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On Those Who Have Fallen Asleep: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

On Those Who Have Fallen Asleep: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

Last updated on: November 7, 2026 at 10:33 pm by Jeff Hood

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On Those Who Have Fallen Asleep: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 2026-11-07T22:33:44-06:00 Jeff Hood

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Fallen Asleep

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

-1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) For Those Who Have Fallen Asleep

Paul wrote these lines to people who were burying each other. The Thessalonians had expected Jesus to come back before anyone died. Then people died. The letter is addressed to a graveyard. I have stood in enough of them to hear it.

Fallen Asleep

Paul does not say the dead. He says those who have fallen asleep. Stand at a graveside in the South and listen to what people say instead. Passed. Gone home. Lost. Taken. The funeral home has its words. The preacher has his. The county has a form with a box to check. Nobody says asleep.

The casket sits on straps over a hole. A green tent keeps the sun off the family. Folding chairs. Fake grass laid over the red clay so nobody has to look at it. Somewhere behind the trees, a backhoe waits with its engine off. Everyone knows it is there. Nobody looks at it. The whole arrangement is built to say finished without anyone having to say it.

Paul calls it sleep. Sleep is unfinished. Nobody sleeps forever. The word carries a morning inside it. It is the word a mother uses with a child at a casket. She is only sleeping. Fundamentalists call that a lie we tell children. Paul puts it in scripture.

He chooses it for the dead of Thessalonica, people whose names we do not have, people who died of whatever people died of in that century. He does not sort them. He does not ask how they lived. He does not ask how they died. He does not ask what they believed on the last day. He says they are asleep. That is a claim about God.

Notice who he is writing to. Brothers and sisters. A family. Families bury everybody. The uncle nobody talks about. The cousin who left the church. The grandmother who never set foot in one. The man who drank himself into the ground. The woman he hurt on the way down. They all go into the same red clay. They all get the same backhoe. Paul’s word does not stop at the baptized. It reaches as far as sleep reaches, which is everyone.

Don’t Grieve like the Rest

Paul says this so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. He draws a line between the church and the rest. Fundamentalists love that line. They read the rest as the damned. Then they go to funerals and grieve like the rest.

I stand outside the kind of church that preaches hell. I still watch it. What I see is a church with hope for its own and a furnace for everyone else. That is grief without hope wearing a Sunday suit. A fundamentalist stands at a graveside and says this woman is with Jesus. He stands at another graveside and says nothing. He goes home. He eats the casserole. He knows what he believes about the second body. He believes it is burning. Then he opens his Bible to Paul and thinks Paul agrees with him.

Hell is grief with the hope cut out. It is the preacher deciding the dead are gone for good and then calling that decision faith. I have heard it from pulpits across the South. I have heard it in parking lots after the service. It never sounds like hope. It sounds like a man who has made his peace with a graveyard.

Hope that stops at the church door is a membership card. The Thessalonians were grieving their own. Paul knew that. Listen to where he puts the weight. He does not say you may hope because your dead were baptized. He does not say you may hope because they believed correctly. He says you may hope because Jesus died and rose. The hope rests on an event. Events do not check credentials. The sun came up this morning on the steeple. It came up on the bar across the road. It did not ask either building what it believed.

The fundamentalist’s heaven has a door. The fundamentalist’s God stands at it with a list. The list is the whole religion. Who is on it. Who is off it. Who got on in time. Who waited too long. Children raised in that church learn which graves they are allowed to cry at. If God keeps a list, God is a clerk. Clerks do not raise the dead. They file them.

God Will Get Those Who Have Fallen Asleep

So too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Read it slow. God brings. The dead do not climb. They do not qualify. They do not wake themselves. They do not earn the morning. They are carried. A sleeping person is dead weight. Anyone who has lifted a sleeping child out of a back seat knows. You bend down. You get your arms under. You lift. You carry him in. That is the picture Paul paints: God coming back with the sleepers in his arms.

Paul does not say God sends them somewhere. He says God brings them with him. The dead travel in his company. Nobody is shipped. Nobody is sorted at a desk. He comes himself and he carries them with him.

Look at who is doing the carrying. Through Jesus. The one who lifts the dead was himself laid in the ground. Somebody rolled a stone. Somebody went home and ate. He knows the dark from the inside. He knows the cold. He knows the stone. He knows what it is to be the one everybody has given up on. He was buried before anyone called him risen.

Who is left behind in that picture? Paul does not say. He names no exceptions. He says those who have fallen asleep. Every person who has ever died is in that sentence. The grandmother who prayed every morning. The grandson who laughed at her for it. The woman in the front pew. The man she never forgave. The drunk. The ones he hurt. Me. You.

Here is the edge. If God brings some and leaves the rest, then death kept something. The grave got to hold a portion. Then Jesus did not rise over death. He rose over part of it. A partial resurrection is a rumor with good publicity. Either the tomb is empty or it has a basement.

Fundamentalists will say I am making the cross cheap. Watch a family lower a casket. Nothing about death is cheap. The cheap thing is a salvation that costs God nothing because it only reaches the people who were already inside the building.

Universalism is the claim that God refuses to sort the dead. God does not check the list. God does not close the gate. God goes down into the sleep and comes back up with everyone who was in it. The ones who prayed. The ones who could not. The ones who hurt people. The ones they hurt. Some of you will hate that sentence. I understand why. Paul did not write to be liked. He wrote to people who could not stop crying. He told them the crying could end because God was coming back with their dead.

He did not say some of their dead.

The tent comes down. The chairs get folded. The backhoe starts up when the last car pulls out. Somebody goes home and says she is in a better place without believing a word of it. Paul believed it. He believed it for people he had never met.

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Politics and Religion

About The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Catholic priest (Old Catholic), theologian, and nationally recognized activist based in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A spiritual advisor to death row inmates across the country, Dr. Hood has accompanied more people to their executions than any other advisor in the U.S., including the first-ever nitrogen hypoxia execution in 2024. His work sits at the intersection of justice, radical compassion, and public theology. Dr. Hood holds advanced degrees from Auburn, Emory, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, University of Alabama, Creighton, and Brite Divinity School, among others. He also earned a PhD in metaphysical theology and founded The New Theology School, where he serves as Dean and Professor of Prophetic Theology. Author of over 100 books—including the award-winning The Courage to Be Queer—Dr. Hood’s writings and activism have been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, CNN, and more. A frequent collaborator with men on death row, he sees theology as a shared, liberative act. Dr. Hood has served on the leadership teams of organizations like the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. His activism has earned multiple awards, including recognition from PFLAG and the Next Generation Action Network. On July 7, 2016, Dr. Hood led the Dallas protest against police brutality that ended in tragedy. His actions that night saved lives, and his story is now archived in the Dallas Public Library. A father of five, husband to Emily, and friend to the incarcerated, Dr. Hood rejects institutionalism in favor of a theology rooted in people, presence, and prophetic witness. You can read more about the author here.

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