Morning Devotion for the Season of Eastertide
May 16, 2022
Invitatory
On this day the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
Alleluia. The Lord is risen indeed: Come let us adore him.
Reading: I Thessalonians 4:13-18
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
Rarely, if ever, do I have the inclination to change what Paul has written. Here, however, I’m tempted to make an exception.
I’ve had the opportunity to hear many eulogies in my life, remembrances at the time of one’s death. I’ve heard far more than most. And I’ve listened as, over the decades, the emphasis has changed. People seldom talk anymore about something as final as the “burial of the dead.” We’ve rather gladly moved on to “celebrations of the life of” someone. It’s been a subtle but fascinating transition, with its own far-reaching consequences. And thus our concerns have changed from Paul’s. People in his time didn’t share our natural presumptions. Death was a very present foe, from which they sought relief. For us, we often speak of death as if it is the relief, with the remarkable statement made in a commonly requested poem at funerals that death is “nothing at all.”
I wonder about that idea, maybe because I’ve spent so much time in cemeteries, observing rows of headstones that mark “nothing at all.” And I’ve stood with family members at the grave and watched as, at the last, when they have to walk away after all has been said and there’s nothing more to do, a sense of finality breaks through. For a moment, all the joie de vivre that had been recounted in sundry stories and humorous observations is snagged by an awful gravity: all that has come to an end.
But we move on, regaining our footing and returning to happy memories or, more accurately, to engaging those who are still alive in conversation about what they still want to do in the time they have. We prefer when death can be “nothing at all.” Which is perfectly understandable. Yet, in trying to make it so, we also foreclose both grief and hope. We lose the measure of life when its loss presses so little upon us once it’s gone, when we don’t allow grief to break open its depths. And apart from this realization, hope is just another word for wishing. It carries negligible weight.
Admittedly, Paul’s vision has an almost comic quality. But it wasn’t meant to be taken literally. It was meant to convey, as much as was possible, the stunning and impossible proclamation that death is not, in fact, conclusive. Paul struggled for words larger than life, something that would represent the overturning of all the grievous endings we’ve come to experience and know. And it’s that sense of astonishing surprise which is not much with us any more. It seems, rather, that we’ve largely made peace with death. It simply comes with life. “Oh well…” one might say.
And is this better than Paul?
With this in mind, I might have liked Paul to have written: “But we want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may grieve as others do, those who have hope.” For death remains a mystery. As does whatever resurrection will be. We do not know; we should not presume. For this makes things that are well outside our reach, in depth and majesty, “nothing at all.”
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
