Unexpected Hope

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

May 31, 2026 • Mount Pleasant UMC

How would you describe the color blue to someone who is blind (cf. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians, pg. 123)? Think about that for a moment. Those of us with sight don’t even think about what blue is. It just is. But if someone has never seen blue, never experienced the color of the sky or the ocean, how would you describe it to them? Or not just blue, but any color? How do you help someone understand what they have never seen or experienced?

This morning, in our continuing journey through these New Testament “Words of Life,” we come to a word that is a little like that: hope. It’s one of the hallmarks of Christian faith, but when you try to describe what it is, it’s a bit like describing the color blue to a blind person. We think we know what “hope” is, but we really use the word to describe all sorts of different things. I hope he will be okay. I hope my flight won’t be delayed. I hope it doesn’t storm tonight. I hope the new boss can turn things around in this place. Or I hope my favorite show doesn’t get cancelled. We “hope” for a lot of things (cf. Gupta, 15 New Testament Words of Life, pg. 110). But none of those come close to describing what Christians and the New Testament writers mean when they use the word “hope.” So I’m going to attempt to describe the color blue to a blind person this morning—or, rather, try to help us better understand what Christian hope is, and why we need it today more than ever. To do that, we’re going to visit a town under the blue skies of modern Turkey called Thessaloniki, a place that was desperately searching for hope.

I’m still a little bitter that our Journeys of Paul trip last fall didn’t visit Thessaloniki, but I still hope to get there one day. Paul had visited there, and started the church there. Then, while he was ministering in Corinth, he received some questions from the believers there, which he attempts to address in these letters that bear their name. Thessaloniki was a massive city for its time; probably somewhere around 100,000 inhabitants if you include the surrounding villages, the suburbs. It was at the end (or the beginning, depending on how you look at it) of Rome’s equivalent of the autobahn, a major highway that connected various parts of the empire. Being on a major road in a major city provided Paul ample opportunity to practice his tentmaking trade while he was there, which then gave him time and resources to teach them the faith. They weren’t always listening, though, because they write to him with questions about parts of his teaching they had, quite honestly, gotten messed up (cf. McKnight, Philippians and 1&2 Thessalonians, pgs. 97-98).

In the first half of the letter, Paul is pastoring them from afar, reminding them how much he cares about them and their welfare. It isn’t until chapter 4 that he gets down to business: “As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living” (4:1). Still, there are questions in particular about the return of Jesus. And even more direct, they’re concerned about those from their church who have died before Jesus returned. They had thought Jesus was returning soon; honestly, from the way most of Paul’s letters read, so did Paul. That first generation of Christians believed that Jesus would return before they died. After all, when he had been asked about the end of time, he had said things like, “This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened” (Matthew 24:34). And they interpreted that to mean literally the generation alive then. But people were dying. Brothers and sisters in the faith were dying. Some of the original disciples, leaders of the church, had already died. The Thessalonians were deep in grief, worried about their fellow believers. Were they not faithful? Were they gone forever? Maybe death really was the final word. These deaths, however they happened, had traumatized this community, maybe even leading some of them to think that this faith wasn’t all that true at all. Maybe it was a sign that they had offended their former (pagan) gods, a sign that they should go back to what they used to believe. They were fearful, and so they send questions to Paul. Why have these friends died before Jesus returned (cf. McKnight 145; Gupta 113)?

Most of us know that kind of grief, and if you don’t, be thankful but you will at some point. Grief comes to all of us because we’re never ready for death to come. The first time I remember being deeply affected by grief was with the death of my grandmother when I was in high school. Grandma had been a big part of my and my brother’s lives. Early on, she lived just about a block from us, and even when she remarried and moved five miles away, we spent a lot of after school time with her. And then the strokes began and she became someone else, but something in me still thought she would live forever. So when the call came while I was at school that Grandma had died, I didn’t know how to react. I remember holding it together through the funeral and the graveside, but when we got ready to leave the cemetery, everything caught up with me and I stood by her grave and wept. How could we go on without Grandma? How could someone so faithful to Jesus just be gone? And there have been many times since when I have dealt with grief, as an individual and as a pastor. I’ve stood beside so many coffins and so many gravesides and every one—every single one—affects you on a deep level. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. In a world where church bells were rung when someone died, poet John Donne described death and grief this way: “Each man's death diminishes me / For I am involved in mankind. / Therefore, send not to know / For whom the bell tolls, / It tolls for thee.” We know what grief is like, and so we understand the Thessalonians. I don’t about you, but in the depths of grief, I too have prayed, “Come, Lord Jesus” (cf. Revelation 22:20).

So when we encounter someone in the midst of grief, we tend to say too much—because their grief makes us uncomfortable and we don’t want to be uncomfortable. So we try to answer all the questions about heaven and the life after this one. We try to figure out where their loved one is and make promises that we cannot back up with Scripture. Or we spend a lot of time shoehorning Scriptures together to try to figure out exactly when Jesus is going to return and make all things right, and we offer details that, again, cannot adequately be backed up by Scripture. We try to figure out something even Jesus himself says he does not know. He told the disciples, “About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, not the Son, but only the Father…you do not know on what day your Lord will come…the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Matthew 24:36, 42, 44). So what does that say about all the people through the ages who have made predictions about when Jesus will come?

Paul does not do that. He doesn’t engage in speculation or even in detailed description of things he does not know. He doesn’t try to tell the Thessalonians where their loved ones are or what state they are in (cf. Wright 124). Honestly, it seems he couldn’t care less about such details. What he does do is offer Christian hope through images, pictures, almost poetic language. He describes death as “sleep” (4:13), which is actually a very powerful image. We all know about sleep. When I go to bed tonight, I’m going to close my eyes and do my best to turn off my mind from all the worries and stress of the day. I will fall asleep. I will not know the moment when I go to sleep, but I don’t lay there and worry that this is the last time I’ll ever have a conscious thought. No, I go to sleep knowing I will wake up in the morning. And if I don’t wake up here, I will wake up there because Paul say death is just sleep. It’s rest, it’s leaving behind the stress of the day, or even of the life, and preparing for a new day. Maybe you used to pray that childhood prayer, “If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” That’s kind of a morbid thing to have your children pray, but it’s not bad theology. Death, Paul says, is sleep and we will wake up there. Where are they or where will we be in the interim? Paul doesn’t care because what he knows is that when we sleep, we are in God’s care and God is faithful and will not abandon us. We are safer than we’ve ever been when we’re in his care, and when Jesus returns, we will be with him (cf. Wright 124).

But how can we trust that? Is this just Paul saying that? No, not at all, and Paul reminds the Thessalonians the truth that this belief stands upon: “For Jesus died and rose again” (4:14). That is the core of our faith, that the God who raised Jesus from the dead can and will also raise you and me and the Thessalonians from the dead as well. That’s why Paul describes death as sleep, because we believe in and trust in a God who has the power over death. The Thessalonians lived in a world in which death was seen as the final word. One epitaph found from a tombstone of the time said this: “I was not; I became; I am not; I care not.” Pretty grim. An author of the time described the popular mindset this way: “There is hope for those who are alive, but those who have died are without hope.” And Aeschylus, playwright and the father of Greek tragedy, said, “Once a man dies there is no resurrection” (Barclay, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, pg. 203). No wonder the Thessalonians were grieving without hope; their whole world lacked hope after the grave. That’s true of a lot of people still today. But Paul declares that the God and Father of Jesus Christ is triumphant over death itself. “Death is not the final word; life is” (McKnight 145). Or, as you might have heard before: the worst thing is never the last thing. The Thessalonians needed to be reminded of that so that they would not grieve without hope. Life brings hope.

I of course don’t know the exact questions that Thessalonians asked Paul, but there’s this section next where he talks about order. “We who are still alive” (notice that Paul says “we” which seems to say he really did expect to still be alive when Jesus returned)—we “who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep” (4:15). It’s almost like they were worried about who was getting in line first. I’ve watched particularly children who try to get in line first, or who try to get ahead of someone else in line. And I want to tell them, “You’re all going to the same place!” That’s kind of what Paul says here. It really doesn’t matter who goes first or what place you have in line. In the end, you all will be with Jesus. You’re all going to the same place. So Paul says when Jesus comes, God will “bring with Jesus” those who have gone on ahead, those who are sleeping. “The dead in Christ will rise first,” he says, and then those who are in Christ who are still alive will be gathered with them. “And so we will be with the Lord forever” (4:14, 16-17). Everyone who believes in Jesus will be gathered together, so don’t worry about those who have gone on ahead. You will not only see them again, you will be with them and, more importantly, you all will be with Jesus (cf. McKnight 146).

But now comes the tricky part, and we need to remember again that Paul is not seeking to describe literal events. He’s trying to help a blind person understand blue. He’s trying to help us understand what we can’t really understand, and more than describing events, he wants to give the Thessalonians hope. So he describes the return of Jesus this way: “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” (4:16-17). What the Thessalonians would have been familiar with and what we are missing here is that Paul is describing the way a king came into a city, either to visit or to stay. The Greek word that is used here—parousia or “coming” (4:15)—is used in Roman writings to describe times when the emperor arrived in a city and the term that is translated as “to meet” in verse 17 was used by both Jews and Greeks to describe dignitaries leaving their city to go meet the emperor outside the city, to welcome him (cf. McKnight 146-147). When a ruler was near a city, the important people would go out and greet him, exchange pleasantries and kisses, and then together they would enter the city with fanfare and probably a parade. The ruler and the people together would “return” to the city. Jesus himself uses the same language in his parable about the wedding party in Matthew 25. There are ten virgins—ten bridesmaids—who are waiting for the arrival of the bridegroom so that the wedding can begin. They don’t know exactly when he is coming, so they’re supposed to be ready at any moment. And then, at midnight, the bridegroom shows up and the announcement is made: “Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!” (Matthew 25:1-6). “Come out!” That’s the same image Paul is using here. Luke talks about Paul experiencing this same practice in Acts 28. When he’s nearing Rome, a group of believers leave the city and meet him at “the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns” (Acts 28:15). They welcome Paul and escort him back into the city. That’s what Paul is describing to the Thessalonians. When Jesus comes, he says, all who believe will welcome him and then they will together return to the “city” as “the kingdoms of the world [become] the kingdom of our Lord of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). Makes me want to burst into song!

Because there is great hope here. We don’t have to know the details or when it will happen for these things to give us hope. Paul isn’t worried about those things. What he is worried about is that the Thessalonians stop focusing on the power of death and live as if life and not death is their future. “And so we will be with the Lord forever” (4:17) is his conclusion. Whatever it looks like, and however many years or centuries it takes, the end is still the same: we will be with the Lord forever. We are always in God’s care, and that should lead us away from despair and into hope. In the midst of a world of death, we are in life, and we can always have hope.

“Therefore,” Paul writes, “encourage one another with these words” (4:18). That is one of my all-time favorite verses, especially in Paul’s writing, because of audacity of it. There aren’t too many places in the world where someone would say, “Hey, you’re going to die and that should encourage you!” In most places today and with most people, talking about death is not how you encourage someone, even in the church. But that’s just more evidence that we’ve forgotten what Christian hope is really about. For the Christian, death is not an end but a transition. It’s not final; it’s a new beginning, a relocation from the kingdoms of this world to the full kingdom of God. And ultimately, the Christian hope is that, when Jesus returns, everything will be made right. In his letter to the Romans, Paul talked about the longing that creation itself shares with humanity: “We know,”  Paul writes, “that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:22). Creation itself knows that this world is not the way it is supposed to be. It’s not what God intended, and it’s not a place where God’s will is often done. Paul describes creation as being “frustrated” (Romans 8:20), longing for what is to be to take place. Creation is waiting for a new birth, a renewing of this broken world, and that’s what is promised when Christ returns. The Christian hope is that one day not only we but all of creation will be with Christ. “And so we will be with the Lord forever” (4:17). That’s why Paul can say, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). What we go through now, even death itself, is nothing compared to what’s coming. This world is full of death, but death never has the final word. For the Christian, our final word is life. That is true hope.

So how do we live with that kind of hope today? Because, you know it and I know it, it’s hard to find any kind of transforming hope today. And so there’s a sense in which living in the midst of Christian hope today means we live in a state of holy discontent. The world is devastated by sin (cf. Gupta 118), and I don’t think “devastated” is too strong a word. When we consider how the world should be and how it is, we should be discontent at the very least. All of the brokenness—disease, sickness, racism, broken relationships (both between people and God and just between people), corruption, war and I could go on but I think you get what I’m saying—all of these things should break our heart. They should lead us to pray, as World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse founder Bob Pierce once did, “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.” That prayer, written in his Bible in the late 1970’s, drove everything he did after, and it’s a pretty good prayer to drive those of us who want to live in Christian hope. Don’t be content. Don’t let this world suffer from the devastation of sin. We become people who want to be answers to the prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” People of hope, we do not despair, even when we are discontent, because God is still at work through his people.

And that leads me to the second way we live in hope: we live as if the future is already here. To the Philippians, Paul wrote this: “In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:4, 6). From the moment you trust Christ, God is working in you, preparing you for eternity, filling you with hope and a conviction that one day, all will be as it should be. All will be made right. God began this work and never stops, enabling us to live in confident hope that what he has promised will come true. We are here to be shaped for eternity and one day, as he told the Thessalonians, “We will be with the Lord forever” (4:17). No matter what happens, we can live in confident hope. There’s something I noticed just recently in the book of Romans. I’ve read it many times, but I’d never seen this before. Paul is talking about how sometimes Christians have to suffer in this life, and he wants them to know it’s never wasted. He says that “suffering produces perseverance,” and perseverance produces character. And in our American way of thinking, that’s the end result: the way suffering and perseverance shape our character, make us better, stronger people, right? But that’s not where Paul stops. He says character produces hope. Not wishy, washy, “I hope my team wins” hope. No, what we go through here produces hope that “does not put us to shame” (Romans 5:3-5). Confident hope—living as if the future is already here. When the world gets dark, when times get challenging, when the struggle seems to be more than we can bear, know this: we will be with the Lord forever. You can count on it. You know that it’s true. “Therefore encourage one another with these words.” Let’s pray.