Thanksgiving Eve 7 p.m. 2006
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Amen.
Well, Thanksgiving Day is upon us! And THANK GOD the BUTTERBALL HOT LINE is still alive and well after 26 years of operation! Yes, folks, it is the fiftieth anniversary of the BUTTERBALL brand and 26 years of the most famous turkey cooking hot line of them all. Almost 3 million calls for HELP spanning 26 years. 1-800-288-8372. In case you want to write the number down.
FIFTY TWO callers TRAINED at BUTTERBALL UNIVERSITY—no kidding—to talk you through what THEY refer to as “TURKEY TRAUMA.”
TWENTY SIX YEARS of calls to the Butter Ball hotline, and we still need a lot of help. How do I know that? The kinds of calls that come in…
I have here a couple of articles on the subject. One appeared in USA TODAY “THE BIRD IS THE WORD” –most memorable calls to the Butterball hotline. Listen to some of these and see if you agree that we need help.
--ONE WOMAN, it says, called from COLORADO. Her problem? She had stored her turkey in a snow bank in her back yard. It had snowed more. And now she couldn’t find it! She had no idea where her turkey was and she wanted them to help her find it!
--Another woman called to ask if it was OK…to stuff her turkey.. with POPCORN! Can you imagine?
--Some guy called and he wanted to know why the turkey cooking in his kitchen oven was making so much SMOKE. The instruction said to REMOVE THE WRAPPER and “PUT IT ON THE RACK.” He thought that meant the OVEN RACK. So that’s what he did, plopped it on the oven rack without a pan under it. And all those drippings were going straight to the bottom of the oven.
--A VA WOMAN called and asked: “How do you thaw a fresh turkey?” The Hotline staffer had to explain to her that a fresh turkey has not been frozen, so it was unnecessary to THAW it!
…OH I can keep going! More?
--A restaurant owner in CA wanted to know how to roast a turkey for a VEGETARIAN menu!
--Another woman from the West Coast used BLEACH to scrub her turkey, ‘cause it said to first CLEAN the bird! She got really upset when she was told to THROW THE BIRD OUT and start over!
--20 of the calls were from men, by the way. A guy called, I’m not sure from where—wanting to know if the yellow netting and wrapper around the turkey should be removed before roasting!
PERHAPS these kinds of calls explain why it was a natural thing for DAVID LETTERMAN to come up with “TOP TEN SIGNS THAT THE PERSON ANSWERING THE BUTTERBALL TURKEY HOTLINE HAS GONE NUTS”
(read some of the list)
……..Apparently we need a lot of help with our Thanksgiving Turkeys. But what we REALLY need help with, is this thing called “THANKSGIVING.” Because even more than proficiency at turkey roasting—it doesn’t come naturally -- and often leaves a lot of room for improvement.
It one thing is evident in the Bible, it is that THANKSGIVING does not come naturally. In fact, it kind of goes against fallen human nature.
IN THE FIRST READING FOR TONIGHT, Deut. 8, God warns the children of Israel, after they have moved into the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey, replete with material blessing, God looks down the line and warns them NOT to FORGET. When you are enjoying all the good things of life, “Do not forget the Lord your God.” He warns them because he KNOWS the tendency of human beings NOT to be thankful. A couple of generations pass, the people are saying LOOK WHAT MY OWN STRENGTH hath gotten me. We human beings don’t like to give credit to someone else for what we think WE’VE achieved.
2 Then in the GOSPEL we have the story of the TEN LEPERS. LEPROSY the most FEARED disease of ancient times -- a literal DEATH SENTENCE -- no cure. You couldn’t live with healthy people, you had to move out to a shantytown on the outskirts of the city -- never to see your friends and realtives again. Your toes and nose and finger would literally rot and fall off. Jesus HEALS TEN from this DREAD and INCURABLE disease. How many return to give thanks? One. "Where are the other NINE?" asks Jesus. His pain is palpable. “Were not TEN healed?” No answer is given. We can only speculate. The easiest explanation is they forget, maybe they were so ECSTASTIC about having been healed. We’re not told why they didn’t return. But the fact of the matter is, they didn’t do it.
3 THE OTHER REASON we seem to have problems with THANKSGIVING is The VERY HUMAN TENDENCY to focus on the NEGATIVE. You know what I’m talking about…
ONE HUNDRED THINGS go right in our day. One thing goes wrong. What do you focus on? Right… the ONE THING. That went wrong.
This is what PAUL alludes to in PHILIPPIANS. The second reading. He admonished the PHILIPIANS to think on all the POSITIVE THINGS of life. Why does he do that? Because he knows we people have a tendency to do the opposite.
…It’s the classic GLASS HALF FULL HALF EMPTY THING. Do you see your glass as half full or half empty? The human tendency is to see things as half empty. Focus on what we DO NOT HAVE as opposed to what we HAVE! That’s why he says what he does…
(quote the second reading)
A famous quote goes like this: “TWO MEN looked out from behind prison bars. One saw the mud, the other saw the stars.”
DID YOU KNOW that the word “THANK” actually comes from an old GERMAN word meaing “TO THINK.” Which suggests that it’s by THINKING ABOUT and RECOGNIZING the blessings we enjo that we CAN be thankful! That in order to be thankful it is necessary to SLOW DOWN, look around, and TAKE NOTE of what we’re surrounded by -- TO PONDER these things.
So maybe that’s what we need to do. Especially tonight. Look around, says PAUL, there is SO MUCH to be thankful for!
-WE MAY NOT HAVE EVERYTHING. But we do have an AWFUL LOT. By the world’s standards.
I came across a little poem entitled “DIRTY DISHES.” It reads like this:
“Thank God for dirty dishes, They have a story to tell,
And by the stack I have, It seems we are living pretty well.
While people of other countries are starving, I haven’t the heart to fuss,
For by this stack of evidence,
God’s awfully good to us.”
ABOVE ALL, Paul reminds us, we have Jesus Chrsit, and his salvation, wrought through the CROSS! Because of him, heaven is ours! So really everything over and above that is really just frosting on the cake, if you think about it.
It is good to be reminded, on occasion, that MOST people who have lived in his world, the VAST MAJORITY of the billions who have made their way through this world, have not enjoyed a FRACTION of what even the poorest among us enjoy today! A good dose of HISTORY is what most of us need, I think.
I just listened to a program on the TV about the GREAT DEPRESSION of the l930’s and the DUST BOWL in the Great Plains. Oh my God. People lost just about everything. They even lost their lives, because they inhaled so much dirt and dust, they got dust induced PNEUMONIA. Entire towns were starving right here in AMERICA at that time.
MY PATERNAL GRANDPARENTS lost their house during the Depression. I never knew them They died before I was born. But I still heard the pain in my father’s voice telling me and my brother how my grandfather gatherd the family and had to tell them they had lost the house, in Jamaica Queens, a house they really liked, and would have to move. My grandfather, by the way, was an architect! Which shows you how hard those times were.
There was a time in my life when I lost just about everything. Some of you know this. The only furniture I had left was my bedroom furniture. My bank account was cleaned out. I remember lying in bed one night and saying to myself—it was snowing outside. “How blest I am. Here I am so snug and warm. And other people don’t even have a roof over their head.”
SO YOU SEE it is all how you look at it. Do you see your glass as half empty or half full? Do you focus on what you DON’T have or what you DO have?
“When you’re worried and you can’t sleep,
just count your blessings instead of sheep.”
We’d be a whole lot better off if we spent more time counting blessings.
SO THINK on these things, says Paul. Whatever is pure, honorable, lovely. Think about all the things we so often overlook,. Pure water. Sunlight dancing on the floor of our living room. Fresh fallen snow. A day milder and sunnier than expected. Moonlight on the water. A basket of ripe fruit, a steak done just the way we like it. Dewdrops on the petals of a rose.
SO MUCH to be thankful for. WHAT GOOD IS HAVING ALL KINDS OF STUFF if our hearts are cold and dead and bare? GRATITUDE makes the difference.
It’s not something you’ll get by calling the BUTTERBALL HOT LINE! The lady there can help you with other things! She can’t help you find your turkey if you’ve lost it! The main thing you need in order to be truly thankful, is to look around. It’s so important to be thankful, thankful for blessings received. For the gift of Jesus Christ, but also for all these other things, so often overlooked, let the sentiment be, collectively and individually: THANKS BE TO GOD. Amen.
