What Brings Comfort?

Comfort One Another With These Words…

(First Thessalonians 4:18)

We did it all—burial, funeral, luncheons, dinners, remembrances. It was all good—very good. Yet, it still haunts. It hangs over us—Gary died. It’s not just Gary; it’s the pilling up of mortality signals: contemporaries dying as all must die, purchase of our own cemetery plot (close to parents and Kinsers), finishing up our estate trust (such as it is); thinning out, or trying to thin out, our earthly belongings—that sort of thing.

“The dead in Christ shall rise” (1Thess 4:16); those are the words the Apostle tells us will bring comfort. Maybe it’s that word “dead” that messes with our sense of comfort. What does it mean to be “dead in Christ”? Elsewhere, the Apostle speaks again of “those who have died in Christ” (1Cor 15:13-26):

If there is no resurrection of the dead,                            

        then Christ has not been raised;

If Christ has not been raised,

        then your faith has been in vain…

For if the dead are not raised,

        then Christ has not been raised.

If Christ has not been raised,

        your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

Then those also who have died in Christ

        have perished.

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,

        we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,

        the first fruits of those who have died.

For since death came through a human being,

        the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being;

for as all die in Adam,

        so all will be made alive in Christ.

But each in his own order:

        Christ the first fruits,

        then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

Then comes the end,

        when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father,

        after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.

For Christ must reign

        until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

        The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Wow! Does that help? Or, is it still too dense and wild to bring comfort? The Gospel is always bigger and more rambunctious than we imagine. It has to do with creation itself, with Adam and with Christ. To be “dead in Christ” means we die within the sphere of Christ’s big Gospel Story:

            Our help is in the name of the Lord,

        who created the heavens and the earth;

and in our Savior, Christ Jesus,

        who abolished death,

and now brings life and immortality to light

        through the Gospel” (Ps 124:8 & 2Tm 1:10).       

That’s it. That’s our hope. That’s our only comfort.