Nothing was insurmountable in the midst of this promise of immediately impending eternal life.

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1 THE BIG PICTURE November 9, 2014, The Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Douglas T. King, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York An Episcopal Priest from Port Jefferson, Long Island, about a mile from where I grew up, described Jesus in this way. The portrait the Gospels paint is that of a lifeguard who leaps in the surf, swims to the drowning girl, and then, instead of doing a cross-chest carry, drowns with her, revives three days later, and walks off the beach with assurances that everything, including the apparently still dead girl, is hunky-dory. 1 This is the quandary of Christian communities throughout history. How do we recognize the presence of God s saving power in the midst of death? The church in Thessalonica, to whom Paul wrote the passage we just heard, was a community that was struggling to understand how to continue to be faithful in the midst of the painful obstacles that they were encountering. They faced persecution from a Roman empire that did not understand them. But their greatest challenge was trying to understand the nature of this kingdom their savior, Jesus Christ, had promised them. In the years immediately following Jesus death, resurrection and ascension, expectations about what would happen next were fervent. New converts to the faith were learning the story of Jesus life. They were hearing tales of miracles, people being healed. They were hearing of Jesus returning from the tomb in defeat of death and rising up to heaven. The Thessalonians were watching the skies for the next big thing. They were waiting each and every day for the next fireworks show, the next example of God turning the world upside down. They could face the persecutions of the world around them because they knew that God was right around the corner ready to make another big splash. They could survive the daily drudgeries and disappointments of life because God was coming soon to make everything perfect

2 Nothing was insurmountable in the midst of this promise of immediately impending eternal life. But then days of waiting for a Technicolor explosion of God s presence in their midst, became weeks, and months, and years. And then members of this small, closely-knit, impassioned community begin to die. The community is not only deeply mourning the loss of their loved ones, but trying to reconcile this promise of eternal life they have received in the face of the death before them. This initial generation of the church had no thought that the physical, larger-thanlife presence of Jesus would not be returning in their lifetime. Eternal life meant never having to die. Jesus was supposed to come to the rescue. It was a perfectly natural expectation for the Thessalonians to have. They were a scant few decades removed from the drama of the cross and the empty tomb. The faithfulness of their community allowed them to feel the immanent (with an a) presence of God in their midst, so why would they not expect the imminent (with an i) arrival of Christ s all-encompassing transformation for all of creation? As people of faith we run this risk of confusing the immanent with an a, with the imminent with an I. When the Thessalonians receive this radical good news that God is deeply present in their midst, immanently (with an a) present, of course they would believe that God is imminently (with an i) about to sweep through the world in a dramatic display of power. But the past two thousand years or so have demonstrated that it would be unwise for us to assume how quickly Jesus may return in larger-than-life glory. Every once in a while some minor Christian sect will announce they have done some rather dubious scriptural math and inform us of the day and time Jesus will show up for the great last call. I remember a wellpublicized prediction back when I was in seminary. As the date approached, we decided the only appropriate response was to serve cocktails and dance. We even had t-shirts printed up for our rapture party. It was a memorable evening, but I do not remember Jesus arriving at any point during the festivities. Maybe it was not the nicest thing in the world for us to do. We did not have to mock what was a very important moment in a faith community s life that ended up being very disappointing for them. Let s call it youthful indiscretion. But, I do - 2 -

3 think it is rather silly to be in the prediction business when it comes to the specific actions of God in the world. Such knowledge is not attainable for us. When we seek to conjecture our ways to such answers we find ourselves wading in metaphysical mush. Paul has a difficult job. What can he tell these grief-stricken Thessalonians mourning both the loss of their loved ones and their dashed expectations about God s working in the world? The first important thing he does is acknowledge that they are justified in their grieving. Paul tells them that they should not grieve as others do who have no hope. But he does not ignore their need to grieve. He seeks to tell them why their grieving should be different. Paul reminds them that even and especially in the midst of the most painful moments of life we have been given a great hope, a lens by which we are called to view the world and our place in it. Paul goes on to paint a bold and colorful picture of a big reunion in the sky where we will all be lifted up and floating around. Frankly the image gives me the heebie-jeebies. In the summertime when I was a child I would lie down on the cool grass in my backyard and look up at the clouds in the sky. Sometimes I would get a little nervous about the whole gravity thing. I would worry about what would happen if gravity decided to take a little break and stop holding me down. Just to be on the safe side my hands would grab a comforting clump of grass on either side of me to make sure I would not suddenly find myself floating up into the ether. Please do not sign me up for this big floating reunion in the sky. But Paul is intentionally painting a bigger-than-life representation of the power of God writ large. He is engaging in the apocalyptic. He is seeking to reveal the promise of God s almighty power making all things right. The trick for us is to not have our attention so focused upon the hows and whens of Paul s picture. Our attention needs to rest upon what the picture represents. One of the blessings of living in Manhattan is the amazing plethora of museums to which we have easy access. Often on Friday, which is my day off, I will wander down to the Met to poke around for an hour or so. I usually check out a new exhibit, the current Cubism exhibit is wonderful by the way, and stop by a few - 3 -

4 traditional haunts, Cezanne, Picasso, and the pointillist Seurat. Ever since seeing the musical Sunday in the Park with George a few years ago, I have been particularly taken with Seurat. The Met has a final sketch for his famous work, A Sunday on La Grand Jatte, which hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. Both paintings are worth viewing. There is something fascinating about the technique of pointillism, or what Seurat preferred to call divisionism. Rather than blending the pigments of color, the artist uses individual separate points of color on the canvas. This allows for the use of pure color, which the human eye blends together in the viewing. The trick is from what perspective one views the painting. Up close, a pointillist painting is nothing more than a multitude of colored dots on a white canvas. But as one steps back the perspective and the vision changes. The eye is given the space to blend the color together and to see the image the artist is intending to communicate. The dots become a compelling picture of a Sunday afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte. This is what Paul is seeking to do for his grieving Thessalonians. He is seeking to have his apocalyptic vision of people floating in the skies serve as a tool to have them step back and recognize their individual lives and the lives of those they have lost as points on a much larger canvas. In the midst of this life, from our limited perspective, we often experience our existence as a random set of occurrences that are far too often punctuated by tragedies like the death of those we love. There are times when we can question the meaning of the larger picture or whether there is even a larger picture to be seen. We can easily wonder if God is present, or if present, powerful enough to shape what will happen to us. But if we allow ourselves to take a few steps back, the patterns begin to emerge. We see the wonder of God s creative power transforming chaos into creation. We see our God liberating a people from slavery and leading them to freedom. We see our God taking human form to walk beside us, teach us, die for us, and conquer death for us. What we see over and over again, throughout this painting, are wide - 4 -

5 sweeping arcs of gracious, powerfully transforming, divine love being directed toward us. We may be too hemmed in by our lives to see it all the time now, especially in the sad and hard times. But that is the painting of which we are a part. That is the vision Paul was seeking to present. I am not too sure about the floating in the sky thing. And I am certain there is no value in picking a date on the calendar for any such event. But I am betting my life that in this painting in which we find ourselves, death is no match for the power of God s love. And with that vision, everything we do and feel occurs in front of a backdrop of deep and abiding hope. Our God is ever coming to save us. In the words of Paul at the close of his letter to the Thessalonians, May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this. Thanks be to God. Amen. 1 Capon, Robert Farrar, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus, William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2002, pp