Don't grieve without hope

This week's verses are 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18:

Now we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Paul is addressing the church in Thessaloniki, Greece, where it seems people were grieving the dead in a way that held out no hope for heaven. Obviously they saw Christianity a little different from the way we modern folk do, where going to heaven after we die is considered to be pretty much the main or only reason to become a Christian.

I don't think Paul is telling them not to grieve at all. There are some Christians who consider it "unspiritual" to grieve when someone dies, and will make it an ugly point of contention. It's not wrong to be sad when someone goes away, whether they die, or end a relationship, or move to the other side of the world. Sadness is natural in those cases, and is a sign that you really valued that person. Telling someone not to grieve is like telling someone not to love. Jesus wept when Lazarus died. So unless you're more spiritual than Jesus, I don't think you could argue against shedding a tear when someone you love is no longer around, even if that condition is only temporary.

The difference between Christian grief and the grief of those who don't believe, is that we believe we will see the person again. That's why Paul describes it as sleep, rather than as death. When someone is asleep, they eventually wake up again. The reason they can do that is that they are still alive. So what Paul is saying is that, in a spiritual sense, the person who has passed away is still alive. Just like Jesus is still alive.

In fact, the dead person is privileged. When Jesus returns to the earth, the dead will rise first to meet him. So in a sense, they're ahead of us in line. Maybe we should be jealous of them? But it sounds like we won't be very far behind them when we're snatched up to heaven.

So Christian grief isn't grief without hope, because we have reasonable hope that we will see them again. Jesus returned from the dead, and his authority is available to us. So our grief is more like the grief we would have for someone who has moved away and broken contact. It is not the permanent grief we would have if we had lost someone forever. They'll wake up.

It's a bit like with babies before they develop "object permanence." When you disappear, the baby freaks out, because he thinks you're gone forever. But when you come back, he's overjoyed! You may as well have been raised from the dead! I think it'll be a bit like that when Christ returns. Intellectually we understand the resurrection, or at least we know the correct answers to give when someone asks us. But do we really understand it the way we now understand that someone who has gone to the kitchen will come back in a minute? Or is part of our understanding "uninformed?"

Paul says to encourage each other with this truth. Some pretty amazing things are going to happen in the future. We have a lot to understand. Don't forget the fringe benefits that are available to us as brothers and sisters in Christ! Don't deny yourself the hope of the resurrection.