The Gates of Hell

 Thoughts on the 12th Sunday after Trinity

 (23rd September 2026) 

Isaiah 51.1–6; Psalm 138; Romans 12.1–8; Matthew 16.13–20

For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.

Those words from our 1st reading today have prompted me to talk today about Christianity as a path of healing. Our God is the ultimate healer and therapist.

In Jesus’ opening sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth he declared that he had come to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind and freedom for the oppressed. 

I wonder if that’s your experience? It’s mine. I have been poor and enslaved and blind and oppressed at various times in my life.

Years ago (about 40) I was in a terrible place. That’s not the only time in my life I have been in deep distress, but that’s the occasion that comes to mind today. I was quite the mess. I had no idea what to do with my life. I was a very damaged person; lonely, isolated, frightened, insecure, angry, wounded, confused and depressed.

I had recently come to Christ after a spell of very loose living and one afternoon I decided to go for a walk. I was living in Richmond at the time and I walked up a street called Halford Road where there was a Christian Fellowship in Halford House (it’s still there). That wasn’t my church but I noticed it because they had a display case outside in which they placed an open Bible. 

They would change the page on display every week and on this particular day the Bible was open at Chapter 54 of the Book of Isaiah, so I read it.

I don’t know whether you have ever had the experience of reading, or hearing, words from the Scriptures and knowing, just knowing, that as you read or listen, God is speaking to YOU in that very moment.  

These are the moments when words in a book become the living Word of God. The Holy Spirit activates those words somehow, and they come alive and penetrate deep into the marrow of your bones, and nothing on earth can convince you that God isn’t speaking personally to you.

This is what Isaiah 54 says: To me this is like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth. So now I have sworn not to be angry with you, never to rebuke you again. Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

‘Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will rebuild you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with lapis lazuli. I will make your battlements of rubies, your gates of sparkling jewels, and all your walls of precious stones…In righteousness you will be established: tyranny will be far from you; you will have nothing to fear. Terror will be far removed; it will not come near you….This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me,’ declares the Lord.

Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will rebuild you! That’s quite a promise isn’t it? I have never forgotten that moment or those words because I was that ‘afflicted city’ and God has been true to his promise.

God rebuilds damaged people and damaged lives. He is the answer to loneliness, to isolation, fear, insecurity, anger, and woundedness; to confusion and depression. I see it all the time in my own life and in the lives of those I know who have come to faith in Christ.

I don’t know how he does it but he does it. Just his presence, and the realisation that in Jesus God has come looking for us to heal and rebuild us, seems to be enough.

Our Gospel reading today relates the story of Peter’s realisation. It describes the moment Peter sees that the man standing in front of him as he speaks is not just the expected Messiah of the Jews; he is not just the great King who has been promised by their Scriptures for thousands of years; he is the Son of the Living God.

This is something beyond what was expected.

And the passage makes it clear that this kind of knowledge, this kind of seeing, is something that is given by the Holy Spirit. You can’t think your way to this realisation. 

It’s rather like the moment I described a moment ago when I was reading the words of Isaiah 54; something you can’t explain happens and your eyes and ears are opened by the Holy Spirit.

You suddenly see that what you have been looking at is not what you thought it was at all; that what you have been reading is not just words on a page but a personal letter to you; and what you have heard is not just sounds but a Voice speaking directly to your own heart!  

The Gospel passage is worthy of our attention: Jesus is clearly checking his disciples understanding here isn’t he? They’ve been with him for a while and witnessed miracle after miracle, but he clearly thinks there’s a way to go in their development, because he asks them a direct question: Who do YOU say that I am?

It’s a great question and one for us today. What do we say?

There will be a range of answers in this church today – for some Jesus was a good man; maybe even the best man. For others a wise man, a teacher and a prophet; a healer and miracle worker. But if that’s all there is then there’s something missing.

Simon comes out with it (he’s not Peter yet): You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, and Jesus replies,  Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…

This is the moment that changes everything because once we see it nothing is ever the same again and Simon is given a new name to signify that he will never be the same man again.

And in the next breath a promise: the gates of Hades (Hell) will not prevail against it.

All the darkness in our lives is powerless to resist the love of God in Jesus. It doesn’t stand a chance.

There’s an interesting detail to notice here. They were in a place called Caesarea Philippi, which was originally called Paneas because it housed a major sanctuary and a cave dedicated to the Greek God of nature and fertility, Pan (him with the horns). The mouth of the cave was regarded as an entrance to the underworld or Hades and so we get the name, the ‘Gates of Hell’. 

But what of those gates of Hades (of Hell) in our own lives? Where are the places where darkness and confusion come in? Well for me there were a whole load of gates that needed to be acknowledged and closed. 

There were past hurts and people I needed to forgive; resentment and bitterness is an open gate for all sorts of misery. There were also my own regrets over things I had done and those needed to be acknowledged and confessed; our own sins are an open gate for guilt and shame.

There was also my own lack of faith. It took me a long time to begin to believe that God loved me, and that the difficulties in my life were not the proof that he didn’t. Life is difficult, and I don’t know why I held on to the illusion that it should be easy and joyful all the time for so long.

You know, God’s healing is available to us all the time if we turn to him, but I think it’s worth saying one final thing about that. To ask for healing is simultaneously to acknowledge our brokenness and that can be difficult for people. 

When I was counselling I often saw people who needed to face their wounds and come to terms with their brokenness, and some would say something like: ‘If I have a look at this or that, and face it, I will never stop crying’. 

Well that’s never actually true, because as the Bible tells us: the truth will set you free, it’s not a bottomless pit like the ‘Gates of Hell’, because that’s where Jesus meets us and heals us.

Let us pray.