Our hope for the departed

[AI translation] In a few days it will be the Day of the Dead, and I know that in those days almost everyone will make a pilgrimage to an old or more recently buried grave. At a peach-petalled, chrysanthemum-lined grave, they remember with reverence some dear life, some dear person who was once here and was so good to have been - but is no more. Where is he? That's why I'm reading this passage from the Bible, whose title the Bible translators once wrote: "Our hope for the departed."We are talking here about things that can really only be spoken of in the light of God's revelation. It is as if the curtain that hides from us that other, invisible world is drawn back a little, and we can look with wonder into the mysteries of the world towards which we are all moving. Thus the apostle begins. And he ends by saying, "Comfort one another with these words." So the apostle is not trying to satisfy a pious curiosity, nor is he trying to give sensational revelations about the afterlife. He wants only one thing: to comfort! And to comfort us with the hope that our faith in Jesus leads us to. For we have a hope that turns sadness into joy, that encourages us in the fear of death, that shines through the darkness of the grave!
The apostle Paul writes to the Thessalonian brothers on this question because, as his letter shows, they are in a crisis of faith. They were so caught up in the faith and expectation of Jesus' imminent return that they thought that none of them would die until they saw their Lord coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and glory. And yet it happened - apparently more than once - that some of the church died without even understanding Jesus' return. Here and there, families of believers were plunged into mourning, and with the mourning came the agonizing questions. Are they now missing out on the joy and glory of the Lord's return?
This question is familiar to us in this way. For there is no man who is not dead. Death is always with us, the longer we live, the more we encounter it. It will come for us one day. For our future on earth, this is the only thing we can know with absolute certainty. When it will come, how it will come, we do not know, but that it will come, that is certain! That is why we are also shuddering with the question: what will happen when I have to go? What will become of me? Where will my path lead me?
The Apostle says: "I do not want you to be ignorant of those who have fallen asleep..." So there is something to be sure about this otherwise mysterious question. We are not at the mercy of nebulous conjectures, fantastic speculations, invented theories. In this respect we need not live in uncertainty and ignorance, for here we have knowledge of facts which give a quite certain basis for our hopes after death. Thus says the apostle, "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again..." So there are two great facts, events that have happened. One is that Jesus died! The other is that Jesus rose again!
Jesus died! Think about it, the only innocent, sinless, pure saint, the only one who didn't belong to death, died. He accepted death. The death of damnation. The death penalty for sin - for us! Then he absolved us from the debt of death. We who owe death! He paid the debt for us with his own death. And a debt once paid cannot be demanded a second time! His death was a satisfaction for us, that is, the very death that redeemed us from death! He became one with us who have sinned, so that we might be one with Him who made satisfaction for sin!
And the same Jesus who died in this way: he rose again! He has broken through the dark wall of death that surrounds and blocks life on earth on all sides! He has broken through it! And with Jesus' resurrection, a gap was opened in death that will remain open. It will never close again. The way has been opened from life on earth through death to eternal life. Jesus is the first of the dead. The tender one. And where there is a "first" - not just "one" - there is a second and a third, there is an untold line that can march through the gap, the place of the great breakthrough, linked to Jesus, the first genius!
These two great, divine facts: the death and resurrection of Jesus are the basis of all our hope in the face of death. This is why the apostle continues, "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, in the same way God will bring forth those who have fallen asleep with Him through Christ." What this means is that, although we must suffer the physical process of dying, that is, we must die, we can die in hope. In the hope that the real danger of death, the condemnation, the punishment of sin, has already been suffered for us by Jesus! So He did not save us from the physical process of dying, but from the "judgment" of death, the sting of death, the condemnation! In fact! Whoever believes in the dead and risen Jesus Christ already has the blessing of His redemptive death and resurrection! Something happens to him as if he himself had already died with Jesus and been raised with Jesus. It is as if he himself, like Jesus, is already beyond death, beyond the grave, beyond hell. He is in the world of eternal life where Jesus is. Together with Jesus! If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then it is not "as if", but "really" that eternal life has begun for us!
We believe in Jesus, dead and risen. We believe that we belong to the dead and risen Jesus! We believe, don't we? Well, then what the apostle goes on to say applies to us too. He also brings them out of the death into which they had to plunge. He will bring him out of the dead from the dead that he has fallen into. As it were, he fishes him out, draws him out, lifts him out. Just like Jesus! This "he with him" is valid beyond the bounds of death. He who has lived "with Him" from death is "with Him" beyond death! The fellowship of life with the dead and risen Jesus - which we can already experience here on earth by faith - continues after death. Whoever believes in Jesus - in His own words, "even if he dies, he lives!"(John 11:25) The physical process of dying does not mean death for Him, but the completion of eternal life already begun in faith.
For the believer, too, death is in a certain sense the end. The end of transience, as it were. But the life itself, which he has already found in Jesus, goes on, and is fulfilled there in all its splendour and glory. Death then also marks the end of faith. For all that he has believed, he has already seen. Faith becomes a vision! Death also marks the end of hope, for everything that he had hoped for is then fulfilled, all hopes come true. So there is no need for faith or hope any more!
Behold, we can look with such triumphant, happy hope upon those who have fallen asleep! How right the apostle is when he says, "Grieve not, as those who have no hope." You may grieve, but never as those who have no hope of death. For us, even the sorrow of our most painful grief is illuminated by some happy hope!
Where, then, are our dead? What has become of them? If they believed in Him here, they are "with Him"! They are with the Lord! I like to say they are with Jesus, only from the other side. And so we who are still here, the closer we are to Jesus from this side, the closer we can be to those who are also with Him from the other side.
When you go out to the graveyard now, don't think of your loved one as already lying there, gathering dust under the grave. There's not enough of him left to fit in an urn. No! But the one you loved, the one who looked you through the eyes, the one who hugged you with his arm, the one who spoke to you with his lips, the one who loved you with his heart, that one is there with Him. He lives with Jesus! God is not a God of the dead, but of the living! Exaggerated cemetery worship is not the custom of the believer. Of course, we guard the earthly remains of our dead with grace, we keep their graves in order. We decorate them with a flower or two, but never with the knowledge that we are doing something for them, because they are not there, in the cemetery! They are much closer to us than a gravestone can be! In the eternity that surrounds us, with Jesus with us: they are with Him!
Therefore, there is no need to pray for them. We can give thanks for them. We can thank them for having arrived where we are still on the way - but what more can we ask for them? What more can we ask for someone whose faith is already a vision, whose hope has been fulfilled, who has arrived, whose life is complete, who is with the Lord?! What more can we ask? No need to pray for the dead, for they are with the Lord! But something is still missing, something is still expected, something still has to happen. Believers on earth live in the same expectation. Only we wait in the flesh, they wait in the spirit. We are all waiting for what the apostle describes, "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with an alarm, with the voice of the archangel, and with a divine trumpet: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; and we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
So this last, visible appearance of Jesus is yet to come. That alarm, that archangelic soothsaying, that divine trumpeting, is to be understood as meaning that the Lord's return on earth will be a real, visible and audible reality. We will see and hear something. The apostle hears the sound of battle and victory. These are statements of the final showdown and victory of the returning Jesus. It is that Jesus will emerge victorious in the light of His divine love and glory!
It is in connection with this divine fact that the apostle mentions the resurrection. Thus he says: those who have fallen asleep will rise again! Of course, they will not be resurrected in the way that many confused ideas have been published, that the graves will be opened and the dead will come forth, revived. No! It is not the body that has been buried or cremated that rises. More correctly, it is not the material of our bodies that is resurrected, not the 50-70 kg of flesh, blood, bone, muscle. What is taken out of the earth returns to the earth. It decomposes. And it makes no difference how: whether it is oxidised over centuries underground or in a few hours in a crematorium. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." (1 Cor 15,50) What is resurrected is therefore not the material of our bodies, but the mysterious form, the essence of our bodies, by which we can recognize one another, in which each one expresses his or her individuality, his or her distinctive individuality. To be resurrected, then, means that we do not melt into a great spiritual mass in eternity, like a raindrop into the sea, but that we retain our individuality in a distinctive form there too. Our identity with our former earthly self. It is precisely this that gives a very strong basis for the hope of reunion that many long for!
The emphasis, then, is not on the details. It is not how it all happens, but what the apostle finally says: "In this way we shall always be with the Lord!" So, where there is a real relationship with the living Jesus, there is no more separation, neither in this world nor in the next. Whoever is here with the Lord will always be with the Lord! On earth, in death and after death. All this great hope after death is precisely not an escape from the problems of life on earth. On the contrary! The resurrection believer is not someone who neglects the earthly world for the sake of a heavenly world, but takes it even more seriously. It is precisely because we know that death does not have the last word, but the resurrected Jesus! If death were the end of all things, those who are selfish, domineering and pleasure-seeking would be right. Those who say: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die anyway." It is precisely by believing in the fulfillment of life after death that we have the strength for the good, the pure, the true! It is the encouraging light of this hope that illuminates even the darkest passages of life. In this way, the end of the road is certain, because we know where it leads! It is precisely this that makes the whole of life on earth truly liberating and serene, for death is no longer a threat!
Amen
Date: 30 October 1966.