Death sucks. I have pastoral colleagues who say they like doing funerals, not because a person died, of course, but because of the opportunity to have spiritual conversations. I’m really iffy about that. When it comes to rituals of the faith, I’d much rather do a wedding, baptism, or lead the celebration of communion. Because death sucks.
Yet, as we learned in the previous post, Christians have hope in the face of death. Why do we Christians have that astounding hope?
In 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 14, Paul explains, “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”
There you have it. There Paul explains why Christians grieve, but with hope. We grieve with hope because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. When Jesus died and rose again, he paved a pathway, he went before us, he was the first, opening the doorway that enables those who die to die a sleeping kind of death, from which they will wake up like he did.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s real death. Heart stops beating, lungs stop breathing, brain activity ceases. It is not sleep, where all our bodily functions are still working. No. It is real death.
Paul is saying that for Christians this very real death has the possibility of awakening, because that’s what Jesus did. Jesus died a very real physical death, and by the power of God, Jesus awoke. It was a miracle. Dead humans don’t wake up. But Jesus did. This is the crucial miracle of God, that through Jesus’ resurrection, he goes before us, making a way for us to likewise experience awakening after we die.
But notice a very important word in this sentence. “Believe.” Belief happens before death. In other words, there is a particular way of life now that enables the sleeping kind of death. The word “believe,” because that word grounds this passage in the here and now.
I was talking about this passage with a friend this week, and he said this, “I live in today.” That might sound like an obvious truth. But it is important to consider. We live now. Therefore, whatever we choose to believe, we choose that belief now. What do you believe? Better yet, how do your life choices reveal what you truly believe?
To summarize what we’ve learned so far in 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 13 and 14, Paul is talking about the sleeping kind of death, and how the sleeping kind of death enables people to grieve with hope, because those who die in Christ will awaken with him, and that gives us hope.
That idea seems to spark another thought in Paul’s mind. What about those who are still alive when Jesus returns? We’ll see what he has to say in the next post.
Photo by Ahmed Hasan on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 