Their expectation was that Jesus’ return would happen any minute now. The problem was some of the Christians in Thessalonica have died and the hope of the Christian community may be wavering a bit.  

Wasn’t Jesus going to return soon? How soon is soon anyway? For the Thessalonians, soon was starting to run a little long. They wondered if those who died while waiting would somehow miss all the excitement. Paul wrote to explain that the living would not precede the dead in the resurrection. Christ will descend from the heavens, the dead in Christ will rise and then the rest of us will join them.  

Paul easily handles the pastoral problem of feeling as if those who died first will be left out in the excitement that will usher in Jesus coming again. But the very way he states the case presents a problem. Paul writes, “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them….” The problem is not the gravity-defying ascent into the sky. God can handle that without working up a sweat.  

The part that makes me pause is that Paul speaks of those who are alive at Jesus’ coming as if he expects he’ll be one of them. Guess what? Paul was wrong. Paul was way wrong. The Roman Emperor put Paul to death more than 1900 years ago and Jesus is not back. Not yet. So what sort of hope are those of us who are alive now, those of us who are left, what are we to think of this return of Jesus? Where’s the hope now after nearly 2,000 collective years of watching the sky? 

First, I think we have to acknowledge that the early Christians really did expect Jesus back any minute, in their lifetimes to be sure. Jesus himself had warned that no one knows the hour or the day, not even the Son. Only the Father in heaven knows the time. Paul himself goes on to remind the Thessalonians of this in the verses that follow today’s reading. Paul writes, that Jesus will come like a thief in the night. Though Paul thought Jesus would come like a thief in the night soon, he did at least acknowledge it would be at a time no one could predict. 

Knowing that we are not supposed to know when Jesus will return gives me a bit of comfort. On the one hand, I did not have to worry about the end of time coming on January 1, 2000 or even January 1, 2001. I knew with a certainty that any date predicted by bunches of folks could not be described by any stretch as “No one knows the hour or the day.” 

Time is a pretty funny concept in the Bible anyway. Jesus has two time based sayings he uses a lot. One is to say that something will happen “in the fullness of time.” The other is to say, “The hour is coming and now is.” That’s about as precise as Jesus got with time. Jesus was expressing the biblical view that there are two types of time.  

In the Greek of the New Testament, the two types of time are chronos and kairos. Chronos is regular clock time. A watch is also called a chronometer, because it ticks off the seconds, minutes, and hours of chronos time. The other kind of time in scripture is kairos, which refers to God’s time. Something like the appointed time, the right time, or as Jesus puts it, “the fullness of time.” 

You get the feeling that when God looks at his watch, it either says “already” or “not yet.” Something has either happened or not. Soon is a bit vague in God’s kairos. It’s God’s time when it’s God’s time. You may or may not like that answer, but that’s what scripture teaches us. The fullness of time or the right time does not come when we want it to, not ever. God’s right time comes when a group of conditions come together that we could never take into account or predict.  

I did not learn to trust in kairos because by reading about it in the Bible. I learned to trust God’s timing because God has been patient enough to teach me to except God’s timing—kairos—even though it gets on my last nerve to wait some times.  

In early 2001, I was pushing to build out this former garage space the altar area is in to make more room for worship at King of Peace. I was sure of what we needed to do and pushing to get there. However, the building department did not share my view of time. There was no rush on their part whatsoever in the process of getting the needed building permit. At the time I wanted to build out the garage first and handle bringing the front porch in second. I couldn’t figure out how to get the porch project done, but I did know the steps to finish out this garage, so I put the garage project first.  

That was a great idea, but I could not move ahead without the permit and time was stretching out seemingly endlessly while we had more coming to worship than we had seats for. I was impatient with God. Why couldn’t God get us that permit? I was in a hurry and God did not seem to share my urgency. Then as the process took longer and longer there were additional hoops to jump through. We needed to get our blueprints signed off by an engineer who could stamp a current state seal on the plans. Soon after, through God’s proper planning I found myself meeting with not one but three engineers to discuss the plans. All of them came to King of Peace free of charge.  

They came to an agreement and signed off on the plans. In the process, they explained to me how we could enclose the porch and gave me a process to go through that avoided the need for a building permit. The next day we started construction on the porch project and within two weeks we had 67 seats for worship. The very week we finished the porch project, guess what arrived in the mail? The building permit. God’s timing was perfect. The coveted permit came right when we needed it. The permit could not come while I was pursuing the wrong process for the building. God had to wait until I was listening in order to get everything lined up. That’s just one of many times God has taught me to trust in kairos. When God’s timing doesn’t meet my expectations, it’s not God’s timing that’s wrong, but my expectations. 

So I look back at those first Christians. When Paul wrote in the year 51, he was sure that Jesus would soon return in glory to declare the end of the age. Thank God he was wrong. If Jesus returned in Paul’s lifetime, where would that leave us? We don’t know what factors God is taking into account. If Jesus returns before the sermon is finished, or waits another 2,000 years, the timing will be just right. 

So what is left for us in a passage like this if we can’t use it to guess when the end of time will come? First, we have to acknowledge that Paul was never writing about Jesus’ return exactly. Paul wrote to explain that those who have died remain in God’s thoughts. God has not forgotten anyone who has died. Those of us who are alive are no more alive to God than those who came before us. All of us who love God will be with our Lord forever. Paul says even as Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. This passage is first and foremost to be a comfort to anyone who mourns. That’s what Paul was really writing about.  

If you mourn for a loved one who is now gone to you, remember that they are not beyond God’s reach. The essence of Paul’s teaching here is that we are going to be with the Lord forever and those of us who are alive do not have the jump on those who preceded us in death. Paul reminds us that we should not grieve as those who have no hope. We have the expectation that Jesus will return. We are taught by experience that God’s timing is perfect, where ours is not. We must let the end of times be in God’s hands as all our times must be. Live as a people with hope and encourage one another with these words.