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Christina’s Gift
Thanksgiving Day
November 22, 2007
The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector
We humans are creatures of ritual. Symbolic actions that point to our founding truths. Acts of remembrance that bring into our present, raising to the
level of our conscious reflection those fundamental values that we, in the daily course of life, often forget. We are creatures of ritual. In that sense,
each of us – whatever our beliefs, theologies, philosophies, worldviews, psychological dispositions – is religious, for through our rituals, we celebrate,
commemorate our truths and values.
And sometimes our truths and values are larger than individual. They are communal. Even national.
And so, today, we gather on the fourth Thursday of November, set aside since 1863, to celebrate our national day of gratitude, to commemorate, to be
reminded that every day is a day of thanksgiving…
Thanks for those bounteous undeserved blessings to which we neither gave nor through our earning received. Thanks especially for the creation around
us, its beauty and wonder. Thanks equally especially for our creation – the breath in our bodies, the minds with which we think, the hearts
through which we love, the hands by which we serve.
It is a good thing to be thankful. It is even better to be reminded of the necessity of being thankful, for there is so much suffering in this life and
so much in life that suffers that, at times, gratitude is hard to come by. The suffering wrought by war and our human propensity – relentless, ruthless,
and remorseless – to settle our conflicts with hateful words, fists, knives, guns, and bombs. The suffering wrought by our historic rape of the earth,
our abuse of the natural resources, which are the gifts of creation’s grace to us. The suffering wrought by the poverty that is the life of countless
people who have little or nothing to eat, to wear, to shelter themselves, and even less in the way of opportunities, and still fewer possibilities for
betterment. Sometimes, for me, gratitude is hard to come by. And I’ve discovered that it doesn’t help me much, when overwhelmed by the world’s
suffering, to reflect on how abundant are the things I “possess.” For I’ve also discovered that my things don’t possess me – there is little about
having things that can bring me peace.
“Rejoice in the Lord always! Again, I will say rejoice!”[1] Thus saith the Apostle Paul. And a part of me wants to reply,
“Nice idea, but impossible to implement!”
But wait, Paul wrote these words to the Christian church in Philippi at a time when he was in prison, facing his imminent death. So, maybe he knew
something about gratitude in the midst of the gravest suffering. And maybe what he knew is what compelled him to call, to encourage, to challenge us
to rejoice, to be gentle, that is, to be patient, to pray for freedom, indeed, to pray in freedom from worry and anxiety, and to have peace.
Actually, what Paul knew, which compelled him to make so audacious a plea to us is found in a subsequent verse: “I have learned to be content with
whatever I have.”[2] Paul, somehow, had discerned the difference between being self-sufficient, that capacity to provide
solely, completely for one’s self, and being self-sufficing, that capacity to be at peace with whatever one has and without whatever one has not.
And in discerning that difference – indeed, the first being impossible and the second being difficult, but doable – Paul determined to seek what was
possible. And having done so, he could say: rejoice, be patient, pray, and have peace.
This would all be so abstract for me – a wonderful, but unattainable ideation – were it not for the fact that I have seen it in flesh.
I have spoken of her before. Christina Gasa. An eighty-something grandmother, “go go” in the Zulu language, I met in the KwaZulu Natal region in
the valley of Shayamoya, “where the breeze blows,” of South Africa while on sabbatical. Her eyes, clouded with cataracts. Her back, bent over with
wear. Her face, lined with care. Her hands, wrinkled, her fingers, gnarled from a lifetime of unbearably, unbendingly hard work. Her home, a hovel, on
the side of steep hill, only reached by foot, the square footage no greater than the size of our altar platform. Her heart, filled and overflowing with
love. A love that cares for nine grandchildren, whose parents, her children have died of AIDS. A love that welcomed me to her home, offered me the only
cushion in her home so that I might sit, as is custom, on her baked clay floor. A love that offered me water from a nearly empty barrel to drink. A love
that offered me food from a nearly bare pantry to eat. A love that offered me on the face of it only a morsel, but it was nearly the fullness of her
tiny plenty. A love that asked nothing of me and expected nothing from me. A love that gave in gratitude simply because I had come to her home.
Christina is hardly self-sufficient. Her poverty is so rich – so constant and so complete – that she cannot afford the illusion of self-sufficiency. She
is, however, self-sufficing. And being self-sufficing, she knows how to rejoice always, to be patient, to pray, to have peace. She knows about
thanksgiving, even, given circumstances, when gratitude is hard to come by. And, now, truly, because of her, I know it, too. And I am grateful, at
least, sometimes. Where I now nearly always find myself is zealous to do what I can to make the world’s suffering less, which is why I, in this our
post-sabbatical year, ask you, my people, my community, to discern that we can do to make the world’s suffering less.
[1] Philippians 4.4. The Epistle reading appointed for the day is Philippians 4.4-9.
[2] Philippians 4.11
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