Sermon for November 26, 1997, Thanksgiving Eve

Pastor Gunnar L. Anderson

"Anthony Adverse"

Participating Churches: St. Luke's Roman Catholic Church, St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Trinity Reformed Church, St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Watchung Avenue Presbyterian Church, The Church of the Holy Cross

Last Thanksgiving I had dinner with my family at my cousin's apartment outside Boston. Then, driving home, I crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge, but instead of turning south on the Garden State Parkway to bring me back toward North Plainfield, I continued on I 287 which brought me around down through Morristown, so that I could make a stop at Morristown Memorial Hospital to visit Anthony.

Anthony, a teenager, was then fourteen years old. He should have been at home for Thanksgiving. He should have been a member of my confirmation class at church. But he was in the hospital. In fact, he'd been in and out of the hospital, mostly in, since mid-summer! Anthony, you see, suffered from Crohn's Disease, heretofore unknown to me, a disease of the digestive tract, of the bowel, causing him intense, unbearable, doubling over and wanting someone to shoot you kind of pain! Anthony began with two operations to heal abscesses on his body, once losing so much blood that we came within an eyelash of losing him, and eventually having a four foot section of diseased intestine removed and his internal workings reattached. Adversity compounded! Here, to quote the title of the classic novel by Hervey Allen, lay "Anthony Adverse!"

Through all this, I would visit him; on Thanksgiving and countless other times, often driving back and forth through the Great Swamp to Morristown Memorial. But this is what a pastor does. Ask any of my colleagues assembled before you tonight. We visit the sick. That's one of the reasons we are here. Still, I was touched last January, when Anthony finally returned to confirmation class, that this teenager personally handed me a card, not picked out or written by his mother, but by him! I opened the card, and it said:

So many days
a smile from you
has made the difference.

So many days
your wisdom
has kept me on the path.

Dear Pastor Anderson,
For all those moments
on all those days,
today, I thank you.

Anthony

Oh, "Tonight is one of those nights when you thank God you have the ability to play baseball," exclaimed Yankee outfielder Paul O'Neill after hitting a grand slam home run verses the Cleveland Indians in the American League Division Series on October 4, 1997.

"For all those moments on all those days," tonight is one of those nights when you thank God! Let us not forget that! Thanksgiving is a National Holiday. It does not appear on church calendars. But we are Christian people gathered here from this community. We ecumenically represent many congregations, and we are in church tonight! So, tonight is one of those nights when you thank God!

We gather on Thanksgiving and we often hear the story of the pilgrims, as our very worship service recalls tonight, and that's great!

We gather on Thanksgiving and we often give thanks for the rights and freedoms of this land we live in, and we should!

We gather on Thanksgiving and we often enumerate things for which we ought be grateful, one perhaps for every letter of the alphabet; and we are people blessed with abundance!

We gather on Thanksgiving and we often are thinking mostly of the feast we will soon share with family and friends, and that's a wonderful experience!

But let us not forget, tonight is one of those nights when you thank God!

I visited Anthony one afternoon. He was at a low point, and he uttered those familiar words which often pass our lips as well, "What have I done to deserve all this? Why is God punishing me?" And I said, "Anthony, you've been in confirmation class with me for more than a year now. I've taught you better than that! You know we live in a sinful, imperfect world that includes illness and pain. And you know from the Garden of Eden it was we who messed things up. Human beings made wrong choices. God's intent is to love us and that all be good. 'God is our very present help in trouble.' Anthony, in the worst of times, do not blame God but turn to God all the more!"

Tonight we thank God not only for obvious blessings but for the strength and help and hope to endure that we have all received in this life else we would not be here. None of us could have made it all on our own!

Most always when I would visit Anthony I would find either his Mom or his Dad already there, sometimes both, sometimes another church member as well.

Tonight we thank God for the precious gift of life itself that we might use it well and wisely to serve God and others. We thank God for the opportunity and joy of relationships, that we not take those we love for granted, that on Thanksgiving Eve we might remember how important it is, as Jesus said, to love one another!

Then there came the night when Anthony, from his hospital bed, suffering the excruciating pain of Crohn's Disease, looked up at his mother and father to say, "I'm so glad you do not have to feel all of this," even in his pain showing care for others, almost as if he was trying to take their pain upon himself! And isn't that a Christ-like thing?

For it was Christ on the cross who bore not only his own seering pain; just imagine, if it is possible, those spikes driven through his flesh, but also the unimaginable pain of your sin and mine, taking upon himself all the punishment that you and I deserve, dying for us so that all who believe in Jesus should never really die but have eternal life!

Why one would hardly die for a
righteous man, but while we were
yet sinners Christ died for us.

Since all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God;
they are now justified by God's
grace as a gift, through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
whom God put forward as a sacrifice
of atonement by his blood ...

And just as it is appointed for
mortals to die once, and after
that the judgment,
so Christ, having been offered once
to bear the sins of many, will appear
a second time, not to deal with sin,
but so save those who are eagerly
waiting for him.

It is like the story of the fishermen; one young and idealistic, the other old and a drunkard, a thief and a wastrel of his life. The old one, grizzled and hard, is knocked overboard on the high seas into the cold, cold northern water. And the young one, without blinking, dives in to rescue him. Floundering, the old man seems lost, till his young friend, a strong swimmer, arrives to pull him back on board.

Later, the old fisherman sits below decks, drying off and warming up. Gone is his gruff exterior. He emanates now a sort of awestruck, wondrous, glowing gaze towards the young man. Sensing this, the young fisherman speaks, "You don't owe me anything!" "Oh, yes," says the older man, "Oh, yes, you saved me!"

So, "for all those moments on all those days," tonight we thank God, like Anthony handing me his beautiful card, like the one healed leper who returns falling on his knees at Jesus' feet "giving him thanks."

And can we do any less, standing, sitting or kneeling before the cross of Christ tonight than to say, "You saved me!" "You saved me!"

Tomorrow I will drive up to Boston to have dinner with my family, and all will be much the same as last year. But this Thanksgiving Anthony, now 15, now confirmed, is at home, and well, and fine!

Thank God!

AMEN

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

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