Please turn to 1 Thessalonians. The third and final sermon in our mini-series addressed to graduates. How you are to move forward in life pleasing God, and doing that more and more. Paul lays out three avenues of pleasing God: a) pleasing God in how we control our bodies sexually; b) pleasing God in the way we work and thus in love support the Church. And now today, c) pleasing God in how we understand death and take the measure of those brothers and sisters in Christ who have preceded us in death.
We made this point earlier, but it’s worth repeating: just think of those three topics: sex, work, death. How fundamental all those are! As their minds are renewed, the children of God, restored image bearers, approach the fundamental things differently than those who are still in their sins.
OK, let’s talk briefly about death: If you drive a mile west on 190 from here you’ll see on your right, Sonnys Place, a place to have fun: mini-golf, carousel, food, etc. What’s often missed is that directly across the street is Leete-Stevens Funeral home. You can miss it because of the glitziness of Sonnys, but also because who wants to stare at a Funeral home?
Who wants to think about death? Especially moderns don’t. We could learn something from our New England ancestors, who worked at keeping the reality of death in front of the living, including their children. In the New England primer, where children learned their ABCs, here’s the ditty for the letter “G”: “As runs the glass [talking about the hourglass], man’s life doth pass.” And “T”: “Time cuts down all, both great and small.” “X”: Xerxes did die, and so must I.” “Y”: While youth do cheer, death may be near.” And recall, this was in an era where life expectancy was much shorter, infant mortality much higher, encountering death wasn’t uncommon.
Ok, those early New Englanders were a little intense, and on the other hand we handle death a little too delicately. Is there a happy middle ground? Well, wherever that exactly falls, Wisdom has it closer to our ancestor’s perspective: It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this [grieving] is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. – Ecclesiastes 7: 2. So, go ahead and stare at the Funeral Home the next time you’re driving to Enfield.
We’ve always needed God’s wisdom in knowing how to deal with death. Let’s read what Paul writes to the Thessalonian Christians, in chapter 4, 13:
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, 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 fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Sometimes, one faint and unsought for impression when someone dies (or, as Paul puts it here, falls asleep) is that Jesus let him down. When we’re alive we experience God helping us – getting us out of scrapes, providing for us, consoling us – but then it appears He couldn’t save us from the most formidable foe: DEATH. Either death takes us by surprise – massive heart attack, massive stroke, bus hits us – or we finally succumb to it at the end of a process that is painful, humiliating, smelly, impoverishing. In either case, ultimately defeat defeats us all… and in death Christ can seem less a Savior.
To this overwhelming impression Paul says three things:
- First, V. 13: There’s hope – death is not the end of a person; it’s a terrible valley on the way to an expansive future. V. 18: There’s encouragement – grief should not be total. When we lose a beloved Christian brother or sister, even as we ache at our loss, we believe we’re still on the way to joyful glory. Even as we look behind and remember and mourn, we look ahead with anticipation. Those without Christian hope deal with death in various ways: from living in fear of it to choosing it over life. The Christian calls it an Enemy yet looks ahead to its ultimate certain defeat. We grieve, but not as those who don’t have hope.
- Secondly: specifically, what we look ahead to is Jesus appearing again. The word translated “coming” in v. 15 is Parousia. Here’s how a lexicon defined Parousia: On the one hand, the word served as a [religious] expression for the coming of a hidden divinity, who makes his presence felt by a revelation of his power . . . On the other hand, Parousia became the official term for a visit of a person of high rank, especially of kings and emperors visiting a province . . . These two technical expressions can approach each other closely in meaning, can shade off into one another, or even coincide.
“A hidden divinity…” That’s what we have now with Jesus. He’s alive, 100% Man, 100% God, but hidden from us in Heaven, the place/dimension where God dwells. It’s designated as “up,” because it’s a higher dimension, more solid, more true, more real than ours.
Currently we read of Jesus, we try to obey His commandments, we pray in His name. Sometimes, somehow, we’re given a deeper faith in Him, and He becomes more valuable to us…we love Him more. But we still don’t see Him. He’s a “hidden Divinity.” All over the world His name is spoken, often in situations people are frustrated, like when the hammer hits their thumb. Before they run athletes will make the sign of the cross. There are buildings with His name on it.
Two thousand years after He walked the earth, globally Jesus has more name recognition than anyone else…ever. Decade after decade, filmmakers make hugely popular movies and series about Jesus. Everywhere throughout the human hive, the idea and name and some facts about “Jesus” keep popping up, and more and more – it’s amazing. Not natural. Supernatural.
This growing consciousness of Jesus has to be going somewhere, and it is. Jesus will appear again. The Parousia awaits.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Western States Ultra Marathon held in northern CA, one of the more popular ultras. There’s a phenom named Jim Walmsley who won the Western States in 2018, 2019, 2021, breaking the course record in 2019. Well, he came back and ran again this year – just last week – and, guess what, he won! I saw a four-minute video summarizing the race, and the title of the video was “The Return of the King.” Parousia!
The King of the world, God’s Right-Hand Man, will return into this world, this dimension. Verse 16 describes it, at least what it will sound like:
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God…
The Lord Himself – not, as He chooses to do so frequently, sending an emissary. But Jesus of Nazareth. The Carpenter. The Crucified. The Lord will return to the world that can’t get Him out of our consciousness, out of our dreams, that is waiting for Him.
Will descend from heaven – Here we have to be careful and follow John Stott’s advice in interpreting this passage: we must avoid the total literalism which denies that the passage contains any figures of speech at all. For the sleep of the dead, the spatial ‘descent’ of the Lord, the archangel’s voice and the trumpet blast, the clouds and the air all belong to the realm of symbolic and apocalyptic imagery.
Some of what Stott’s referring to: If it’s as simple as we in Somers are able to watch Jesus as He descends out of the sky, then we’ll have to assume that He’d be too far away for those in Boston to also see Him. Yet from our Lord in Matthew 24:27 we know that His coming will be the farthest thing from hidden, it’ll be as obvious as a lightning bolt thrown across the expanse.
And if He’s coming down toward us in Somers, then that’d mean for those in China He’d be coming up through the ground. Whatever it actually will look like, the overwhelming sense will be that there’s an incursion of a Being much greater than us coming out of a realm much higher than ours. He’d been here before, but relatively incognito. Now, He returns…
With a cry of command – contrast this with Jesus’ first coming, when He would often duck away from notoriety, when He didn’t lift up His voice in the street. Not this time!
Don’t know if you’ve seen the New Zealand Blacks, the rugby team, performing its “Haka” before a match. A rhythmic shouting accompanied by various movements designed to intimidate. That’s akin to Christ’s cry of command: To Wall Street, To Silicon Valley, To Tribal Chieftans, To Heads of State, To the National Football League, To Yale University, To Lockheed Martin and the Mafia and the Head of Random House and whoever the head of Amazon is at that time, and all the powers throughout the earth and heaven, natural, human, and angelic, especially to Death itself – A Commanding Shout.
Will it be high-pitched? Will it be words or just sounds? If words, which language? How will the whole earth hear? Recall in Revelation when John hears Christ speak it was like the roar of many waters.
With the voice of the archangel – The archangel is the most majestic, powerful of sentient creation. I gather from Scripture that were you or I to be visited by the archangel, we’d shut down, buckle. Though he doesn’t dwell in our space and time, I suppose that if a hundred nuclear bombs were lobbed at the archangel, he’d swallow them like a Chipotle burrito. Terrible majesty. Power. And ancient. The angelic company is older than humanity; the archangel is the greatest of these.
Anyway, when Jesus appears in the world, he rides on the voice of the archangel. It’s that voice, perhaps, which immediately conveys that the tables have been turned. The Jesus movement – the genuine Jesus followers – have spent a lot of their existence as a minority, sometimes maligned, even occasionally a laughingstock. The common impression is: This Jesus they worship is a lightweight…look at all the power we have. But suddenly, the archangel’s voice flips the script: his utterance implies that the created order backs Jesus. The beleaguered minority – the true Church, is now seen to fit alongside myriads… upon myriads of the most powerful creatures ever created.
With the sound of the trumpet of God – Today’s trumpets are made of brass, an alloy of copper and zinc. And throughout the years they’ve been formed from shells, animal horns, other metals. Of what is this trumpet made? How old is that substance? And whose air is blowing through the trumpet? Certainly, air from some non-dying person. A heavenly creature sounding a heavenly instrument.
Some musicians think that the best songs are those that reflect on or riff on the so-called “music of the spheres” – music that since the creation has sounded from the rhythms and notes and tones of nature. Songwriters/composers are just borrowing music from what is already out there, in nature.
But the music of the spheres is itself derived from the song of heaven, an eternal melody and harmony. And suddenly, at Jesus’ Parousia, this eternal music sweeps into the exhausted world. And the inhabitants of the world hear a song for the first time that somehow it’s also been trying to remember.
All of these sounds sweep over the world. Sounds terrible and lovely. Threatening and live-giving. Those who don’t know the Lord are swept away into judgment and the Second Death by the thundering Hurricane of God’s final disclosure.
For those who have God’ Spirit in their spirits, these reverberating through the globe sounds – from the Lord himself, from the Chief Angel, from the Trumpet of God – come together as summons.
- Which brings us to the final observation of what Paul says: The dead in Christ will answer that call and go to their Lord. Now, to clear up a little confusion: In v. 14, Paul says that God will bring with [Christ] those who have fallen asleep, that is, believers in Christ who’ve died before His second appearing. Since they’ve died, their non-material selves have been with the Lord, resting from their labors, and when it’s time for Jesus to re-enter the world they return with Him.
So, it’s their physical bodies that answer the three-fold summons, and bodies leave to be re-joined with souls. You ask, how can the dead answer a call and go to the Lord? And you ask again, if their immaterial part, which you would think would include their cognitive capacity, is already with the Lord, then how can a body without cognitive capacity hear and decide to respond?
And I can only answer with another question using an analogy borrowed from St Paul: what does that little thing we call a seed have to do with that 7’ tall stalk laden with corn and sweeping in the wind? How can that come out of that? How can God turn a body that is decomposing in the ground into something that appears to be in every cell responsive, intelligent, alive??
The dead in Christ, who in our slight faith we had pitied for being overthrown by the Grave and perhaps even let down by their Savior, are, in fact, cared for and honored at every stage: in the process of dying – the decline, the pain, the weakness, the foulness, the humiliation – they’re being formed by the Spirit into holy ones; to heaven and with the Lord they go when they die, returning with Him when He appears again on the earth, and given the honor of being bodily gathered to Him first…before those Christians who appeared to be luckier than they in not dying. In fact, Paul calls those who don’t die “we who are left.”
V.17: Then we who are alive, who are left, will join the Lord and the dead in Christ in the clouds…in the air. Commentators have heard in these expressions echoes of Daniel 7:
Behold with the clouds of heaven/ there came one like a son of man/ and he came to the Ancient of Days/ and was presented before him./ And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom…”
I suspect that in our passage the references to clouds and the air – another allusion to the powers – are attesting that those in Christ – the dead and the living –are brought into the reign of Christ…are glorified. Christ makes us kings to our God. He assigns to us authority. We’ve been heirs of and now become rulers over the world. Judges of angels.
We go to meet the Lord in the air, then after, having been transformed into His glory, we escort the Son of Man into His world. After all, that’s what the word “meet” in v. 17 connotes: The word had a technical meaning in the Hellenistic world in relation to the visits of dignitaries to cities where the visitor would be formally met by the citizens, or a delegation of them, who had gone out from the city for this purpose and would then be ceremoniously escorted back into the city.
Conclusion
I’ll ask the Deacons to come forward for the Lord’s Supper.
I imagine someone saying to me after the service, What a fantastic sermon! And I’ll say, Oh, thanks, I… And then they’ll interrupt: No, I meant a fantastical sermon: trumpets of God, archangels caught up in the clouds with dead people, made kings, …
Then they’ll hopefully say: This is all so far-fetched…weird. Why would anyone think these things would happen? And I’ll reply: For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so….
Friends, God made this world as His temple, His house. Jesus said, My Father’s house has many rooms. I’m going to prepare a place for you.
And so, He died for our sins. He was buried and carried our sins far away…into Death. And then He rose up from the grave as the Lord over the world and the firstfruits of a new creation. And when He appears again it’s harvest time, and the resurrection life-that-knows-nothing-of-death that animates Him, that is Him, He’ll gather us into – body and soul. We have a place in this world, with the Father, because our Lord has died and risen again and will return to make things so that we are always with Him.
Yes, then, this coming “return, resurrection, rapture and reunion” (Stott) are the inevitable continuation of what began at Calvary, when the glorious Maker of all died to purify from sins so that He could renew us and then the world in Himself. “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
Now we gather at the Lord’s Table, which our Lord Jesus said proclaims His death until He comes. We remember that our participation in the age to come was purchased by His broken body and shed blood, and whatever else was the spiritual agony behind that physical suffering.
As the men distribute the elements…in the bulletin…
I’ll ask Jack Conklin to thank God for the broken body…
I’ll ask Mike Savelyev to thank God for the shed blood…