Holding On For Dear Life
2 Thess 2:1-5 13-17
I wonder if you’ve had the pleasure to go on a log flume ride?
You can normally find them at these great theme parks that are dotted all over the country.
To begin with the log flume can seem a most pleasant experience.
You get in a little log boat and sail around a course drifting along quite happily, but then you begin to climb – beneath the water is a pulley system and you drift ever upwards towards a large log cabin on a wooden summit.
You go ever so slowly so there’s no problem yet.
It’s just that in the distance you can hear people screaming.
But once inside the log cabin – you’re moved to the farthest end and suddenly there is a sheer drop. You go thundering down as if you were going over the top of a waterfall.
Water is sprayed everywhere as you come splashing down at a rate of knots.
The idea is that as you descend you show that you’re not in the least bit scared – you take your hands off the safety bars and shriek with delight.
Then when you’re back on dry land – you find that a photograph was taken of you as you came down and you can see whether you were bravely shrieking or simply scared out of your wits.
I remember seeing our family photograph come up on the screen.
Everyone had their hands raised with the joy of it all – at the back was me – eyes closed holding on for dear life.
“Look at Dad, what an embarrassment” said my girls “He’s still holding on”
Paul is exhorting the young church at Thessalonica not to get too cocky.
Just because you are in Christ, it doesn’t mean that you can expect life to be easy.
Paul forecasts troubled times ahead and tells them to hold on tightly, to stand firm, to keep to the teachings which first turned them to Christ, knowing that there are deceivers and rebels on the very edge of their life.
He reminds us all that, as followers, we do not cling on for dear life to our faith, because its all we’ve got left, nor because of some vain hope that there might be some truth in it all, rather he exhorts us to remember that there is method in the madness of Christian living, that there is a purpose to which we are all moving.
And that purpose is grace and glory.
God in his love has chosen us to be pioneers of his work of salvation.
We’re back in the language of being first fruits of a new creation brought about through Christ.
We have been called to live out the gospel.
To do this we have been sanctified by the Spirit – set apart for holiness as if we were all Priests, as if we were a living temple.
To follow this way is to know that at the end of things we will share in the glory of Jesus Christ which was made real in his resurrection from the dead.
So everything we do from the moment of our baptism onwards is held within a framework of God’s powerful love and grace.
Paul ends this passage with familiar words of blessing
It is as if, by the Holy Spirit, this glory steps out of the future into our present moment to give us the strength we need for the next testing time.
Chosen, called, sanctified and to draw others into this stream so that all of us may share the glory.
To keep hold of the framework of our salvation is not an easy business for there are those who will tell you that to be somebody in this world – you ought now to let go.
Stand firm, hold on tightly – not in desperation – but literally for dear life.
RH 11.11.07