Intro to theme: Hopeful Sorrow
What are the two certainties in life? Death and Taxes! We are quick to complain or about taxes. But death, that is a topic rarely discussed with honesty and sincerety.
Our New Testament reading comes from I Thessalonians. This letter addresses some specific concerns raised by a young church started by Paul. Paul had been teaching that Christ would return soon and carry everyone up into heaven. Paul, and many early Christians thought that they would live to see this, that they would be there for the completion of God’s Kingdom. Now members have died and so the question arose “what will happen to those who have died before Christ comes again?”
“Hopeful Sorrow” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)
(Show the clip from UP – best four minutes.)
Death has long been, and continues to be, one of the hardest things for people to talk about. We know Death happens to everyone. As rational, thinking, folks we know that. It is part of being alive. From early on in our lives, we come to learn that plants, animals, and people grow up, grow old, and one day die. At least that is the supposed to be the natural course of events. We know that there is an eventual end point to our earthly growth, there comes a time when our baptism is complete, yet it is very rare that we will talk freely about it. Try to think about the last time you shared your honest feelings about our own death with someone else saying “here is what I believe, or “this is what I am afraid of”, or “here is what I hope is true, here is what I know is true.”
For the most part, death scares the heck out of us. We don’t know for sure and we can’t prove in any scientific way what comes next so there is an understandable apprehension about what shape and form that any life after life might take.
Death and dying, it makes all the difference in the world if it’s happening to you or someone you love. Not all of us are dealing with the reality of death and dying right now. Some of us are fine and healthy, and members of our families are as well. And we proceed in life with a sense of immunity. That death is not going to happen to us, at least not for a long time so we can speak freely, casually, even philosophically about death, because it is a reality that is not very real to some of us right now.
For some for us death and dying are very real to us. We know the pain of having lost someone dear to us. We know the feeling of being left behind, or left alone. Some of us may know what is to be dying, living with a very real sense of time being limited and striving to make the most of each day given. Death will, and death does enters every life at some point.
I remember one of my earliest enoucounters with losing someone I cared for deeply. When I was a teenager I took flying lessons from a wonderful man, named Jake. He had flown all his life and his greatest joy was teaching others. As it turned out, I was the last student he taught. He always assured me of any mistake I would make he had seen it hundreds of times before. Anyway when we were flying Jake could tell when I was tired or just not getting it, and he had this routine that I looked forward too. Sometimes, at the end of a lesson, if it had gone really poorly, (or if it had gone really well) There was this pattern that developed. I knew what was coming. He would reach over put a hand on my shoulder, give me a wink, with the other hand push the yoke forward diving the airplane to just the right speed, pull back on the stick until we went like this and then toss it over to one side till the airplane did an aileron roll. It was an absolute thrill for us both. He loved it and I loved it. And we would laugh. There is nothing quite like an airplane doing a circle in the sky like that.
A few years later Jake was diagnosed with cancer. It spread quite quickly and in time he needed large amounts of morphine to numb the pain in order to get through each day. I was living in California at the time and one trip home I knew would be the last chance to see him. It was hard to see him so different, unable to get up or even say much. When it came time for me to leave he tried to reach for my shoulder, couldn’t quite lift his hand that high. But he looked me in the eye and gave me a wink, and that was it. He said goodbye with a promise filled wink. The tears came fast as I drove away.
Tears are a very real part of any death. There is a sorrow on the part of those who are left behind, and there may be tears from the person who is leaving. Saying goodbye for the last time is something we don’t learn to do anywhere. There is no way to practice. And sometimes death comes without the chance to say goodbye beforehand.
Death at any point in life brings up many questions. What is next? Is there life after life? What can it be like? We don’t know fully, on this side of the grave, we don’t have satisfactory answers. There are many things to ponder, and doubts can be very real.
Death and dying, it makes all the difference in the world if it’s happening to you or to some that you love. That’s the situation in the book today, of Thessalonians. Christians in the first century, who were expecting the risen Christ to come soon, to usher in his kingdom with all of its glory and triumph, these Christians were suddenly confused because other people in their church were beginning to die. They didn’t know what to make of it. And it confused their faith and it gave them concern as to what Easter really meant. They had thought the resurrection had destroyed death. And they would now see Christ coming on the clouds, but with the death of their loved ones they are unsure.
That’s what was perplexing these Thessalonians, in a post resurrection world. Paul says two things. The first thing is we sorrow, obviously, yet how many people say I have to be strong, I can not break down I have can’t ask questions. Resurrection doesn’t mean that death has somehow disappeared, that death is now our friend, what it means is that death has been defeated. But that the fullness of that defeat is not yet complete. And so we sorrow.
The Bible says in the presence of death we sorrow. But the other thing that Paul says is that though we sorrow it is not as those who have no hope. Hopeful sorrow, the resurrection says, though death may grasp us, it will not hold us forever. Hope is what helps hold our sorrow, it does not replace it, it does not cancel it, but it undergrids it. The pain of death can never cut so deeply as the grace of God in our lives. Hopeful sorrow, the conviction that there is more to life and death than what is seen. That when the kingdom is complete we will all be together.
Paul says we will be with the Lord forever. Honest grief, hopeful sorrow is what helps keep us from giving in to despair. We sorrow, but not as those who have no hope. We are to encourage one another. In a moment, we role of those who died in the past year sharing sorrow that they are no longer with us, hopeful in the promise that one day we are all united again.
This spirit of always being hopeful is captured beautifully in a story about a woman who had been diagnosed with cancer, and had been given three months to live. You may have heard this before but see if can’t stir you again. This woman’s doctor told her to start making preparations to die, so she contacted her pastor and had him come to her house to discuss certain aspects of her final wishes.
She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, what Scriptures she would like read and what she wanted to be wearing. The woman also told her pastor that she wanted to be buried with her favorite Bible. Everything was in order, and the pastor was preparing to leave when the woman suddenly remembered something very important to her. “There’s one more thing,” she said excitedly.
“What’s that?” came the pastor’s reply.
“This is very important,” the woman continued. “I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.” The pastor stood looking at the woman, not knowing quite what to say.
“That shocks you, doesn’t it?” the woman asked.
“Well, to be honest, I’m puzzled by the request,” said the pastor.
The woman explained. “In all my years of attending church socials and functions where food was involved, my favorite part was when whoever was clearing away the dishes of the main course would lean over and say, ‘You can keep your fork.’ It was my favorite part because I knew that something better was coming. When they told me to keep my fork, I knew that something great was about to be given to me. It wasn’t Jell-O or pudding. It was cake or pie. Something with substance. So I just want people to see me there in that casket with a fork in my hand, and I want them to wonder, ‘What’s with the fork?’ Then I want you to tell them: ‘Something better is coming, so keep your fork, too.'”
The pastor’s eyes were filled with tears as he hugged the woman goodbye. He knew this would be one of the last times he would see her before her death. But he also knew that that woman had a better grasp of heaven than he did. She knew that something better was coming.
At the funeral, people were walking by the woman’s casket, and they saw the pretty dress she was wearing and her favorite Bible and the fork placed in her right hand. Over and over, the pastor heard the question, “What’s with the fork?” And over and over, he smiled. During his message, the pastor told the people of the conversation he had with the woman shortly before she died. He also told them about the fork and about what it symbolized to her. The pastor told the people how he could not stop thinking about the fork, and told them that they probably would not be able to stop thinking about it, either. He was right.
Who are we? We are people of hope, living examples of a community faithfully seeking God, knowing that questions and suffering come and will come, but that through it all, God is the source of our hope Believe that the best is yet to come. .that place which is beyond this life, that place for which nothing in this life can prepare us…that place which Jesus himself has prepared for us. Our “abiding place”, our everlasting relationship with God. Jesus leads us there. Amen.
Amen.