Hell - NO.

We say it three times in the rite of baptism.

Hell - No.  

Hell - No. 

Hell - No. 

Well, we don't say it quite like that.

Rather it is in the form of three renunciations that have to to with the devil and all the forces that defy God - the powers of this world that rebel against God - the ways of sin that draw us from God. I suppose you could also say we are directing our attention to the personification of evil and its wardrobe of violence that has a way of seducing us into taking part in its character of deceit - disrespect - dishonor - rivalry - envy - brutality - lying - and dying, that keeps the world as it is - broken and separated.

We make sure that we hear about the empty promises that lead to death. We do this so that as when we begin walking in the wetness of God's Reign we will remember the look and the smell and the grasping and the lies that well up in the midst of Hell as it comes alive around us trying to flirt with us and seduce us.

That renunciation could be said in another way: Hell NO - we won't go. But remember that in this refusal we are not directing our attention to another time and place - a disembodied domain that is the antithesis to another disembodied place called Heaven. We are lifting up a voice of resistance even as the water of baptism is rolling off the heads of the newly baptized. This watered life comes when we are being drawn up and brought up into each day as people who renounce Hell's invitation to join the parade of horrors that are so often the ways of the world - unfortunately they are often ways we have adopted as our own - with a price.

We say: Hell NO - we won't go along - with Hell's character. As long as we are wet with the unbounded love of the peaceable Reign of God that looks like the humanity of Jesus, we will face many of our days living lives of love that ceaselessly say:
Hell - No.
Hell - No.
Hell - No.
I think that is when the dancing begins.
TRRR