A Grand Welcome
As the days get shorter and cooler, and as we near Thanksgiving and Christmas, my mind wanders back to years past, when my family would regularly make the road trip to Kentucky to visit with family for the holidays. What I remember most clearly is the warm welcome we would receive when we arrived. The car would still be rolling into park when my grandparents were already out the door to greet us in the driveway. (This point is crucial to what comes later! So let’s put a bookmark here. The initial greeting happened not inside the house, or even at the door, but out in the driveway.) First were the hugs. My granddad would nearly squeeze the air out of me, and his moustache prickled as he kissed my cheek. Then he would help carry luggage from the car into the house. Once we were inside, we plopped with exhaustion in the living room or at the kitchen table, and my grandmother passed around a plate of homemade cookies.
If I’m being honest, as a child, I normally found these sit-around-the-room-and-talk gatherings to be boring. I’d be itching to go outside and play soccer, or to explore the hidden treasures in the basement. But—the first half hour or so after we arrived was different. I was not bored at all. And it wasn’t just because of the cookies. It was because there was a vibrant energy in the room, a compelling sense of connection. I suppose that in those moments I felt all the things I really desired. I felt loved. I felt that I belonged. I felt safe. If I had to compare the experience to something else, I would say that it was sort of like watching a beautiful sunrise or sunset, where you’re happy to do nothing at all but bask in the glow of something bigger than you that feels like a gift, that is special and sacred and yours. Gathered together in a circle, we were all basking in the glow of each other’s presence.
Good Grief
Most historians agree
that the letter of 1 Thessalonians is the oldest book in the New Testament. So
it gives us a glimpse into the hearts and minds of some of the first followers
of Christ. In today’s scripture, we learn that the Thessalonians are deeply
distressed. About what? “About those who have died” (1 Thess 4:13), Paul says. See,
Paul had been teaching that Christ will return again soon. But the
Thessalonians are worried that the Christ-followers among them who have already
died will be unable to participate in the final reunion with Christ. In the
ancient Greco-Roman world, people generally believed that once a person died,
they were eternally consigned to the underworld, Hades. They were eternally
separated from the living. The Thessalonians are captive to this idea. They
fear that those who have passed away have missed out on God’s kingdom, which
will come in fullness when Christ returns.
Paul reassures them in more than one way. First, he refers to those who have died as, literally, those who “have fallen asleep” (1 Thess 4:13). As though to say, death is an end, yes, but in Christ it is not the end. One ancient Jewish bedtime prayer, which Jesus himself may have prayed, included the words from Psalm 31:5, “Into your hands I commit my spirit; for you redeem me, O Lord, faithful God.” Just as a person would entrust themselves to God’s care before sleep, Paul is insisting that those who have died in Christ have likewise entrusted themselves to God’s care. (It is as though they are sleeping in God’s care.) Likewise, just as a person who goes to sleep later wakes up, Paul insists that those who have died in Christ will rise again as he himself died and rose (1 Thess 4:14).
Paul’s encouragement—that the Thessalonians should “not grieve as others do who have no hope”—has sometimes been interpreted to mean that Christians should not grieve at all. I don’t think this is the case. Paul is not telling the Thessalonians not to grieve, but rather how to grieve. Paul is not averse to tears. Elsewhere in scripture, we hear Paul repeatedly exclaim that life has brought him to tears (e.g., Acts 20:19, 31; 2 Cor 2:4). But for Paul, there is a good way to grieve. Long before Charlie Brown uttered the words “good grief,” Paul outlined the concept. Good grief, according to Paul, means genuinely missing a person…but trusting that they are in God’s care. It means being honest about one’s own sadness…but also hopeful about God’s resurrection love. Paul is not telling us certain feelings are off limits, but rather encouraging us that, even in our darkest feelings, we might still have hope for what God’s love is doing and will do.
Not a Rapture but a Welcome
And what is our hope, according to Paul? He paints a dramatic picture of Christ “descend[ing] from heaven” at the “sound of God’s trumpet,” and then the dead rising and the living getting “caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thess 4:16-17). I don’t know about you, but it’s difficult for me to hear this passage and not think, “Oh, this is the rapture!”
For the last two months or so, as we made our way through the book of Revelation, I was at pains to point out that, contrary to popular imagination, John’s vision in Revelation is ultimately not a “rapture” in which Christians are vacuumed up into heaven. Instead we saw in the penultimate chapter of Revelation God’s kingdom “coming down” from heaven to earth (Rev 21:2). We saw God making God’s home with us here (Rev 21:3). When I read today’s scripture earlier this week, I was genuinely baffled. Does Paul have a different vision than John? Maybe one of them was turned upside down when they received their vision, because it seems they have us moving in opposite directions. In Revelation, God comes down to earth. But in 1 Thessalonians, Paul envisions us getting “caught up in the clouds” and “meet[ing] the Lord in the air” (1 Thess 4:16-17).
Well…it turns out that neither Paul nor John had their wires crossed when they received their visions. It is, rather, a case of something getting lost in translation. The culprit is the innocuous little word “meet” in that phrase, “[We will] meet the Lord in the air.” In the Greek, this word is apantao, and it refers to the specific event of leaving one’s home in order to welcome someone and give them a warm escort back home. It’s sort of the ancient equivalent of rolling out the red carpet. When a king or high-ranking official visited a town, the residents would go outside the town walls and receive them with honor and accompany them on the last leg of their journey, perhaps offering to carry their luggage or ease their burden in some way. In the book of Acts, when Paul is traveling to Rome, the Christ-followers from the capital journey over thirty miles (that’s a big distance when you’re on foot!) outside the city to “meet”—or apantao—Paul (Acts 28:15). We are told that Paul “thanked God and took courage” because of their warm reception.
All of this to say, when Paul envisions us Christ-followers meeting our Lord “in the clouds,” there’s every reason to believe that he is not imagining a literal mid-air rendezvous. Rather, he is spatially mapping out how we welcome a Lord who is descending from heaven, how we meet him mid-way. When my family visited my grandparents in Kentucky, the welcome happened not inside my grandparents’ home, not even in the doorway. It happened outside in the driveway. They met us mid-way. When Paul went to Rome, the welcome happened not inside, not even at the city gate. It happened thirty miles outside the city, at a point mid-way. When Christ descends from heaven, where will the welcome happen? Not in our homes, not even at sea level. It will happen, Paul says, “in the clouds,” which is to say, at a point mid-way. If we have to imagine this literally, let me suggest that maybe we are not levitating, but rather rushing up the nearest hill or mountain, (or climbing a tree like Zacchaeus), all in an attempt to get as close as we can to our arriving guest.
The crucial point in Paul’s imagined scenario has to do not with the mechanics of the scene, but rather its meaning. It’s not about us suddenly acquiring the powers of levitation and hovering like ghosts in the air; it’s about us leaving the city walls, so to speak, to receive our Lord with joy, lavishing honor upon him. Paul is envisioning not a great rapture but a grand welcome. This is not the scene of an escape but rather than arrival. Christ is not taking us up with him; we are receiving him down unto earth. We are meeting our Lord outside the city walls to escort him back inside. We are meeting our Lord in the driveway to embrace him, to accompany him to our home, to bask in his presence as he will surely be basking in ours.
Will We Welcome Him?
Paul’s idea of Christ arriving in some final, absolute way inspires hope. Absolutely, it does. But does it mean that everything until that day is just empty time, just days crossed off the calendar? If so, that would suggest that the last two thousand years or so have been a grand disappointment, a tragic waste of time.
According to Matthew, Jesus’ final parable—we might consider it the final lesson of his teaching ministry—is about when “the son of man comes in glory” to “sit on the throne” (Matt 25:31-46). In this parable, Jesus is drawing from precisely the same prophetic images from which Paul draws in our scripture today, namely a little passage in Daniel where “the son of man” comes “with the clouds of heaven” and receives his “dominion” (Dan 7:13-14). So it is essentially the picture of a king returning home, returning to his kingdom. In Jesus’ parable, the king blesses a host of people who received him—by feeding him when he was hungry, by giving drink when he was thirsty, by welcoming him when he was a stranger, by clothing him when he was naked, by visiting him when he was imprisoned. These people, however, express great surprise. “Lord, when was it that [we did these things]?” they ask in their bewilderment. (They’re probably thinking, “You’ve been away all this time. We’ve only received you just now.”) The king responds that when they received the so-called “least” among them, the shamed and excluded and neglected of their society, they were in fact receiving their Lord, who considers himself one with the “least.”
Jesus’ final lesson harmonizes perfectly with Paul’s encouragement in today’s scripture. For he affirms the final hope which Paul espouses, namely that there will come a day when Christ returns in fullness, when his kingdom will be complete. But notice that he also insists that the meantime, the interim, the time in-between now and then, is not empty or meaningless. It’s not just boxes on a calendar crossed off until the day that really matters. He insists, rather, that he has always been coming. Sometimes he has been welcomed with honor and dignity. Sometimes he has not been welcomed in such a way. Perhaps he is even implying that his final arrival, the day on which God’s kingdom comes in its fullness, is none other than the day when all the world welcomes him in precisely these little, humble, overlooked ways. When all the world rolls out the red carpet for him in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the imprisoned. Perhaps he is implying that such a day is the same day that Paul envisions, when we do not simply linger as our lord makes his heavenly descent, but rather rush out to meet him in-between—which, spatially speaking, is in “the clouds.”
The good news of today’s scripture is simple, “Christ is coming.” But to be clear, the good news is not that Christ is coming to escort us from earth to some heavenly otherworld. It is that Christ is coming to make his home with us, and it is up to us to rush out to meet him, to roll out the red carpet to greet him. And the twist on this good news—what we might forget, but what Jesus tries so hard to remind us of—is that this day happens not in some pompous, spectacular ceremony (see also Luke 17:20-21), but in the little forgotten moments of welcome that we offer to the least of these (Matt 25:31-46). If the good news is that Christ our king is coming, the question we should be asking is not, “Will he take us away with him?” but rather, “Will we welcome him?”
My enduring memory of being welcomed by my grandparents is a very personal and warm memory. The challenge of the gospel is that this sort of kindness and hospitality extend beyond the family, beyond the tribe, beyond the political party, beyond nation lines, beyond, beyond, beyond…. Because on that day when it does, we may find our eyes opened to see that in fact we have received our king himself.
Prayer
Who is with us even now,
Sometimes in guises unrecognized
…
Inspire us with hope
For your arrival,
That we might risk leaving our homes
To meet you in the middle,
To welcome you with dignity and joy
In the least of these;
And that we might receive you
In our earthly home,
Even as you receive us
Into God’s kingdom. Amen.
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