For a Christian, resurrection isn't a pipe dream, a mere wish, a chimera. Dying and rising, physically, is what resurrection is about. You will be you. The unique, singular person God created and redeemed you to be. All is one, but one like the Father, Son, and Spirit are one- distinct but not separate.
How can this be? It can be because God is and because God is God and because Christ rose from the dead. I'm in good company when, with Rowan Williams, I cannot conceive of the resurrection in any sensible was except to take it quite literally. Understood any other way kind of defeats the purpose, at least in my view. This is why we don't "grieve like the rest, who have no hope."
The context in which our reading from 1 Thessalonians was written is that of the very early Church. These Christians believed Christ's return was imminent. They believed this because it's what they were taught by no less than Saint Paul himself. Hence, they were disturbed by the fact that some of their sisters and brothers had died before the parousia. In this passage, Paul is consoling them, even as he realizes that maybe the Lord's return isn't so imminent after all.
In 1920-1921, Martin Heidegger gave lectures on The Phenomenology of Religious Life. In these lectures, he used 1 Thessalonians to show how religious life can be understood phenomenologically. One aspect of his phenomenological analysis, one that has bearing on this passage, is the urgency, the expectation, produced by Paul's eschatology, that is, on the expectation of the parousia. Such an expectation generates energy. It creates an urgency and intentionality about living life, about enacting faith.
More recently, in a very short work entitled The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben noted that for the most part, over two millenia, Christians have lost any perceptible sense of eschatological urgency.
While Christ hasn't yet returned, you will still die. The people you know and love will also die. You don't know when or how you or anyone else will die. But die you will.
What has become the opium of the masses, if anything, isn't faith in God. It is atheism or a soft pantheism, a main feature of which is agnosticism concerning any divine characteristics. One result of this is that life becomes a race against time. This has the effect of making life quantitative rather than qualititative. And so, we make bucket lists and the like.
For example, I ran across something that encapuslates this nicely: "There will come a day when you will take your last trip without realizing it. So, for now, go everywhere you can." With apologies upfront for being crude, there will also come a day when you take your last dump without realizing it. Does that mean, ... Well, you get it, right? Maybe we've all imbibed the lyrics to "Imagine" too deeply.
We still confess in the Creed that Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, do we not? Do we say these words without thinking about what they mean? Do we mumble them not knowing what they mean? Do we care? Is it true?
Another aspect of early Christian eschatology that we've lost is that we won't dwell in the heavens. As Paul notes in this passage, Christ will return. Because we will be resurrected, we will have bodies. Hence, we will occupy space. This means we need a place to be. A renewed earth will be that place. See also Revelation 21:2-3.
What we need to recover is the spiritual practice of memento mori- remember death. Far from being morbid, this practice is energizing because it forces you to grapple with being, with being human, with being mortal. It helps you see what matters and what doesn't.
It being November, the month we remember the dead as well as the month we celebrate the end of the world as we know it with Solemnity of Christ the King, makes this passage from the lectionary paricularly valuable. Valuable to reflect on it.
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