Sermon: "Authentic Hope"

5th in the "Authentic People" series.
Delivered May 17, 2009 by Rev. Laura Crihfield.
Sermon Text: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11

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Authentic Hope. Not exactly what the plastic stars of that production were exhibiting as they offered trite answers to profound struggles, right? We need to pray that Rocco can stay... what? Positive. And they were unwilling to respond in meaningful ways to the fears and the questions that their friends raised. Don't worry; it's all in God's hands. I'm sure everything will be okay. Jesus loves you. True statements, but a definite reminder that all true statements are not always appropriate at every moment.

I suppose we should cut them some slack. It's not always easy to know what to say, especially when it comes to offering hope in less than hope-filled circumstances. Hope is a sought after commodity that's hard to grasp. It's something everyone wants, and I think many struggle to know how to supply, or many suggest they know how to supply.

Every day, we're offered hope and encouraged to bank our trust on everything from products and ideas to philosophies and even people. But Scripture is clear that we are not called to place our hope in any of these. From the start of the sermon, I want to just name what we know that we as believers are called to hope in Jesus Christ and in him alone. To claim the words of Jeremiah 29:11, in which God declares, "'I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"

Throughout the Old Testament, God offers hope to his people. And the New Testament is clear that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of that Old Testament declaration. Jesus Christ is our hope... because of his life, his death, and his resurrection, we can all have authentic hope.

Unfortunately, as encouraging as those words should be, they are still a tough sell sometimes in our world, and many aren't buying it. I'm convinced that's because the idea of hope, this authentic life-giving hope has been hijacked...to the point where many people, perhaps ourselves included, don't know what real hope is or how to hold on to it, or perhaps even wonder if it exists.

We could all tell stories about things or people or ideas that we have hoped in that have disappointed us. And many of us have learned, unfortunately the hard way, the painful way, not to hold out much hope for anything. We've become jaded and so we settle for the cheap, fleeting, finite hope that our society tries to sell us.

C.S. Lewis, in his essay, The Weight Of Glory, in talking about what God has in store for us and how amazing that's going to be, suggests that we're often, and I quote, "like the ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased."

We are... I am... far too easily pleased at times. The hope that Scripture offers us is, in Jesus Christ, is long-term, infinite, authentic hope, and we don't have to settle. The hope that God offers us will never disappoint us. It's straight from the God who loves us, who has our best in mind and who always will. Its authentic hope, and we are called to live with it and live in it and demonstrate it.

You've probably guessed what logically follows, and that's a question. And simply put, the question is... do we? Do we live as authentically, hopeful followers of Jesus Christ? We're in a study of 1 Thessalonians, and this is week five of that study, and we're going to be looking at chapter 4, beginning at verse 13.

What we're going to find is that as we move into this chapter...or this section of text which covers the end of one and the beginning of another chapter, is that Paul challenges us with this very question. He challenges his readers, and he's challenging us. So I want us to hold that question in our mind...do we live as authentically, hopeful people? Do I live... ask yourself that question as we read the text...as an authentically, hopeful follower of Jesus Christ?

First Thessalonians, chapter 4, beginning in verse 13, hear the Word of God.

"Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.

"For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.

"Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, "Peace and safety," destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

"But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night.

"But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing."

Let's pray real quick: Lord God, thank you for your Word. Thank you that it is as alive and relevant for us in our lives today as when it was written. May we hear it this day, may we hear your voice speaking to each one of us. Come Holy Spirit, come, in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Well you talk about a jam-packed text... Paul hits on a number of really big theological realities in this text that we're going to unpack in a minute, but before we do, I think it's crucial for us to do so with an understanding that Paul seems to have one goal in mind as he writes this particular section of his letter to the Thessalonians. That is, he wants to encourage the Thessalonians about their future in Christ. To let them know that things will be as they have believed, and that they can continue to hold on to the hope of that kind of a future.

It kind of breaks down into two different sections, but we're going to look at them together. First, we're going to look at the first half which addresses the concerns among the Thessalonians about what would happen to their loved ones who were followers of Jesus and didn't live physically to see the resurrection of Jesus, or the Second Coming of Jesus.

Remember that the early Christians believed that the Second Coming of Christ would happen in their lifetime, and they began to struggle with that teaching, began to wonder if that was really true as they saw death within their community. They saw a generation coming to a close and they saw people dying and they wondered whether that was really true.

So Paul begins by addressing that concern. He says in verse 13, "We do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope." This is a short verse with two pretty important things for us to notice.

First, Paul challenges his reader not to be ignorant about those who have fallen asleep. And it's clear that sleep, here, refers to those who have died, right? Who have died a physical death. Today we tend to use phrases like passed away or no longer with us, but asleep was a really common euphemism used in the ancient world and it referred to the stillness of the body, resting after a life of labor.

For the Christians, it became kind of equated with the idea that sleep is followed by waking. Right? We go to sleep; we wake up. We die a physical death; we will be raised with Jesus. That was what it became...the resurrection, it's what it became kind of synonymous with.

Paul is essentially saying, I want you to know what will happen to those who have died. Their physical bodies may not be with you anymore, they may not be with you as you know life right now, but they're not ultimately dead. So don't worry.

We have to ask ourselves... Why does he want us to understand this? And we see that really clearly when he says so that they won't grieve like those who have no hope. Like those who don't know the promises of God and the salvation offered in Jesus Christ. It's important, really important, to notice that Paul doesn't say, "Don't grieve." That's really crucial.

Grieving over the death of a loved one or over the possibility or the eminence of our own death is utterly normal, its right, its good, and many would argue it's necessary. Grief is real, but Paul contends that our grief, as followers of Jesus Christ, is to look very different than the grief experience by those who have no authentic hope for the future. And it must, on some level, be joined by a sense of celebration because of the new, wonderful reality for those who have died, who are in Christ.

And so he reminds his readers, and us, in verses 14 and 15, "We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own Word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep."

In other words, don't worry, your loved ones will rise again and will be in on the excitement when Christ returns. They're not going to miss the fun, believe this and be encouraged. Don't give into the temptation to grieve like death is the end of a story... it's not. Jesus has won and death does not have the final word.

Over the course of the last several months, I've been communicating with and praying for and trying to encourage a friend of mine who lives in Chicago whose name is Allison, because she's one of my best friends, and her father in December was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which for him, as is often the case, came with a very grim prognosis.

From the start, Allie had been asking her friends to pray for her dad, for his physical healing, but more importantly, to pray for his spiritual healing. Like me, Allie is a pastor, and she was really concerned that her dad didn't know the Lord, and he didn't. He was very clear about that. She had talked with him many times about it. He was not a believer.

So Allie would send us updates, and of course we were praying for him, I along with other people that were in her prayer network. And we would pray, and we would get these occasional updates letting us know how he was doing, both physically and spiritually. And I had the privilege, or perhaps the...well I guess it was a privilege... of driving by myself with kids. Why I did that I'm not sure, but 15 hours to Illinois over Josh's spring break. John wasn't able to go with us, and I took the kids, and we got to visit Allison and her family in Chicago.

As we were talking, she shared with me that her dad had accepted Christ, that he had come to that point of salvation and she was sure of his future. She wasn't excited for his immediate future, but she knew what his long-term future would be. And it was like her demeanor just changed, from the voice that I had heard on the phone and her concern over him... it changed into this voice of peace and contentment, knowing that he was going to be okay.

Well just last Sunday, which was Allison's birthday and also Mother's Day of course, we got another email from her and it read, "Happy Mother's Day to my friends. Thanks for continued prayers. He died last night around 7:00 Eastern. I spoke a blessing into his ear over the phone about one minute before he stopped. Its okay, God answered my prayer. Love you all." Not, Yay, Dad's gone. There was no excitement, but... It's okay. It's okay. That is authentic grief mixed with authentic hope. It's okay.

The second thing that is worth noting is that Paul seems to be referring to ignorance as the enemy of that kind of hopeful response to death. And the antidote (as is always the antidote to ignorance... right?) is knowledge. He wants his readers to understand what's ahead for them in Christ, and so he reminds them what they already know. This is not new information.

But he wants his friends to get it, and to hold on to it and to believe it. And he tells them, Don't be ignorant about this. You know the truth, hold on to it. And then in verses 16 to 18, he launches into what is my favorite part of the text...painting an incredible picture of Jesus' Second Coming. It's almost like Paul is saying, Now that we're on the same page about the certainty that we have in Christ and about our future, let's spend some time thinking about what it's going to be like. It's going to be incredible. Beyond our imaginations, barely imaginable. Something we rarely think about if you're anything like me. But something we should think about.

Now it may seem a little strange, we are Presbyterian, but I'm going to ask you to close your eyes for a few minutes because I want you to hear the words of 16 to 18 and capture in your mind the images that Paul sets before us about just how incredible this is going to be.

Verses 16 to 18: "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever."

Now keep your eyes closed for another minute because I want you to hear those same verses in the words of Eugene Peterson from The Message.

"The Master himself will give the command. Archangel thunder! God's trumpet blast! He'll come down from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise...they'll go first. Then the rest of us who are still alive at the time will be caught up with them into the clouds to meet the Master. Oh, we'll be walking on air! And then there will be one huge family reunion with the Master."

If you'd like, you can open your eyes. It's amazing to think about, isn't it? Images that really do go beyond our wildest imaginations, beyond our wildest dreams. I would contend that's because we don't make them our dreams. We don't allow them to infiltrate our imagination, and we don't hold on to them. Paul is challenging us to make them ours. To believe that what Scripture says will happen.

Not to settle for the cheap, finite, fleeting hope that I mentioned a while ago, that our world tries to sell us, but to bank our future on the hope that only God can provide...infinite and eternal hope, and to allow our imaginations to be held captive by those images, and perhaps most importantly, to be encouraged because of them.

Following these incredible images, Paul goes on to talk a bit more about the Second Coming, and he begins in 5:1 by reminding the Thessalonians that when it comes to the details about the dates and the times and the how's and the what's and all of that, no one other than God knows the answers. Not even Jesus. He's also pretty clear that's it not necessary to get into all those specifics because that's not the point.

The important thing, according to 5:2, is that Jesus will return like a thief in the night, and we need to be ready. This is a direct echo of the analogy that Jesus used in speaking of his return in Luke, chapter 12, verses 38-40 where he says,

"It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You must also be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him."

We can't predict when a thief might break into our house, right? If we could, we wouldn't let it happen. That's what Paul is saying here. We would do everything we can to stop it... set the alarm (if we have one), lock the doors, you know, close the windows when we're gone, make sure that if we have security lights there are light bulbs in them. We do what we can to protect our homes, because we never know when somebody might try to break in.

Now Paul is not saying, Try to protect yourself and prevent Jesus from breaking in that way, but he is saying, Just as that kind of an activity is unpredictable for us, Jesus' return is just that unpredictable. We can't see into the mind of God on this issue. We can't know when it will happen; and therefore (he says), the best thing to do is to be prepared lest we be caught off guard, to watch for it; to be ready for it, by living our lives with a kingdom or eternal perspective; to live with the end in mind.

Our son, Joshua, who many of you probably heard me speak of a couple of weeks ago, is finishing his first grade year at Cambridge Christian School in Pikesville, which is, in and of itself, a little bit of an irony. Wonderful Christian school, placed there by God for a very specific reason...little school with a big vision for its students. He's been there for two years, and we love it. And I can still recall being impressed at one of our first gatherings that we attended last year when he was a kindergartener.

We were fresh into the school, we were new, he was coming in for... what, you know... could be the first of nine years there. And the head of school spoke about something that the faculty had been discussing at their meetings as they got ready for school and the administration with them...that they were trying really hard to begin with the end in mind. That was their phrase for the year, and that's their phrase for what they're trying to do at Cambridge.

He went on to say that together they had spent time dreaming about what they hoped to see exhibited in their students when they graduate in 8th grade. Where they hope their students would be spiritually, academically, socially, emotionally, all the various components of how they were hoping that God would mold and shape these students so that when they graduated they would see that as they moved off to other high schools.

He said it was that vision of Cambridge graduates that drives everything they do, the decisions they make, the ways that they speak, what they teach, how they operate, even beginning in kindergarten. They are beginning with the end in mind, even though for that particular situation, the end is nine years away.

That's how we're called to live. We are called to live with the end in mind whether Christ will return tomorrow or years in the future. We are called to live with that particular end in mind and to allow that perspective to shape how we live and make decisions for the kingdom now. A big part of that is being prepared, right? Which Paul elaborates on in verses 4 to 8 with a challenge, and I'm just going to hit these quickly... to be alert, to be awake, to be sober, to be self-controlled.

He goes on to say that we need to put on love as the breastplate of protection and hope, the hope of our salvation, again, as the helmet for protection. These are, you may recall, kind of paraphrased or smaller images of what he elaborates on in Ephesians. I would encourage you to go home and read Ephesians 6, if you haven't, about the whole armor of God and how we're to put that on in an effort to be prepared for what God has in store for us. If we're wise, we will take this charge seriously. Unfortunately, if you're anything like me, we don't always do that. We don't always take it seriously.

Dallas Willard talks a bit in The Divine Conspiracy about a woman who refused to talk with her kids about life beyond death because she didn't want them to be disappointed if it turned out not to be a reality. Willard points out that this was pretty unwise, because if there is no afterlife, they wouldn't be disappointed. And if there is (he says), they may find themselves seriously ill-prepared. He concludes by saying that the only possible way for them to be disappointed is if there is an afterlife and they do continue to exist."

Scripture is clear... there is an afterlife, and we will continue to exist. Christ will return. We don't know when. The details are mysterious, but the truth of the Second Coming is certain; and therefore, Paul calls his readers, and God is calling us today to live alert and ready for it as people of hope. Comforting and encouraging one another with that hope, and living confidently because of it. I love that Paul ends both of the, kind of, halves of this text, both sections of this text, in the same way essentially.

Chapter 4:18 says, "Therefore encourage each other with these words", and 5:11, "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, as in fact you are already doing." Friends, if we want to make an impact for the kingdom, we have to live authentically as people of authentic hope. Others have to see it. We have got to be about the business of encouraging one another and building each other up, reminding each other of Paul's words and encouraging each other to hold on tightly to the incredible images about what we have to look forward to.

If we don't, who will? The world is trying to sell us false hope. We've got what everyone so desperately wants, the real deal. Hope in Jesus Christ. Others may not know that we've got it; others may not even know that they want it. But they do. Believe me, they do. And that's why it's so important for us to share our hope that Jesus will come again, to share our hope that the dead in Christ shall rise. To share our hope that our loved ones, who have died, will not miss out if they have died in Christ. And to share the truth, that by placing their faith in Jesus Christ, they too can share in this authentic hope.

"For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord..."

Say it with me, "forever." Be encouraged. We have reason to hope.

Let's pray: Lord God, thank you that you give us reason to hope. Thank you that in Jesus Christ, who died and was raised, we have hope of a future with you, of hope of salvation. God help us to believe it. Help us to hold those images that you have put before us in our mind. They are images that go beyond our imaginations, God, and we ask that you would help us, to allow them to infiltrate who we are. That we might hold that hope of future with you and that we might have the courage and the boldness, and the love and the compassion, to encourage those who are sitting around us, who know you, and those who don't yet know you. God give us the courage and the grace to do that. For Jesus' sake and in his name, Amen.

© 2009, Rev. Laura Crihfield
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org