Apocalypse now and the teapot

1 Thess 4:13-18 The Message

I have a beautiful teapot that I don’t use every day - it’s white with blue flowers. When I make a cuppa for myself I put a teabag in the cup. But when I get a text from family or friends on the way to visit, I respond with “ I’ve put the kettle on, smiling emoji” and I smile and warm up the blue and white teapot. Time with family and friends brings joy. 

The Thessalonians were going through a difficult time. With the recent persecution people had died. They had looked forward to Jesus’ return, so sure it was imminent that they believed it would happen in their lifetime. So when those among their number died, it rocked their faith. How could Jesus meet those who had died? Perhaps Jesus was never coming back, maybe he never even rose from the grave in the first place? 

Paul speaks to this group, stricken with grief, wracked with doubt and he brings words of comfort. He speaks of the end times. When we come to talk about new creation and end times, we struggle with language to convey what will happen, there is so much we don’t know and can’t express. Paul uses apocalyptic language here - it is visionary, over the top poetic language and imagery to describe the impossible. Not like the mundane schedule we got when we started this course. The point of this is not to note the order - the cry of the command, then the archangels call, then the trumpet (what kind of trumpet anyway - a Bb, a flugelhorn, a bugle?) NO NO NO! This is a painting in broad strokes, the artist merely hinting at the reality behind the words. The point is that Christ WILL return, and it will be magnificent in ways we can’t possibly imagine. 

Paul does not deny his friends their grief, it’s unrealistic and unhelpful to tell people not to grieve the loss of loved ones. My beloved father died in 2015, I wept by his hospital bed, I wept at his funeral. We thought of him on Saturday at my ordination and how much he would have loved it. But my grief was not the desperate, hopeless kind of grief, not the grief we find in Auden’s poem which ends with “nothing now can ever come to any good”. 

For Paul and for me and I hope for you, we miss our loved ones but we have a hope - the resurrection, the new creation - we KNOW we will see them again. Just as we know we will be with the risen Jesus. The comfort comes not from the trumpet blast but from what Eugene Petersen in The Message version refers to as “one huge family reunion with the Master”. So the next time you put on the kettle and warm the pot, remember that we are a people of hope, we serve a risen Lord and we look forward to that wonderful community of the new creation.