This article was originally published in Sleep issue of The Mockingbird magazine.

In Greek mythology the god of sleep, eponymously named Hypnos, is born from the gods of darkness and night. When the sun sets, Hypnos goes to work. With wings that emerge from the sides of his head, Hypnos flutters across the land, dispensing opiates and giving rest and refreshment to the weary; he vanquishes woes and confers peace of mind. Seneca, the first century Stoic philosopher and tutor of Emperor Nero, praised the god as the provider of “peace after wanderings, haven of life, day’s respite and night’s comrade.” But alongside Hypnos there was his twin brother: Thanatos, the god of death. While Hypnos flew around the world on his nocturnal vocation, Thanatos would dart from house to house, taking souls with him to the underworld. One twin was welcomed, the other feared.

Seneca believed Sleep and Death worked in tandem, two sides of the same coin. The god of sleep “comes alike to king and slave” to “compel the human race, trembling at death, to prepare for unending night.” Just as everyone sleeps, so everyone dies. Our nightly ritual therefore anticipates our final rite. More broadly, Aristotle considered sleep to be the boundary between life and death, being and non-being. Greek language further blurred the lines, with sleep serving as a common metaphor for death, an indirect way to say that someone had died.

In a similar fashion, many of us today prefer to speak of death through metaphor and euphemism. We might say someone has “passed away,” “lost their life,” or that “they’ve left us.” We circuitously talk around death to soften the blow, to obviate the discomfort, perhaps even denying death entirely by way of taboo.

Though ancient Greek speakers had a plethora of analogies for death, sleep was—by far—the most regularly used in the New Testament. But rather than reflecting cultural or personal discomfort with death, or a desire to mute the tragedy of it, the sleep metaphor was chosen because of its rich theological implications. Perhaps oddly to us, death was euphemized not as an expression of denial but of hope.

In the ministry of Jesus, the linguistic coincidence between sleep and death proves to be crucial in two of his healings (Lazarus in John 11:1–44, and the daughter of Jairus the synagogue leader in Mark 5:21–24, 35–43). In both scenes, Jesus is beckoned to the bedside of someone gravely ill. But in each case, Jesus is delayed — by the time he arrives, the person has already died. With perhaps a hint of accusation, Jesus is told that he is too late. He responds with an exhortation to believe and declares that the deceased is not dead, but asleep. In both instances, Jesus’ audience is more than confused by his apparent loose grip on reality. It is plain to them that their beloved is, in fact, dead.

But in Jesus’ terms, Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter are “sleeping,” wordplay that foreshadows the upcoming miracle. They are not dead but waiting to be awoken, just as the prophet Daniel foreshadowed in the conclusion of his vision: “Your people will be delivered … Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awaken” (Dan 12:1-2).

Meanwhile, in his epistles, the apostle Paul takes the metaphor of sleep and gives it a significant theological twist. Though almost every English translation makes no distinction between Paul’s literal and metaphorical references to death, parsing the two is illuminating: his chosen language follows a curious pattern, one that can hardly be a coincidence.

Whenever Paul references the death of Jesus he does so with variations of the unequivocal terms (variations on thanatos or nekros, both of which imply a literal death). It is important to him that Jesus did not appear to die — he did not hold his breath long enough to fool the Romans. His heart in fact stopped beating; his brain neurons stopped firing. One should not confuse Jesus’ resurrection with waking from a particularly long nap. Along the same lines, saying that Jesus “fell asleep” for our sins, or that he “fell asleep” for the ungodly — well, suffice to say it doesn’t really get across the same point.

But when Paul uses the literal language of death for believers, he seems to mean it more abstractly. Believers “have died to the law” (Rom 7:4), or they are living in the world as though they are dead, yet living (2 Cor 6:9). Describing his life as an apostle, Paul declared that he dies daily (1 Cor 15:31). He uses the literal language of death to describe the death of Christians before their hearts stop beating and their neurons stop firing. Paul believes that death must be experienced before death actually arrives. But it’s not some Stoic acceptance of death’s inevitability — that one must “come to terms” with Thanatos before he comes knocking on your door. No, the kind of death Paul has in mind is the death of the old self, crucified with Jesus, so that one may also share in the life of the risen Jesus (cf. Rom 6:5). Or as Paul succinctly declared, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).

This “death before death” then informs how Paul writes of the physical demise of believers. In these cases, Paul almost exclusively uses the metaphor of sleep. He says that Jesus’ earliest followers have now fallen asleep (1 Cor 15:6); a widow is free to remarry after her husband has fallen asleep (1 Cor 7:39); and some have fallen asleep after eating the eucharist in an unworthy manner (1 Cor 11:30). Writing of sleep in such mundane contexts suggests that the metaphor was commonplace for Paul, his go-to way of talking about the death of Christians.

But why is “sleep” Paul’s preferred language here? His usage elsewhere arises precisely within debates over the resurrection, explaining how it’s possible that death is defeated and that Christians can still die. When members of the Thessalonian church begin to die, they urgently write to Paul, worried that these individuals will miss the boat when Jesus returns. Paul assures them that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. They should not grieve over those who have fallen asleep, like the Gentiles, who have no hope (1 Thes 4:13-14).

A few years later, when the Corinthian church denies the possibility of any future resurrection of the dead, Paul retorts: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20). If there is no resurrection from the dead, then “those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished” (15:18). Paul’s distinction between falling asleep in Christ and perishing signals that he holds death in two different categories. There is perishing, where death is the only end, and then there is sleep, a death that anticipates waking up: resurrection.

The broader logic here is striking. Jesus died and was then raised from the dead. Christians share in his victory over death, which transforms the loss of perishing into the hopefulness of sleep. As the scholar Simon Gathercole notes in his short work, Defending Substitution, “there is an asymmetry or disparity between the kind of death that Christ died on the cross and the death that believers die at the end of their lives.” Strangely, Paul seems to think that even when believers die, they never actually die— they simply fall asleep.

When someone you love dies, it might seem bizarre to say they are not dead, but peacefully asleep. It might seem like a bald lie or a delusion, conflicting with the coroner’s report and the open casket at the front of the church. It could appear to deny the harsh and irrevocable fact that Thanatos comes for everyone eventually. But that is precisely what Paul and Jesus do. Death is neither an inevitability nor a universal truth one must confront. The question to ask isn’t whether there is life after death, but if there is a morning after the night. The scriptures suggest there is. Just as the dark sky gives way to the dawn, so too will the dead in Christ arise. Believers who have died have fallen asleep for a time; they will awaken when the light of the world comes to stir them from their slumber.

COMMENTS

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One response to “Sleepers Awake!”

1. Rev. Douglas Moffat says:

   12/14/2022 at 3:52 pm

   How refreshing and beneficial for a Christian who has had someone they love….”PASS”

   Reply