May 31, 2026 Reflection

In his letter to the congregation in Thessalonica, Paul is attempting to respond to a question that is perhaps as old as time. A question that comes to many of us in the middle of the night, when the house is still and we’re staring at the ceiling. What happens to us when we die?

The church in Thessalonica was young and still sorting through the implications of their faith. Remember these people did not have New Testament Bibles. Those of them who were Jewish would have had the Torah and much of the Hebrew Testament, which was written in the expectation that the Messiah would come, but not with much detail about what to do when he did. And certainly no detail about what to do when he was murdered and then was raised. This letter is one of the earliest existing letters that we have, written maybe 40 years after Jesus had died and been resurrected. To say the faith was young, to say there were still a lot of details to be worked out, is an enormous understatement.

With great hope and expectation, the believers in Thessalonica had embraced the message Paul brought them, the message that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and that with the resurrection of Christ God’s realm was breaking into the world. They believed Christ would return soon and they assumed that when he came, all the believers would still be alive to witness it. “It seems that in Thessalonica – as perhaps in many places in the earliest days in the church – the belief arose that since Christ had won the victory over death by rising again from the dead, believers would now not die themselves. Or they would remain alive until Christ came back.” htthttps://cepreaching.org/authors/scott-hoezee/ps://cepreaching.org/commentary/2020-11-02/1-thessalonians-413-18-2/

But then something very unsettling began to happen. People started dying. Members of their congregation died. Parents died. Friends. Beloved elders. And suddenly the community was thrown into anxiety and grief. Had those people missed out on Jesus’ promise that they would be with the risen Christ? Would they somehow be excluded from the coming reign of God? Was Paul wrong? You can imagine the tone of terror and confusion in the letters they wrote to Paul.

Our reading today is Paul’s pastoral response to a community he loved: “We do not want you to be uninformed… about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Paul assures the people that the dead are still in Christ’s hands and when he returns, those who have died will be the first in line to be raised back to new life and then those still alive will be reunited with them. In the meantime, Paul encourages the people to live according to the faith as they already had been, only more so. A faith that is the grounds for encouragement to and steadfastness in living a life pleasing to God. Paul does not tell the people to not grieve, but to hold their grief alongside their hope. To not lose hope in life nor hope in a future. And perhaps that is a word many of us need today.

Because grief is everywhere. Some of us grieve people we have lost. Some relationships that have changed. Some grieve a decline in their health or the health of someone they love. Many of us grieve for the world: violence, climate anxiety, injustice, fear about the future. And often underneath all that grief is the deeper fear: Are we alone in the universe? Do the people we love simply disappear? Does death have the final word?

Paul answers all these questions with a resounding no. He reminds the Thessalonians that the heart of Christian faith is resurrection: “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again…” Since we believe. It’s important to know that the word we translate as “believe”, actually meant something more like “trust” to the people Paul is writing to. To “believe” something, in today’s language, means to accept it with our brain, with our intellect, to receive it as the truth. You might say, “I don’t believe the moon is made of green cheese.”

But in scripture, the word believe means trust, bond with, give allegiance to, give our heart to. It’s the way I would say, “I believe in my husband Bob.” Not, I believe he exists – but I trust in him, his loyalty, his faithfulness, and I make that promise to him in return.

So Paul, in response to this question that is bewildering and grieving his community, says, ‘We trust that Christ died and rose again…“ The Christian trust is in the resurrection, however we understand that today, and I know there are multiple ways of grappling with what exactly happened on that first Easter morning that set the world on a particular course. Our trust is in the promise that love is not extinguished by death. The promise that life in God cannot finally be destroyed. The promise that those who belong to God remain held in God forever.

And then Paul goes on to describe how the living and the dead will be reunited in Christ. The imagery here is poetic and apocalyptic — full of symbols common in ancient Jewish writing: clouds, trumpets, angels, heavenly processions. And there is another layer to this imagery that matters. In the Roman Empire, when an emperor or victorious ruler approached a city, they would arrive with great ceremony, including processions of brilliant horses and chariots, and trumpets and pageantry. The procession came heralding the arrival of the  emperor, praising the Pax Romana, the peace and security of the land. Paul is using similar imagery for the arrival of the risen Christ, but he subverts it. Unlike the emperors, who were referred to as Lord, Father and Protector, and who maintained the peace and security of the Roman Empire through violence and oppression, Christ the Lord of all creation brings peace and security through grace-filled love. In his subversive writing Paul proclaims that the love of God is more powerful than empire, fear, violence, or death itself. And so he tells the Thessalonians, “…put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” (1 Thess 5:8) Do not arm yourself as the Roman warriors do for violence, but as followers of the Way of love and life.

Paul describes how the people, the living and the dead, will be united with Christ, how we will be ‘caught up…in the clouds together”. Again, he is using apocalyptic language; language and imagery that was meant to encourage, comfort and give hope. Apocalyptic language was a genre, a style of writing like mysteries or science fiction or romance, a type of literature intended to rally people with hope, and containing subversive critiques of the ruling powers.

Unfortunately, some of the intent of the passage has been completely distorted over the last 150 years. It is used often now as a description of what is referred to as the Rapture. Some Christians have interpreted this part of the letter to mean that believers will suddenly vanish from earth in a supernatural evacuation. And the rest of us will be left behind. But it is important to know that this interpretation is quite recent in Christian history. For most of the church’s history, Christians did not read this passage that way. Paul’s focus is not escape from the world through Rapture. His focus is on life in a renewed world and in reunion in Christ.

Paul is trying to reassure a frightened congregation that even in death we are not forgotten by God. That there will come a time when they, when we, will all be enveloped in the fulfilled realm of God.  And throughout this cosmic imagery, Paul keeps bringing the conversation back to community, grounding his writing in the hope of the people. He says: “And so we will be with the Lord forever.” We. Not just isolated souls. But all of us. Together. Again and again in this passage, Paul emphasizes togetherness: Together with those who have died. Together with one another. Together with Christ.

Christian hope is communal. And that matters deeply in a culture that is experiencing loneliness and isolation at epidemic levels. Last Sunday when the new members joined we all pledged to be together on our faith journey. We repeated our creed: “We are not alone, we live in God’s world.” We carry one another. We comfort one another. We become signs of resurrection for one another.

Yesterday I was visiting a very dear friend who is dying. She has all the shades of dementia and has chosen MAiD, medical assistance in dying, rather than entering into that state where she would have no cognitive ability. She is an extraordinary woman who will be missed terribly, and people are coming from all over the country to say good-bye. One of her daughters was telling me that her mom enjoys the visits tremendously but that half an hour later she will forget that the people came. She doesn’t remember anything of the visit her daughter said, except, she remembers the love. She remembers the love. And that love is the presence of God, holding onto us even to the end, and then beyond.

I believe that when we die, we are held in the memory of God. And then I believe and I can’t help it, I’m a concrete thinker, that there is this great cosmic brain and heart that holds all of us, all of us from all time in that memory, and that the entity that holds the memory, the one we call God is defined by Love. God is the force of Love, the vulnerability of Love, the all-encompassing Love that holds the universe and we’re all rattling around in there as memories and so somehow present to each other. As my friend remembers the love, so too God remembers us, holds us together, reunites all that is to God’s self.

Paul tells us to encourage one another with these words, these words of hope. Sometimes encouragement looks dramatic and people are touched deeply. Sometimes it can seem an ineffectual offering in the face of a terminal illness or addiction or depression or homelessness. But we remember the love of the encouragement, and that love is the essence of what holds us all together.

The theologian Frederick Buechner once wrote: “Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.” I think Paul would agree. Death is real. Grief is real. But they are not ultimate. God’s love is ultimate. This letter to the Thessalonians and to us encourages us to not lie awake wondering what happens when we die, to not obsess about what kind of insanity we’re going to read about in the paper the next morning. Grieve – yes. Worry – yes. But in our grief and worry lean into trust and hope. Trust and hope that you are not forgotten. Your beloved dead are not lost. Love does not end. “Encourage one another with these words.” May we do exactly that.

Amen.