There are certain things that we say which really have no bearing on reality, but they make us feel better, especially when you are a parent. We tell our kids to be safe or study hard. Comments like this makes us feel like we actually are doing something and then if the kid comes home with a bad grade we are off the hook because we told them to study hard and darn it they just didn’t listen. And if you were being cynical you could say that the snippet we have from Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians was just this type of advice – sort of a grey skies are going to clear up type thing. But I am working on my cynicism and so that is not the route that I am going to take.
Paul is writing to the Church in Thessalonica and he seems to be initially addressing something that was a prominent question in the early days of the Church, but something about which we don’t give a whole lot of thought to these days. Most in the early Church believed that Christ would be returning very soon, and by very soon I mean within their lifetime. And so as time went on, some of those who believed that Christ would be returning before they died, died. And for those who remained, a concern arose over what happened to those who had died, because the expectation was that none of them would see death before the return of Christ. That is what Paul is getting at when he says, “For 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.” In other words he is assuring them that those who have died do not have to worry about anything – they are not going to miss out on the return of Christ and the resurrection of the body and all that. So that is the reason for Paul writing this section of the letter and while that is interesting historically, I want to take a minute and focus on the other stuff. And by using the technical term other stuff I mean to ask a question about the assurance that he is offering and why is it more than just happy talk that does not reflect reality?
The main point of what Paul is saying is that we are not to be as ones without hope, which is why he says, “so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” But there is another piece to this that can kind of be missed if you read through this too quickly. And just in case you are worried let me assure you that we will return to the bit about hope, but I want to start with the first part, which is about grief. Notice Paul does not say that we should not grieve; it is simply that the grief should not be like those without hope. And I think this is very important because it dispels an issue that sneaks into Christianity now and then which has to do with the way in which we handle death. Some Christians, who for charity’s sake we will say, believe that because we are Christian we should not mourn. Some may even push it as far as saying we should celebrate when a loved one has passed because they have gone onto their reward. But notice Paul does not say to avoid mourning, only to not mourn as those without hope. And this may seem like hairsplitting, because mourning is mourning isn’t it? But really it points to something that is very important.
To understand this a little better, we need to go back to the story of Lazarus and the shortest verse in the Bible. If you remember from John Chapter 11, Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha and was very ill and died. Jesus went after this had happened and was met by those mourning for the loss of Lazarus. As the story continues Jesus would eventually raise Lazarus from the dead, but in between Lazarus’ death and his raising we have in verse 35 a verse which simply says that “Jesus wept.” Now think about this Jesus has lost someone that he loved, while at the same time he knew that he had the power to raise him from the dead and yet he still wept. You could hardly say that Jesus was without hope; I mean he was the Son of God and had control over life and death as he would show. Yet at that moment when he saw that his friend Lazarus was not there he felt the terrible sting of loss. And so you see mourning someone does not mean we are without hope instead it represents the feeling of loss, the feeling of emptiness that had previously been filled by another person. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that God keeps this gap empty so as to keep our former communion alive even if it causes us pain. Jesus felt the pain and it is okay for us to feel it as well. We can miss someone or mourn someone and still have faith and still have hope.
But this brings us to the second part. We realize we will feel pain at loss, but we also have hope and the question is what distinguishes hope from foolhardiness? I mean Linus had hope that the Great Pumpkin would come for all the good that did him. And, so, what is the difference between our hope and simple wishful thinking? Well the answer like many in the Christian faith comes down to the resurrection of Jesus. The Resurrection was not just a neat trick, but rather it was the sign that death was not the final word. We know that death is not the final word because we have someone that went before us. Someone who was dead but rose again. This signified that there was more. Death was just a moment before the eternal glory that was to come. We do not rely on feel good stories but rather we rely on an actual event. The hope that we have comes from something that happened which shows that through belief in this person who rose from the dead we are able to conquer death as well. The author of Hebrews refers to Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He is the pioneer because he went first. He passed through death and came out resurrected on the other end. And just like a pioneer we are to tread the way that he trod. We are to follow knowing that it has and can be done. We do not live as ones without hope because we have seen that death is not the final word.
And I would be remiss today if I didn’t mention the loss of our brother Gerry Bay. I was taking Gerry communion weekly over the past few months and I would get the question from others of how he was doing. And I always felt there were two parts to this answer. There was the physical question to which the answer was that he was obviously declining, but there was also what we would call the spiritual question and the answer to this was rather incredible and rather inspiring. Gerry was not living as one without hope. He was ready to go to his reward, he was ready to rush out and meet the Lord. Gerry was what we are called to be as Christian. He did not ignore the physical reality. He knew that his body was failing, but he also knew that there was something beyond this, something to which Christ calls us. This is the life lived as a Christian, we may mourn, we may suffer, but we also hope. And we do not hope in an unrealistic way but rather our hope is found in him who died and rose again so that we may have life and have it abundantly both now and forevermore.