At funerals, everyone becomes a theologian, or at least a grief counselor. And some people are not as good at those jobs as other people.
All the readings for this Sunday converge on the theme of the Day of the Lord, the second coming of Christ, the apocalypse at the end of time. This is what happens as the Church Year winds down, and this week there are foolish virgins in Matthew, justice rolling down like a river in Amos, and the most frequently cited pericope of 1 Thessalonians, the bit about the coming of the Lord. I love the epistle lesson this week because out of all the readings, it is the one most patently relevant to the experience of my listeners. They actually do have loved ones who have predeceased them, and we just celebrated that fact last week with the tolling of the bells and the recitation of their names during service at All Saints.’ Preach the epistle this week and you will be delivering comfort and anticipation, something to look forward to at the coming of the Lord, which your hearers will experience on their last day or the last day, whichever comes first!
In my experience, I have had occasion to treat this text most often in occasional preaching, namely the funeral service. We use it well as Paul intended, as a teaching text (I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters! 1 Thessalonians 4:13), and as a comfort for those who grieve (but not as those who have no hope, 1 Thessalonians 4:13). It is important to drive this latter point home accurately and memorably. At funerals, everyone becomes a theologian, or at least a grief counselor. And some people are not as good at those jobs as other people.
You know what I am talking about if your experience includes well-meaning folks at the reception rolling out simplistic, empty, trite, superficial platitudes on the theological end like: “God needed another angel,” or “everything happens for a reason,” or “she’s in a better place, so we should be happy and not sad,” or “God never gives you more than you can handle!” Blech. Spontaneous grief counselors are just as dangerous: “At least they lived a long life,” “you need to be strong for your kids (or fill-in-the-blank),” “time heals all wounds,” or the dreaded and mendacious, “I know exactly how you feel.”
How refreshing amid the slings and arrows of outrageous religious and psychological advice to take up arms (the Word of God in Christ) against such a sea of trouble and by opposing, end them, namely by proclaiming the clear Word. We do grieve, yes! It is not wrong to! Yet, we do not grieve as those who have no hope. We grieve as those who share a hope in our last day being our first in resurrected glory, united with Christ in His resurrection, reunited with those we love, our fellow sojourner-exiles whose pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem has simply come to its fulfillment sooner than ours by a few hours or days or years.
“Encourage one another with these words,” says Paul (1 Thessalonians 4:18). This is even more reason to preach this text on a Sunday morning, not just at a funeral. But hear one more thing in that phrase: With these words. Words matter. As a biblical preacher, your use of language is prophetic, your accent is psalmody, your dialect is divine inspiration, your twang is Christological, and you resonate with the heavenly. In other words, we should preach like the Bible preaches, and we should preach the Bible. And that includes the way the inspired Word of God in Christ employs language. This is so important for this particular reading – but it is subtle, so pick up on it. Euphemisms abound in every language. It is one of the natural things about human language. Sometimes words are hard to swallow, so we pull the punch on technical vocabulary to ease what might sound abrupt. So many ways to say “die,” “death,” and “dead” in the English language are there not? Why is it that “passed away” has such caché these days? We even truncate that phrase to the single participle “passed” or its gerund “passing,” as in “when my dad passed” or “we gather today to mark the passing of fill-in-the-blank.”
We do grieve, yes! It is not wrong to! Yet, we do not grieve as those who have no hope.
Our anxieties about death that translate into euphemism at best amuse (I would refer the reader to the Pythons’ Dead Parrot sketch), but at worst fail to confess the truth, and, in fact, confess a different gospel, one that mourns but has no hope. Sisters and brothers, this just is not how scripture talks, at least not in “encouraging” terms (1 Thessalonians 4:18). God can certainly cause to “pass away” whatever He wants to wipe out or take away the breath of (refer to Psalm 102 and Isaiah 2:18). But when we are talking Christian death, the way Paul does it and the way that the New Testament community does, and employ a euphemism like biblical language does, then we have one better than “pass away.”
“For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thessalonians 4:14).
This has the accent of our Lord in it through and through, in the words of the Beloved Disciple at John 11: Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him (John 11:11). Wake him up He did, from the dead. And lest there be any doubt about it, John has Jesus tell them plainly, Lazarus has died (John 11:14), and he has been resting in the tomb for four days (John 11:17), long enough that there will be a smell of putrescence (John 11:39). Just as Lazarus was roused from death, the dead are called to awaken in Paul’s baptismal hymn of Ephesians 5:14, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
What a comforting image, one that ought to encourage the believer in the quite practical habit of sleeping and rising daily. This is one my children learned early on as they prayed their evening prayers. Nothing morbid about “now I lay me down to sleep... if I die before I wake.” But we would add a coda to it before the goodnight hug and kiss: “We go to sleep as if to our death, for we go to our death as if to our sleep.” There is a rich heritage of hymnody that confesses sleeping and waking in the move from death to life which undergirds our confession and flows from the biblical language as well – and you just cannot say the same thing about “passed away.”
Why spend time on this? Be conscious of your craft. Dear preacher, dear pastor, if you find it is most helpful to talk about “death” without saying the word “death,” do not capitulate to a culture that settles for “passed away.” Be biblical about this and counter cultural. Why not practice “fell asleep in the Lord”? It has a nice to ring to it, after all.
And that is exactly what Paul does here in the epistle text for this antepenultimate Sunday of the Church Year, keeping it Christocentric as you should in your sermon. Jesus never passed away. After all, He promises, in fact, that His Words never will pass away (Luke 21:33; Mark 13:31; Matthew 24:35), but Jesus did die and rise again. So, preach those words. Those are the ones Christ has given to us. The dead in Christ will rise. The Lord Himself will descend, the trumpet will sound, and the grave will yield its captives. Our dead are not lost, nor have they merely passed. They are asleep in Jesus. And Jesus is coming to wake them up. And when we rub our eyes on that final morning, it will be the first morning of eternity with them.
Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus.
Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
