With These Words

 

Sunday, November 9^th, 2008

Proper 27 A/ Ordinary 32 A/ Pentecost +26 (All Saints Sunday)

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Theme: Encouraging one another through the hope we have in Christ

 

 “¹³But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. ¹⁴For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. ¹⁵For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. ¹⁶For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. ¹⁸Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

 

It is a profoundly compelling vision, isn’t it?  To imagine what that day might look like, when Jesus comes back in all his glory, and according to Paul, with a cry of command ushers in the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth – life as it was intended to be. 

 

It is also, at its heart, a profoundly unlikely scenario – unlikely in the sense that it is UNLIKE anything we have ever – or WILL ever – experience here on earth otherwise. 

 

But that seems to be the whole point, isn’t it?  Paul is coming from the perspective of one who over the last few years had experienced the most UNLIKELY of lives.  This vision that Paul presents to his readers in Thessalonica is one that goes beyond what they could imagine… it speaks to their longing for a day they could look forward to when there would be no more struggle, no more sorrow, no more war.  It speaks to a reality so radically different from that which they had experienced all their lives that even to contemplate it required a leap of faith. 

 

We’ve skipped some of the text of the letter.  In some ways, Paul spends what seems an inordinate amount of time in greeting and expressing his love and prayers for the Thessalonians, and it is in the fourth chapter that he begins the conclusion of the letter – and to speak to some of the issues that he has heard have arisen among the believers.  We’ve jumped to one of the issues that the folks at Thessalonica were worried about – some in their number have died since Paul had left – perhaps even been killed in the persecution they suffered that was the cause of Paul’s hasty departure from their city. 

 

Something we need to remember about the very beginnings of the church is that their sense that Jesus was going to return – literally, physically, trumpets blaring, clouds rolling, thunder clapping, the whole kit and caboodle – was understood to be expected MOMENTARILY – RIGHT NOW or maybe this afternoon, or evening, or tomorrow at the latest, and that sense of expectation translated into an excitement that was contagious, to say the least. 

 

Now, remember also, Paul was of the same generation as Jesus – he was a contemporary of Jesus’.  Even though we have no scriptural evidence of his having seen Jesus before his crucifixion, we know that he DID know OF Jesus – enough to begin persecuting his followers pretty quickly, and we also know of his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus, when Saul the Pharisee became Paul the Apostle.  So he had an image in his mind of what Jesus looked like and sounded like.  It is easy when you KNOW what someone looks like to imagine them around you – walking into your house, or into your room, running into you at the grocery store or in the pharmacy … there’s an understanding that it would not be a big deal if you DID happen to run into that person that you are accustomed to seeing IN your daily life.  It’s kind of that with Jesus for Paul.  Christ’s presence – even though it was that one time on the road that day, was a profoundly life-changing experience for Paul, and for MOST of his ministry he spoke of Christ’s return in terms that left no doubt that he DID in fact, expect Jesus to return within his lifetime.  It’s not until he wrote to the Corinthians that we begin to see his allowing for the possibility that he MIGHT not be around when Christ comes back. 

 

So he has left the Thessalonians with the understanding of the probability of Christ’s IMMEDIATE return.  They all look at each other and go “great, it’s going to happen in the next few days or weeks at most, let’s get ready and really show what we believe by how we live.”  And they did.  But then a couple of them died.  And they know what to do with that. 

 

Remember there were some Jewish believers in Thessalonica, and there were also some Gentile God-fearers – those who believed in God but had not taken the steps to become full-blown Hebrews.  While there were SOME segments of the Hebrew Religious community that believed in the possibility of a bodily resurrection – or for that matter, life after death – it was NOT a belief that was shared by ALL Jews, and it was even LESS available as a possibility among the pagan religions of the Greco-Roman world.  My suspicion is that there may have been a larger portion of believers of gentile origin than believers of Jewish origin, just by virtue of the response Paul received in the synagogue, but I don’t know that for certain.  So if these former pagans, who were expecting Jesus to come back anytime now begin to see their friends and co-congregants begin to die off, or to be killed or executed in the continuing absence of Christ, they were not sure what that meant for them.  This is what Paul is addressing. 

 

Up until then, the concept of life that prevailed was that it ENDED at death, period. End of story.  It was foreign to them to consider the possibility that life extended beyond the grave.  And that is natural.  All our senses tell us that.  When we see something dead in the middle or on the side of the road, we have a pretty good foundation on which to assume that whatever animal it was will not be moving of it’s own accord anytime soon – in fact, EVER again.  That’s just the way it works in the world. 

 

To say that something works in such a way that your friend, your loved one – who just died – will one day, hopefully soon, rise from the ground where he or she is buried, and that YOU will join him or her in the air as you BOTH approach the returning Christ in all his glory… that is to describe something that can only be accepted through the eyes of faith because it has never happened before.  There was no point of reference in the reality in which the Thessalonians lived for them to be able to expect something like that to happen.  There WAS in Paul’s experience, because he had a direct encounter with the risen Lord. 

 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

 

A phrase I heard repeatedly over the last part of this past week was “I didn’t believe I would see it in my lifetime.” 

 

In president-elect Obama’s acceptance speech in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, he referenced a woman from Georgia who had voted on Tuesday.  She is a hundred and six years old.  Her father was a freed slave at the age of twelve.  Imagine the improbable things she has witnessed in HER life. 

 

We really don’t even have to go THAT far to think of improbabilities, do we?  Think back on the span of YOUR life.  What seemed so far-fetched to you as a child but is now commonplace? 

 

The possibility of Christ’s return happening in the next minute seems remote, this far removed from those who actually walked and talked with him.  And it is open to discussion – and conjecture – when the actual time will be.  Jesus himself didn’t know when it would be.  My thought is, if it was something that Jesus didn’t concern himself with, that’s good enough for me.  I will worry more about what it means to live out his life through me than walk around looking to the sky for any signs of trumpets and clouds rolling around … the POINT is, though I don’t know WHEN it might happen, or exactly HOW, I know it WILL.  And that gives me the encouragement I need when I see some of the less than hopeful places in the world today.

 

Knowing the end of the story IS enough.          

 

Let’s pray.