1 Thessalonians 4:7-18  ⁷ For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness.  ⁸ Therefore whoever rejects this rejects not human authority but God, who also gives his Holy Spirit to you.  ⁹ Now concerning love of the brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anyone write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another;  ¹⁰ and indeed you do love all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, beloved, to do so more and more,  ¹¹ to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you,  ¹² so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one.  ¹³ But 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.  ¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.  ¹⁵ 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.  ¹⁶ For 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.  ¹⁷ Then 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.  ¹⁸ Therefore encourage one another with these words.

            The above text is one that I mentioned in my sermon yesterday.  As I said in my sermon, this is what I consider one of the most powerful texts in the whole Bible.  This text is witness to the theology of the early church, and most notably, to the theology of Jews who had converted to Christianity. 

            In hopes of preventing the church in Thessalonica from dissolving, Paul wrote this letter to them.  In it, he addresses the grief that members of the church are experiencing because Jesus has not already returned.  They had witness the death of many of their members, yet Jesus had not come back.  The text above is Paul’s own account and theology of how Jesus’ second coming will happen and what it will look like. 

            This text can be comforting to us as we look forward to that day, but it can also leave us with lots of questions.  For example, this text leaves out all notion of judgment.  Additionally, it also makes us ask “where do those that have died go if not straight to heaven?”  This text makes the resurrection one of extreme equality, where those that have died rise to meet those that are alive, and then together all go to meet Christ.  I asked one of my theology professors about this once, and his response was this:  “The Bible speaks multiple times about people falling ‘asleep’, i.e., dying.  Since we have not yet died, we do not know exactly what that is like.  However, since the human body cannot keep track of time, I am convinced that what seems like to me mere moments after I die I will indeed be in Heaven.  How much time actually passes between my passing and Christ’s coming though, I will not know, nor will I care, because I will be with my Lord.”  That’s a pretty powerful thought in my opinion, and one that I hold on too.  How true is it?  Ask me again when you see me in Heaven.

In our prayers this week: Ann, Daniel, David, Brianna, Scott S, Anna, and Mike C. (Mary Lou’s neighbor)

God’s Peace