If Christians Tried to Save People from Hell on Earth

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets, Houston

May 4, 2025

3 Easter, C

Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)

Psalm 30

John 21:1-19

Imagine if Christians overall were far less concerned with saving people from Hell, and far more concerned with helping people from living through Hell on earth. The Church might be a bit different than it is right now. The world might be too.

I think about some of the things the Church has done over the centuries in the name of saving people’s souls. We’ve fought wars and killed those we called heathens. We’ve burned people alive. Churches have ostracized people because they sinned or backslid, shaming them into leaving their church. Churches have joined with the U.S. government to take native American children from their homes and putting them in boarding schools to Christianize them and basically turn them into white people.

The government just didn’t want Indians around anymore. The Churches wanted to save people’s souls, seemingly oblivious to damage they did in the process. Gotta get people saved, right? If bad things happen here in the process, well, you’re doing good because you’re saving them eternally, keeping them from Hell, right?

Mph, I don’t think so.

Just looking at the church’s role in trying to Christianize native American children, lovely that they were trying to save souls, but many of the children forced to go to these school end up living through Hell on earth. They were separated from their families and made to forget and forsake their own culture and language, just so the government would have an easier time dealing with them. We don’t want those pesky natives around, so let’s make them like us…I mean, not too much like us, not enough to have them truly be a part of us, but just enough so they’re not a problem. Then there’s the abuse many of the children suffered, and various churches ran over half of these schools.

If only the Church hadn’t been so focused on saving souls, perhaps they wouldn’t have partnered with the government to harm children. If only the Church hadn’t been so focused on saving souls, perhaps they wouldn’t have spent so much time ostracizing people who sinned or backslid. Perhaps they wouldn’t have fought wars and murdered people in order to save souls.

Besides, when it comes to saving souls, I’m pretty sure Jesus already took care of that.

What if instead of, “we gotta get people saved,” what if it was, “we might should help people out. We oughta strive for justice and peace, forgiveness, healing, and, mercy?” What if, instead of worrying about getting people saved (which again, Jesus already took care of), what if we worked to live in such a way that we don’t create hell on earth? What if that’s what we chose to mean by saving people, trying to keep from creating hell on earth?

That’s what Jesus was doing when he met Peter and the disciples on the beach. See, Peter was going through his own hell on earth. He’d been with Jesus for three years, trusted in, believed in, and loved him. Then, when things started to go badly for Jesus, Peter immediately denied that he even knew him. Three times he denied knowing Jesus, and hours later, Jesus was killed.

Peter had to be going through some guilt and some shame over that. Even after Jesus was raised from the dead, it seems like Peter was wracked with guilt. Peter and the disciples heard from Mary Magdalene that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Then Jesus appeared before them and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Jesus sent Peter and the other disciples as apostles of forgiveness. He sent them, just as he had been sent, to grant forgiveness and healing and to teach others forgiveness and healing as a way of life. Peter was sent, the same as the rest of the disciples.

After that, however, Peter decided to go fishing. Ok, so, it seems that Peter and the others still needed to make a living, so fishing made sense, but it also seems like Peter was stuck. Peter seems to have been unable to live as the apostle of forgiveness Jesus had sent him to be.

Even though Jesus had said, “Peace be with you,” even though Jesus sent him as an apostle, Peter seemed to think that his life as Jesus’ disciple was over. He thought his life as Jesus’ apostle of forgiveness was over. It wasn’t. It never had been, but wracked with guilt, Peter couldn’t get past his denial of Jesus. He seems to have been living in his own self-imposed hell.

So, when Jesus met Peter and the other disciples on the beach, he helped heal Peter’s broken heart by forgiving him. To be clear, he had already forgiven Peter, again, that was taken care of on the cross, but when he met Peter on the beach, he spoke that forgiveness out loud. Now, he didn’t say the words, “I forgive you.” Instead, he gave Peter three opportunities to claim his love for Jesus, once for each time he had denied Jesus. He let Peter repent, out loud, for his own sake, to heal the guilt and shame he felt. Jesus saved Peter from his own self-imposed hell on earth.

As far as big S salvation goes, “getting Peter saved,” as some folks would say nowadays, that was already done. Jesus had done that a few days earlier on the cross on Friday afternoon. Jesus was saving Peter from hell on earth. In doing so, Jesus told Peter to do the same for others.

“Do you love me?” Jesus asked Peter. “You know I love you,” Peter replied. Then, “feed my sheep,” Jesus said. That was Jesus’ declaration of forgiveness. You are already forgiven. You are already restored. Now go, and be an apostle of forgiveness, healing others as you have been healed. Go and save others from hell on earth, just as you have been saved from hell on earth.

The big S salvation, our unity with God in all of our lives, including our sins, that’s already done. What Jesus has given us to do is to live and share his teachings and way of life. Cause harm to no one, and when you do, work to put things right. Forgive others when they harm you, and help heal the world through your forgiveness. Don’t worry so much about saving people from Hell (that’s already done). Instead focus on keeping people from living through hell on earth, and help release people from those hells, in Jesus’ name.

Rather than what the market demands, choose justice, mercy, love, and transformation.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets, Houston

February 9, 2025

5 Epiphany, C

Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13]

Psalm 138

Luke 5:1-11

Title

“From now on, you’ll be fishing for people,” Jesus told his first disciples. This has been interpreted by many as Jesus’ call for his disciples to be evangelists, sharing the good news of Jesus and getting folks to become Jesus’ disciples. So, I’m supposed to preach about how we’re all supposed to go out and be good evangelists and get people to believe in Jesus. 

When I’ve heard people talk about this kind of fish for people evangelism, the message that I’ve heard that people are to share often has very little to do with this life and has a whole lot to do with life after we die. So, there are often thinly veiled threats of God’s punishment or not veiled at all threats of God’s punishment, along with a get out of punishment free, Jesus card. Believe in Jesus. You just gotta believe. The whole thing is often kind of confused and leads to believers whose faith may be in Jesus, but whose lives are not transformed. 

It kinda follows the movies I’ve seen about Jesus where his disciples get so excited about fishing for people that they go around talking about the good news, and how great it is because of the good news, and y’all should believe because of the good news. There’s never really any explanation as to what the good news is, and audience members who haven’t been raised in the church are left wondering what in the world they were talking about. 

I find that a lot of our “fish for people” evangelism is equally confused, people feeling like they have to tell folks about Jesus to get them saved, but in that conversation, the actual person with an actual life is irrelevant. “You gotta get saved.” “But what about what’s going on in my life right now?” “You gotta get saved.”

So, that’s definitely one interpretation of what Jesus meant by “you’ll be fishing for people,” but I read a different interpretation last week which is fantastic and actually makes sense with the rest of Luke’s Gospel and the prophets that came before. “Fish for people” was an image used in Jeremiah, and Amos, and other prophets calling for justice, for an end to oppression, and for turning back to God’s ways of loving and caring for one another. 

In Jeremiah 16:16-17 God says he is sending fishermen to catch those who are not following God’s ways, who are following idols and violence. In Amos 4:1-2, God says those who oppress the poor and crush the needy will be taken away with fish-hooks. In light of Jeremiah and Amos, it sounds like Jesus was sending his disciples to call out oppression and to serve and heal the needy who were being crushed by the powerful.

Jesus sending his disciples to fish for people by working to help the poor and needy, and striving against oppression, that follows all that had come before in Luke’s Gospel. What did Mary sing when she was pregnant with Jesus? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t, “My son is going to be a get out of Hell free card with little or no impact on this life.” Mary’s song said, “[God] scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” Justice and mercy were the themes of Mary’s song. 

For centuries, the prophets had been preaching justice and mercy. “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” (Micah 6:8) “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” (Hosea 6:6) “Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17) Then, when John the Baptist was proclaiming his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, people asked him what they should do, and he told them to live lives of justice and mercy. 

So, when Jesus told his disciples, I’m going to have you fish for people, he was telling them, we are going to work for justice and mercy, and by working for justice and mercy, we are going to draw people closer to God and one another. We are going to live lives of love and transform people’s lives by how we care for them. We are going to transform people’s lives, and we teach others to do the same.

That work of justice and mercy, that work of love and transformation was for everyone, those who were wealthy and those who were poor. In one parable Jesus told, a wealthy man showed mercy, and a poor man did not, and the poor man was not let off the hook (or the fish-hook) just because he was poor. 

Justice and mercy, love and transformation, that’s God’s will for our lives. That’s always been God’s will for our lives. We see this in the earliest parts of scripture and when God formed the people of Israel and gave them the law. One law God gave was about gleaning. Gleaning was a practice in ancient Israel in which large landowners, farmers, would not take in all of the harvest. They would intentionally leave some of the grain, leave some of the fruits or vegetables out in the fields, so that the poor among them could come and take what had been left.

In other words, the wealthy intentionally took less than they could for themselves so that others might have enough.

If we look at modern-day gleaning, we could look at the owners of businesses and the executives of businesses. Owners are the shareholders, and they want to get as much as they can get from the profits of the company. Executives try to keep shareholders happy by earning as much profit as they can to give as much as possible to the shareholders. The executives also end up getting as much as they can in their salaries. The market demands that executives get huge salaries, because if one company didn’t pay as much, then another would pay more, and they’d get the best executives. So, salaries keep going up as companies compete for the best people.

Executives and shareholders get as much as they can out of the business, and folks on the bottom have not enough or barely enough to live on. That goes completely against the Biblical demands for justice and against the concept of gleaning. Modern-day gleaning would look like shareholders and executives intentionally giving themselves less than they could get so that those at the bottom could have more.

That’s the kind of thing Jesus and his disciples might preach when they went around fishing for people. For those at the top, you don’t need to take as much as you can for yourself, regardless of what the market demands. Choose to take less than you can, so that those at the bottom can have more and won’t be weeks away from eviction at any moment. 

Rather than choosing what the market demands, choose justice, mercy, love, and transformation. I think that’s what Jesus and his disciples would preach as they went fishing for people, and Jesus and his disciples would preach that message to all of us, not just to the wealthy. Even those with very little can oppress others. 

God, who created all that is, has been teaching us this for millennia. Choose justice, mercy, and love, rather than oppression. God knows how hard that can be for us, and so God became human. God became human to join with us in our oppression, both when we are oppressors and when we are being oppressed. God joined with us to strive with us and to help transform our lives. From lives of oppression to lives of justice, mercy, and love, God strives with us, joining us together with God and one another so that our lives might be transformed. That sounds like good news. Fish for people. Choose justice, mercy, and love, and allow Jesus to transform our lives.