Sermon for February 16, 1997

Pastor Gunnar L. Anderson

"Any Thing, Any Time"

Every now and again comes a pivotal moment in life that gives one pause to think and reflect. Surely one's fiftieth birthday is one of those. For months I have been preparing myself, joking; saying to almost everyone, "Soon I will be fif ... fif ... fif," and I couldn't bring myself to finish the word. Last summer, Joyce, my friend in Oregon, kidded, promising to hold for both her husband Henry and me a forty-nine and holding party. She never did, and now it's too late! For last Sunday our Congregation Council was kind enough to dedicate our Mission Support in celebration of my birthday; and there, in bold print for all to see, including me, was my name with the number fifty sitting right next to it! And that's the first time I'd seen that; and it was, to say the least, disturbing! Fifty seemed like such a big fat number plopped there, not at all like 18! As my life-long friend Joe said in his note to me, "How did we ever get so old?"

Now, of course, it is true - you are only as old as you feel. And age is a matter of perspective. Bob Hassard was quick to point out, "Wait till you get to be sixty!"

Well, all jokes aside, Thursday of this week, the 13th of February finally arrived, and I became fifty; so now I have to say it. "Fifty!" Half a century! So, as I drove up to Bergenfield, to my aunt and uncle's, for my roast beef birthday dinner, I couldn't help but think and reflect. I thought for the first time in a long while of a young girl, only twenty-two, lying in Holy Name Hospital up in Teaneck all those fifty years ago. I thought of Agnes Smyth Anderson, suffering from a badly damaged rheumatic heart, told by her doctors never to have a baby. I thought of my mother risking her life to give me life! I shouldn't have been, you see. Yet here I am able to glory in being fifty. And I thought of my gratitude. I thought, "how much do I owe this woman so long dead, she having died from a blood clot due to her bad heart valves in 1961 when she was only thirty-seven years of age.

I thought and reflected upon all this, and I remembered the current series of cereal commercials, you have likely heard them, where the mother is serving up a bowlful for her little one, and the announcer says, "In twenty years when Johnny has just received the Most Valuable Player Award after his team has emerged victorious from the World Series, he will say the same thing as he does this morning: 'Thanks Mom!'"

And I think and reflect further this morning, for isn't it the same with our faith? Today we hear the colorful story of Noah, and the animals, and the ark, and the rainbow sign. And we can know that ancient peoples thought of the rainbow as God's weapon from which He would hurl thunderbolts! We can remember Martin Luther dropping to his knees in the violent thunderstorm, praying, "God save me!" With Presidents' Day tomorrow, we can hear Abraham Lincoln telling of the sinful man's prayer as the thunder clapped, "Oh, Lord, if it is all the same to you, give us a little more light and a little less noise."

But the story of Noah tells us that God, in fact, did get angry, at least at first. In reaction to the willful, selfish, rebellious attitudes and behaviors of we sinful human beings, God got mad, God drew his bow and hurled his thunderbolts and flooded the world wiping everyone out and away; save Noah and his family, and two of every animal from which all could start over again.

Then God hung the rainbow in the heavens. God literally lays his weapon down upon the table, teaching us that violence is no way to solve problems, pledging never to flood the world again! the rainbow becomes a covenant, a promise, a sign of hope; but we are not out of the woods yet. No more floods, God promised; but could there be something else?

For what does God give us next but Law! "I will be your God, and you shall be my people," God said; here's how - obey these ten commandments. Do we? Do we never bear false witness, gossip and slander one another? Do we never steal or cheat? Do we never kill or hurt? Do we never commit adultery? Do we never forget the sabbath? Do we never dishonor loved ones? Do we never place things other than our Lord God as most important in our lives? Do we not yet deserve the thunderbolts? Martin Luther still thought so centuries later!

Next God sent prophets such as Joel, whom those of us here on Ash Wednesday heard speak,"Return to the Lord your God," repent, turn your lives around toward God's way and God's will for you. But do we do that, or do we remain sinners?

God ... we have not loved you with
our whole heart; we have not loved
our neighbors as ourselves ...

Christ also suffered for sins once
for all, the righteous for the
unrighteous, in order to bring you
to God.

Think and reflect on that! I did as I watched a film the other night. In it George C. Scott plays an old Virginia coal miner, the grandfather of a teenage unwed mother who stood up before the judge, before the system that would take her beloved baby son away, proclaiming, "I love him more than sunlight, more than my own life." And so the Christ of the cross loves us!

In that same film, George C. Scott is down in the coal mine with his crew; when the whole earth rumbles, and with dust and smoke the walls and roof cave in. Most of the miners scramble to the safety of the surface. Only two are left behind, Scott and the young son of the foreman. Agonizing, that father and the others stare into the shrouded mine, till emerging from the darkness come two figures, one carrying the other. It is the old man Scott supporting the younger. Laying him down on a cart, the two men's eyes meet. They do not speak. All is told in that glance. The young man knows what has just occurred, what has been done for him. He looks up at Scott and simply says, "ANY THING, ANY TIME."

" ... repent, and believe in the good news."

AMEN

Copyright © 1997 Gunnar L. Anderson. All Rights Reserved.

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