I’m sure that most, if not all of you, will have heard of C.S. Lewis because he is one the best-known and most popular Christian authors, certainly in the English language. And so I’m equally sure that some of you, at least, will have read some of his books. And if you have, you may have read one called The Great Divorce.
For those who haven’t read it, The Great Divorce is an allegorical story about heaven, purgatory and hell. In the story, the narrator is taken, in a dream, to a place called Grey Town where he boards a bus along with a few other people. The bus takes them to a beautiful valley but, on leaving the bus, the narrator realises that everything is rigid and so hard that even walking on the grass is painful. He then sees spirits approaching who try to convince those who’ve come on the bus to go with them to the mountains in the distance. But most of them refuse. One prefers to pick apples from the trees in the valley, so that he can take them back to Grey Town to sell for a profit. Another refuses to go and warns the narrator about going because the same people who control Grey Town also control the valley and the mountains beyond. Another, an artist, refuses to go to a place where his art wouldn’t be appreciated because he wants to preserve his school of painting. Yet another, a bishop, won’t go because he’s become so used to speaking about his faith in abstract, intellectual terms that he can no longer simply say that he believes in God. Some meet the spirits of departed loved ones but are so consumed with bitterness, anger and hatred on account of the past that they simply argue with the spirits instead of going with them. In the end, only one of the bus passengers journeys on to the mountains. A man who carried lust on his shoulders, in the form of a great lizard, very reluctantly allows an angel to kill the lizard which then transforms into a great horse which carries the man away to the mountains. All the other passengers return to the bus and to Grey Town.
The narrator’s guide tells him that the valley is a place that people from Grey Town visit. Some people stay in the valley and then go on to the mountains where they climb to Heaven. For these people, Grey Town is Purgatory, a place to exist before they travel on to Heaven. But for those who prefer to take the bus back from the valley, Grey Town is Hell. People are not consigned to Hell forever, they’re always free to leave and enter Heaven, but they must want to leave and, sadly, most people are too stubborn and proud to do that. They would rather live in Grey Town, stuck in their old ways and attitudes than show humility, accept their faults, leave them and the past behind, and move on to love God, and each other, in Heaven.
The Great Divorce is, of course, a work of fiction, but nevertheless, the faults of the people portrayed in it are well-observed. How many people are there, for example, who put profit before everything else? In fact, we often hear these days that we live in a world that puts profit before people, don’t we? How many people do we know, cynics, who miss out on good things and happiness because they can’t bring themselves to trust others? People who’ve perhaps been betrayed or deceived in the past and now think everyone is out to betray and deceive them? How many people are there in the world and how many do we know who think their way is the best and only way and must be protected at all costs? How many are there in the Church who think like this – my denomination, my tradition, my liturgy, my theology, my interpretation of the Scriptures? How many people are there in the world, and do we know, who can’t let go of the past? People who are unforgiving and who can’t move on in life because they cling to old resentments and harbour grudges?
There are so many people in the world who act like this and I’m sure we all know people like this. These are often people who miss out on good things and happiness in life because they can’t imagine anything other than the things they know and are familiar with and so they become stuck in the life they know, no matter how unhappy that might make them. They can’t imagine anything new, different or better, and so they can’t move on. Although perhaps it might be better to say won’t move on because I’m not speaking here about people who can’t move on because they have genuine mental health issues, but people who freely choose to act in these ways and who won’t move on. And in this, they’re not unlike the Sadducees in this morning’s Gospel.
The Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection and to try to prove that there’s no resurrection, they argued from the law of Moses. Their argument can be summed up like this; the woman in question married seven brothers, as the law dictates in these circumstances. But, as there were no children to any of the brothers, none of them would have a special claim on her as his wife, so whose wife would she be if there was a resurrection? Neither Jesus, nor indeed the Pharisees who did believe in the resurrection, could say that she would be the wife of all seven brothers since that would be against the law. Therefore, there can be no resurrection.
But, in answer, Jesus told them the woman would be no one’s wife at the resurrection because resurrection life, the life of heaven, is not the same as earthly life. And given that the Sadducees had quoted Moses in their argument, Jesus answered them from Moses.
Jesus’ proof of the resurrection was that in the story of the burning bush, God said to Moses,
“Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
We need to remember that the word we translate as ‘Lord’ is the divine name, ‘Yahweh’ which means ‘I am’. At the time of the burning bush, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had died. But, God had said to Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’, not ‘I was’ their God. So, as Jesus said, God
“…is not God of the dead but of the living…”
so even though Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had died, they must still be alive to God. Therefore, there must be a resurrection. And if we were to read on in the Gospel, we find that, after this answer, no one dared to ask Jesus any more questions.
The Sadducees were devout people; they obeyed the law of Moses; but they were set in their ways. They were so set in their ways that they couldn’t imagine any other way, but their way. They argued against the resurrection by quoting the law, but they couldn’t understand that the law was only a temporary measure. It was good and God given, but it was only for this life and only then until Christ came. The purpose of the law was to keep people close to God, but the law is unnecessary at the resurrection because in heaven, we will be in the very presence of God. And so they were trapped in a way of thinking that stopped them from recognising a better way and stopped them from moving on from where they were to where they needed to be and to where God was calling them to be.
I think that we can often be a bit like those Sadducees. As Christians, we don’t question the resurrection, or at least I hope we don’t, but we can have difficulty in imagining life being different than the way we know and understand it now.
In that we can be very like the characters in The Great Divorce. We can find it very difficult to let go of our old ways, very often because we think our ways are right. Sometimes we can not only think that our ways are right, but that our ways are the only ways that are right and that everybody else’s ways are wrong. In effect, although we might say that we believe that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, we can live and behave as though we ourselves are the way, the truth, and the life. And when we do that, we can’t see a better way. We become trapped in the way of life we have, and know, and understand and can’t and won’t move on, even when there’s a better way right in front of our eyes that God is calling us to. We become trapped in Grey Town. We might get the bus to the valley from time to time, and we might see the mountains of Heaven but, because the way to get there is hard, we can’t wait to jump back on the bus and go back to Grey Town, to what we know and understand and, as uncomfortable as those things may be, that paradoxically, we are comfortable with.
The Great Divorce is a work of fiction, and the idea of Purgatory isn’t a fashionable one these days. But, nevertheless, Lewis’ story does make a valid point and it’s one we need to pay attention to. If we want to get to Heaven, we have to let go of our own ways and take on Christ’s ways. Just as in The Great Divorce, that might not be easy, but it’s what we have to do. It might be a hard and painful road to walk, but it’s one we have to walk because it is the road that leads to Heaven. We’re all invited to go, and to stay, but are we prepared to do what it takes to get there, or are we happier to stay where we are, even if that is Grey Town?
Amen.
The Propers for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 