Meditation on I Thessalonians 4

             We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, 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 are asleep.  Therefore comfort one another with these words.

              Alzheimer’s is a very puzzling, perplexing, infuriating, insidious disease. It is hard to know what metaphor best describes Alzheimer’s.  Ronald Reagan spoke of it as the “long sunset at the end of life.”   Another metaphor is that in Alzheimer’s the mind goes to sleep while the body remains awake.  Alzheimer’s is a form of living sleep.  Which brought me to the old King James translation of our text from I Thessalonians: We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are ASLEEP, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

             Now Paul certainly did not have Alzheimer’s in mind when he wrote these words.  The old translation preserves Paul’s use of a euphemism for death – sleep.  This is a very old fashioned effort at avoiding the use of a very natural word:  death.  What Paul is saying to his Thessalonian friends is this:  Do not grieve over those who have died before the final resurrection.  The God who raised Jesus will raise them up also.  Be comforted and find hope that God’s good word of resurrection will prevail, even over death.

             I find a very contemporary comfort in these ancient words, comfort consistent with Paul’s message and our experience of loved ones with Alzheimer’s: We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are ASLEEP, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.  For since we are believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who are ASLEEP.

             Those who are asleep.  This is an apt metaphor for our friends and family afflicted with Alzheimer’s. They are not dead – they are alive.  It is as if their minds are asleep in a wide-awake body.  For even though in the earlier stages of the disease they speak to us and move about, they are really more asleep than awake.  However hard we try to wake them up into conscious thought and action, they remain trapped in the tomb of the living death of Alzheimer’s.

             Over a number of years we saw the fall of  Alzheimer’s sleep over Tommy.  And as we saw him slip away – as we see others similarly afflicted with this progressive disease - it is hard to find hope or comfort, but only sadness and grief, anger and frustration.  As one author has written, living with a person with Alzheimer’s is a 36 hour day.

             This is the point at which scripture speaks to us:  do not grieve, as those who have no hope.  Our God is the God of the living and the dead, the sleeping and those awake.  No matter what disease afflicts our mind or body, our heart or our soul, the God we know in Jesus Christ is with us.   As God raised up Jesus from death, so also God will raise us up from the depths of our despair and the deepest sleep of the darkness of our minds.  God will never leave us. “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble,” the Psalmist wrote.  The Lord is our shepherd; we shall not want.  God is with us, as God was with Tommy, and as Tommy is with God now. 

             So we do not grieve as others do, who have no hope.  For we have hope.  We have comfort.  We have peace.  We have God’s word that through Jesus Christ our Lord nothing can separate us from God. Nothing in life or in death.  No disease. No heartache.  Nothing.  Nothing in all of creation, can separate us from the love we have in Jesus Christ our Lord. 

             Friends:  let us comfort one another with these words.  AMEN.          

 R. Charles Grant * Bon Air Presbyterian Church * June 12, 2002