The One Thing
II Thessalonians 2:1-5-13-17
September 25, 2005
This is the season of meetings. Our Annual Charge Conference is just around the corner and that means that we have to get all the reports finished: Trustees, Finance, Staff/Parish, Missions, and all the rest. I had a meeting every night this past week.
When I get home from these long days, I’m generally pretty tired. I take the time to check me e-mail one last time, let the dog out for her final romp through the back yard, brush my teeth, and hit the pillow.
That means that I missed the opening episode of the new season of “Lost” on Wednesday. I got hooked on that show last season. If you’ve seen it, you know that it’s about a bunch of people who get stranded on a deserted island when their plane crashes on a flight across the Pacific Ocean.
On the final episode of the season, the castaways found a hatch in the jungle with a ladder descending down into the depths. They were supposed to climb down into it this week, but I didn’t see it and so don’t have a clue what they found.
I think that “Lost” is a fitting metaphor for the times in which we live. We have named these times “Postmodern” because we have discovered that the modern times didn’t work out so well and didn’t provide us with the answers we sought to life’s hard questions.
We thought that modern medicine would be able to bring miraculous cures. While scientific inquiry has made incredible inroads in treating disease, it seems that new ones keep cropping up. AIDS is the one that is most on people’s minds. In just the last few years, we have been introduced to Mad Cow Disease and Avian flu. Despite the success in cancer research, it still remains a dread disease.
As dangerous as the Cold War was, it still provided a certain sense of reliability. The lines were pretty well drawn. We pretty much knew how the Soviet Union was going to react to things and they pretty much knew how we would react.
But the end of the cold war has brought a new level of tension in the world. The old problems have changed, and we haven’t yet found new solutions. It seems to me that in certain ways, the world is much more dangerous now than it was thirty years ago.
Technology has seen incredible breakthroughs. I remember the first church computer we got when I was Associate at Trinity Church in Huntington. It was a ten megabyte machine. We had all of our financial and attendance records on that computer and thought that we would never need another one. Why, we wondered, would we need more computing power than that? When I became pastor here, you bought a new computer for my study. It is a 120 gigabyte machine. We couldn’t even have imagined that in 1987.
I now e-mail our missionary in Zimbabwe. Maria Humbane and I can communicate instantaneously half-way around the world.
Still, for all of our advancements, we are in many ways more isolated than before. Instant messaging and e-mail has replaced face-to-face interaction. The modern world did not live up to its promises.
So in the post-modern world, we feel a little lost. We don’t quite know where to turn. We don’t really know what is around the next corner. We wonder what challenges will present themselves tomorrow and whether or not we will have the energy or ability to meet them.
Everyone reacts to the present times of uncertainty in a little different manner. We all are searching in our own special way for answers. What do you think about this as a post-modern prayer for salvation?
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray my Cuisinart to keep.
I pray my stocks are on the rise, and that my analyst is wise.
That all the wine I sip is white, and that my hot tub’s watertight.
That racquetball won’t get too tough, that all my sushi’s fresh enough.
I pray my cordless phone still works, that my career won’t lose its perks.
My microwave won’t radiate, my condo won’t depreciate.
I pray my health club doesn’t close, and that my money market grows.
And if I go broke before I wake, I pray my Volvo they won’t take.
Those of us with even a nominal churched background, look for some heavenly sign of hope, some divine intention to intercede, and some evidence that God has not abandoned us.
In times like these we are drawn to eschatological speculation, or talk of the end times. This offers some comfort we think, because the end times promise that Jesus really is in charge of the universe and so offers some comfort in the midst of confusion. He offers us refuge for our feelings of being lost and left behind.
We believe that upon the arrival of Christ’s Second Advent, the trouble of this world will be finished and we will be reunited with him. The times of being lost will be over. We will find ourselves and be found by Jesus. We will understand. We will have the great questions of life explained. We will finally find peace and rest.
The times in which we live are new and different than any other time in history, yet very much the same as those times experienced by other generations of God’s people.
People of the first century felt the same fears we feel. Circumstances were different, but human emotions are a constant. The earliest days of the church were very much like our times today, with uncertainty, fear of the unknown, stress, and suffering.
They felt lost and alone because they had expected the return of Jesus to be just around the corner. Unfortunately, he was delayed. No one knew why.
But when I read the Bible, I get excited and hopeful. Jesus talks about his coming back. The Apostle Paul expected Jesus to return at any time. The early church fervently believed that before long, they would see Jesus coming back on a cloud to gather up the saints. But a couple of thousand years have passed, and we’re still waiting.
We are those people who, like the Apostle Paul, “see in a mirror dimly” (I Corinthians 13:12). In other words, we just don’t understand yet, and we won’t understand until we are reunited with our Lord. We’re here and we don’t know what to do.
In the first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul acknowledged the difficulty through which they were now going. He recalled the stress, strain, anxiety, and confusion with which they lived. He praised them for their faith, but he knew that they are waiting for Jesus to return. He knew how long and difficult the waiting has become.
In spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit (I Thess. 1:6).
…when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know (I Thess. 3:4).
In his second Thessalonian letter, knowing that the people expected Jesus to return at any time, he tells them not to sell the farm yet because there are some things that have to happen first.
Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction (2:1-3).
So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us…(2:15).
The message is two-fold. Jesus is coming back. They can rest assured of that fact. But, he might be delayed for a time. If that happens, no matter what transpires in the meantime, stand firm in the faith and hold fast to the traditions which have brought them so far.
Stand firm and hold fast. They were to remember what they had been taught. They were to keep their faith alive as their ancestors had kept their faith alive. They were never to stop hoping and trusting; never give up. They were to keep looking skyward for the day, but remain confident in the eventual outcome if that day is delayed.
We have a tendency to feel lost because the modern world has disappointed us. We are threatened on every side; from hurricanes to terrorists to a fractured and splintered Christian family. Even the church has disappointed us because it has not always been able to offer the answers or the comfort it promises.
But I believe that Paul’s counsel to the early church continues to speak to us today. We may feel lost and might be waiting to be found or to find our own way, but in the meantime, hold fast. Hold fast to the traditions we have been taught. Hold fast to the knowledge that God came to earth in human form for the redemption of the world. Hold fast to the tradition that assures us that we are never alone. Hold fast to the tradition that proclaims Jesus Christ as the hope of the world.
Do you remember the movie, “City Slickers?” These three middle-aged guys are vacationing together on a Dude Ranch out in the western United States. Curly, the trail boss, played by Jack Palance, is talking to Billy Crystal as they ride along. “You city folks come up here every year, same age, with the same problems. You spend 50 weeks a year getting knots in your rope, and come down here thinking two weeks will untie it. None of you get it. Do you know what the secret of life is? The secret of life is just one thing (Curly holds up a finger). You stick to that, and everything else don’t mean nothing.”
Billy Crystal’s character then asks, “What is that one thing?” Curly responds, “That’s what you’ve got to figure out.”
Back in the Old Testament, there was another generation of people up to their necks in trouble. The prophet Isaiah offered them this word from God.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. Because you are precious in my sight and honored, and I love you (Isaiah 43:2, 4).
When Paul wrote to the Thessalonian Christians, he told them that he understands the persecution through which they are going. He told them that he knows that times are tough. He said that he understood the tension of waiting for Jesus and how they were almost faint from the delay. But he also told them to remember that they believed in something bigger than themselves. They had been searching for meaning in their life; for a reason to live and to die.
He told them that their search had ended with God. This is the God who loved Isaiah’s people, and continues to love his people throughout the generations.
Here is the one thing. Jesus is coming again. We can count on that. But in the meantime, don’t be afraid because we live in the light of Christ’s presence today.
Whatever history may throw at us…today, tomorrow, or next week…we don’t have to be afraid. We are precious in the Lord’s sight and he loves us.
In God’s care, we are not afraid. Stand firm and hold fast. That is the one thing. We don’t need anything else.
