to continue to read, continue to think, continue to write, and continue to ponder. So this post is "to be continued..." (unless I think my way out of it:))

 

But just as a placeholder, what strikes me in this reading is that Jesus says that it is the will of his Father that everything he has given the Son should be saved. Then Jesus says that in order to be saved we must both see him and believe in him.

 

What has the Father not given the Son? Nothing. All of creation belongs to the Son - everything was created in him, through him, and for him (Colossians 1:16). So the first part of this means that it is the will of the Father that all of creation be saved, and that Jesus came to do that. We know that Jesus accomplished his Father's will, he did what he came here to do. Therefore, it would seem that Jesus has saved all of creation. That would mean everyone who has ever or will ever live.

 

However, Jesus goes on to say that we must both see and believe in him to get to heaven. And Jesus makes very clear that there is a hell - he mentions hell more than anyone else in the Bible. Hell is our default destination because of the Fall - the Fall seperated us from God, and we remain so separated, even in death, unless we accept Jesus' gift of salvation - by both seeing him and believing in him.  So there are four options:

 

1. Some have both seen and believed (like the apostles and some saints). Those people have obviously been saved.

2. Some have seen and not believed, Jesus even calls out some of those people as being in the crowd that day. Those people do not have eternal life (yet?), but they are part of God's creation, so it is God's will that they be saved (and remember we have not yet reached the last day!)!

3. Some have believed and not (yet) seen. This is me, and most of us. We have not yet had the chance to see him, but many of us have believed. (Aside - I wonder if seeing Jesus in the Eucharist is sufficient?) I think that we all get the chance to see Jesus either at the moment of death or immediately afterwards, and thus check that second box. If we have believed, and then we see, it will be more like a homecoming, a joyful reconnection, than anything else.

4. Finally, there are the people who have not seen and have not believed. Again, I think we all get the chance to see Jesus at some point upon or after the moment of death, so maybe we make the choice then and there? When those people who have not believed, maybe not even known of him, see him then, and yet still do not believe, they will not have eternal life. However, they, too, are part of God's creation, have been given to the Son, and God wants their salvation.

 

So this raises all kinds of questions for me about hell, and whether or not the waiting period between our death and the last day when all will be raised up is in fact purgatory. Maybe "actual hell" doesn't start until the last day, when Jesus raises us all, and some of us remain separated from him by refusing, still, to believe. They will have seen, and have had a lot of time to come to believe, but still do not believe, and on the last day the time is up for coming to believe, so is that when hell actually starts? Maybe the period that still exists in time, that is, before the last day when time ends, is all purgatory, and there is always a chance for anyone who has died but is in that state to come to believe, and thus to come to both see and believe when raised up on the last day.

 

Or is it possible (and forgive me Lord if this is a heretical thought, this is where I really feel like I am going off the rails a bit!) that maybe time will not end until all come to believe, even the most unrepentant sinner in hell. Maybe hell itself is the separation from God until time ends, but God's plan is that time will not end (so it will be eternity, quite literally) until all are out of hell?? Thus, all will have been saved, so Jesus will have accomplished God's will, but there also will have been a hell that existed for all of time (and the suffering there for all of eternity will have been just as bad as Jesus told us it would be, he does not want us to suffer like that, so he tells us to get with the program while still here on earth, it will be infinitely better for us that way)!

 

Maybe, since eternal life with him is God's will for all of us, he is giving us all the time necessary to for his Son to accomplish this gargantuan task - to save everything that has been given to him. For the creator of the universe, who became one of us and died for us, maybe it's not as gargantuan as it seems to me - nothing is impossible with God!

 

(Again, I am probably way off base, and possibly being heretical. I will continue to think about this...)