Social Holiness: Rapture
God Renews All Things
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. Nov. 12th, 2023
Sin can be characterized as selfishness. It is our tendency to curve in on ourselves at the expense of others, and ultimately at the expense of ourselves. Sin leads to death, because we need to be open to others in order to live. So pride is placing yourself above others, greed is seeking to possess as much money and resources as possible, envy is wishing what someone else had was yours and hating them for it, lust is seeking to possess someone else as a sexual object, and so on. Holiness is the opposite of sin. Where sin draws us in on ourselves until we die, holiness opens us up to others that we would act selflessly and in love.
Holiness, in that sense, requires hope. As holiness opens us up to God and neighbor that we would encounter them not as the objects of our own satisfaction but as subjects we may love, hope is our open dependence on God. Our trust that he will bring his promises to past and bring all things to their end. You can’t have holiness if you are without hope.
You can’t follow Christ if you don’t have hope.
It is no surprise, then, that Paul speaks to our hope in Christ this morning. Paul tells the Church in Thessaloniki that he does not want them to be uninformed about those who have died, that they might grieve like those who have no hope. Perhaps Paul had heard that people were worried about people who had died since the Church was established since Christ had yet to return. If Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead, and people die before he comes back, what becomes of them? How can this be? Paul wants to answer this.
He tells them that through Jesus God will bring with him those who have died. And he explains how. When Jesus returns the dead in Christ will rise first, and we will all be caught up with them to meet Jesus in the air. This, Paul says, ought to encourage us.
This passage is often misunderstood and it’s important to get some clarity because it concerns our hope in Christ. And if Paul wants us to be encouraged by his words we ought to be encouraged by what he actually says not what we think he says. This passage has often been interpreted as a text about the rapture. That is the idea that before Jesus comes to earth he will rapture up all the Christians so they will not have to endure the great tribulation. The most famous exponent of this theory now is probably the Left Behind series of books. The trouble is the rapture is taught nowhere in Scripture and no Christian believed it before the 19th century.
Our hope is not that we might leave the earth behind, or God might deliver us from suffering. The whole book of Revelation makes no sense if you assume the Church will be raptured before the tribulation takes place. The book is written to console Christians in tribulation. It presumes the Church will suffer, is suffering, and wants to know how long until Jesus returns.
Our hope is in our bodily resurrection and a new heaven and new earth. We do not hope to leave earth. We hope and pray for the redemption of this earth and for all things to be made new. For every tear to be wiped from every eye. For the glory of God to shine like the sun. Christianity is not an escapist religion. It’s not that we think we leave earth for heaven, it’s that God brings heaven to earth.
The image that Paul is using here is based on a royal entrance. In the Roman world if a king or general were to visit a city dignitaries would first leave the city to invite the king in. And there would be festivities. We actually get an example of such an entrance in Palm Sunday. Jesus is first met outside the city walls by the multitudes who lead him in with singing and rejoicing. Paul tells us it will be like that at the end when Jesus arrives in glory to set the world right. The archangels trumpet will herald his arrival, the dead in Christ will rise first and get in front of the line. Then the church militant will join them and meet Jesus in the air. The part that is implicit, but clear in the full context of Paul’s writings, is that Jesus will then come to earth in judgment. Because he must be all in all.
The key here is our hope in resurrection and in God making all things new. Our hope is not that we will fly away and abandon this earth. Our hope is that God will redeem this earth and make it new. God does not abandon the things he creates. He redeems them. God does not abandon us, God redeems us. And so too, we are not to abandon the world. But we are to be witnesses to the love and glory of God. Joyful, hopeful, loving witnesses. A people so full of scriptural holiness that we reform the nation and Church.