“Keep Hope Alive”
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Our text for this
morning is not only one of the most important parts of Paul’s letter, but it is
one of the most important passages in all of the New Testament. This text is not only pastoral, but it is
hugely theological. It is a text most
appropriate for the season of advent or even Easter, for it so directly and
clearly declares the pinnacle belief of our faith – the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. There is enough material in these nine verses for numerous sermons,
however, our interest for today is its place in the context of this letter as a
whole to the Thessalonian Christians, and so we will only touch the highlights
of this text and save the full thrust of it for another time.
Last week I
left you with a question to consider over the course of this week: why would
there be a tendency for the Thessalonian Christians to return to sexual
impurity, to not love their Christian brothers and sisters as they should, and
to stop doing work? Remember from last
week that for some reason Paul felt it was necessary to remind the
Thessalonians to continue to live as holy people and to conduct themselves in
such a way that embodies the divine will of their calling, which is
sanctification. Our text for this
morning not only helps us answer that question, but it also points us to the
purpose of Paul’s letter.
Imagine that
you are a first century Christian living in Thessalonica in the year 51 A.D,
less than 20 years after Jesus’ resurrection.
The community of faith in which you belong to is a small one. You are Gentile by origin, but you have left
the ways of the pagan and imperial cults, because the message of the gospel has
come to you in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Your small community has not only stayed true to the gospel which you
have received as God’s word to you, but your faith has become an example to all
believers through out the province.
As Gentile
Christians living in the heart of a Romanized city, life for you has been
tough. You are routinely hounded by
other religious and cult leaders and their followers. You are criticized by your family and friends
for becoming a “Christian,” who, as they believe, practice all kinds of
terrible deeds behind closed doors and under the cloak of darkness. Then there is that whole thing about
worshipping a man who died a criminal’s death on a cross. The hounding and criticizing has even, in
some cases, turned to outright hatred and persecution.
Yet, your
community of faith has remained steadfast in your beliefs and convictions, and
you have persevered and endured through trials and tribulations, because of the
gospel that you have heard witnessed to you by the apostles. Through the witness of the apostles you have
heard about how Jesus Christ brings liberation and salvation to the oppressed,
downtrodden, broken, and persecuted. You
have heard about his life and ministry, his death on the cross for the
forgiveness of sins, and his resurrection from the dead for eternal life. And,
you have also heard that Jesus ascended to heaven with the promise to return
again. But something has happened in
your community of faith that you did not expect, something that you did not
believe would happen, some of the believers in your community of faith have
died, and Christ has not yet returned.
I wonder if
we can fully appreciate how this would have impacted the 1st century
Christians. Here was a group of people
who not only believed Christ would return someday, but they fully believed that
Christ would return any day. They fully
believed that Christ’s return was imminent, even Paul in the beginning believed
Christ would return in his lifetime.
Little could they have known that nearly 2000 years would pass, and we
are still waiting for Christ to make good on his promise.
The imminent
return of Jesus Christ was the basis of their hope as believers. This hope sustained them and empowered them
to endure persecutions. This hope
nourished their courage, refreshed their heart, and brought meaning to their
faith. This hope was the beacon of light
as they lived in a dark world. They had
assumed that all the faithful would share in the momentous event of Christ’s
return. But the Lord did not come. There was no cry of the Lord’s command, no
call of the archangel, no sounding of God’s trumpet. All they were left with was the cynical
scoffing, and the “see I told you so”, and the ridiculing. One can almost hear the voices of the
brokenhearted as they lamented saying, “Why should we continue to live the
Christian faith.” “What good will it do
us anyway?” “Why should we continue to
uphold the Christian morals and ethics, when the guarantee of our witnessing
Christ’s return and the promise of eternal life is in question?”
No wonder some of the Thessalonian
Christians had a tendency to return to their old ways. The fact that some of the believers in their
community had died before Christ returned would most certainly have caused a
crisis of faith and prompted many to question the validity of the gospel as a
whole. For them, to die before Christ’s
return meant that one was beyond the reach of Christ’s presence and his
resurrection promise, and if just one believer was beyond the reach of Christ’s
presence and his resurrection promise, then could any of them really be sure of
anything.
We now get a
sense of why Paul so urgently wanted to return to Thessalonica to restore
whatever was lacking in their faith.
Timothy’s return back to Paul brought an encouraging report about the
faith and love of the Thessalonians, but his report must have also included a
concern about the integrity of their Christian hope. And so Paul sits down to restore in them the
meaning of Christian hope.
For Paul,
Christian hope is directly tied to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus Christ
was not a private miracle, but an open proclamation about what God intends for
humanity. The hope of the Christian
faith is not a hope in what we wish to be, but in what will be. Christian hope is a hope in the fulfillment
of God’s intention. It’s a hope that is
foundationally based on the character of God and the integrity of God’s promise
about what God will do in the future.
Paul’s words to the Thessalonians
would have been powerful words to a group of people who saw death as the end of
God’s sphere of influence and the end of hope itself. Paul’s words not only give them a reason to
continue living in the Christian faith and ethics, but they also give the
Christians the encouragement to keep their hope alive, because even the dead
will participate in the great final victory of Christ’s return, and all of them
will be with the Lord forever.
For Paul, the resurrection of
Jesus Christ is the greatest good news and proof of the power of the Almighty
God, who demonstrated once and for all in raising of Jesus from the dead that
grace is more powerful than sin, mercy is more powerful than judgment, victory
is more powerful than defeat, and life is more powerful than death.
For us Christians living today,
the thought of one of the believers dying before Christ’s return does not have
the same impact on our faith as it did for those Christians who believed that
Christ would return within their lifetime.
We not only know that believers have died before Christ’s return, but we
also know that it is pretty good odds that many more will die before the
trumpet sounds, including ourselves. So
what about the integrity of our Christian hope?
For today’s Christian, Christian
hope has not so much changed as it has been redefined. We now talk about Christian hope in the
resurrection, not as a hope in the fulfillment of God’s intention for humanity,
and sometimes not even as a hope in something God will do, but as a hope that
we will not die. Instead of hoping in a
God who can make the dead alive again, many Christians place their hope in
themselves, in the quantity of their faith and in the quality of their
lives. Their hope becomes the wishful
thinking that if they are faithful enough or good enough then maybe they will
be able to cheat death from its sting.
But true Christian hope is much
more certain than mere wishful thinking, and much more realistic about
death. True Christian hope is a
conviction that God is not only a promise maker, but that God is also a promise
keeper. Christian hope is a hope that
looks beyond the ability of the self, and glimpses a vision of what God will do
at the end of time.
Christian hope in the resurrection
is a living hope, because it is grounded in the living Christ, because it is
secured in the living promise, because it is protected by the living word of
the Lord God Almighty, who is able to reach into the snares of death itself and
pull out all those who belong to him in Christ.
In world that
struggles with hopelessness, we Christians today find ourselves amidst the
chaos and destruction that comes with the scarcity of hope. We find ourselves embattled and sometimes
embittered by the events that lay waste to an already broken world. War, terrorism, natural disasters, famine,
poverty, crime, and an increasingly amoral and anti-faith agenda in countries
around the world, including our own, we Christians today, run the risk of
allowing the hope for ourselves, others, and for this world to become
idealistic folly of an ancient faith.
Now more than
ever, we the church need to continue to be the voice of hope to all those who
grieve and mourn the suffering and losses that life in today’s world can
bring. Now more than ever, we the church
need to be the voice of hope that encourages and lifts up all those who find
themselves dismayed, disillusioned, and fearful about the future. Now more than ever, we the church need to be
the messengers and witnesses of the good news of Jesus Christ, and of the power
and presence of God’s saving work in the world through him.
Let us never forget the hope that
we have. Let us never forget to keep our
hope alive in the God who raised Jesus from the dead and who has promised a
brighter tomorrow, for the Lord is coming soon and when he does, our hope will
no longer be a living hope, it will become a living reality. Amen.