One strategy for getting through a really tough time is to fantasize about what the future will be like once you’ve cleared whatever hurdle lies before you. In fact, when I was in grade school, I used to drift off thinking about the future just because of boredom with the present. I didn’t want to clear the dinner table or do my homework. It was much more fun to think about what it would be like when I got to go to the moon. Anyone who has ever taken a child on a road trip knows that the journey is not always half the fun. “Are we there yet?” “How close are we?” “When are we going to be there?” It can be easier to think about the future than what’s happening now because there’s hope over the rainbow. Whatever we don’t like about now has the potential to be better later!

A different strategy for coping with a challenging present is to spend time with our memories of the past, to fondly recall something that used to be, but is no longer. It might even be something you didn’t like at the time you were experiencing it, but in retrospect, maybe it wasn’t so bad. The difference between looking back and looking forward to disengage from the present is that hope thing. There’s hope or at least its potential looking forward, but looking back, there’s only memories.

In both cases, if you tune out from the present it’s a passive and temporary solution. Without engaging in the now and acting in the present moment, you can’t make anything happen. You can only hope that it does. Some day, maybe someone will fight back on our behalf, or maybe God will intervene and rescue us from injustice. Spending one’s time escaping from now into the future doesn’t make it happen—it only makes it someone else’s responsibility.

Prophets speak out during troubled times. When they issue warnings about a dire future for those who turn from God or perpetrate injustice, those warnings are for people who are causing harm, or are unjust or oppressive in the present—the ones who are the cause of the troubles of the day. The hope in these prophetic messages is for the ears of the people presently suffering, and the nature of that hope is justice. There’s hope in justice. The prophets are very clear about what behavior is expected of the righteous and what will happen to those who are not.

The King of Love is like to a shepherd, loving those sheep and seeking them out from whatever corner to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness, as Ezekiel puts it. Christ the King is not a king in the sense of a political or titular head of state on the world stage. The realm of Jesus Christ is the KINDOM of God, that very thing we’ve been talking about using metaphorical examples because it’s so hard to envision, given what we know about the history of humans and our propensity to choose the material over the divine. We use the term King of Kings because we don’t have an easy time understanding the likes of Jesus because, well, Jesus is one of a kind! Even in a trinity, there is only one Jesus, so just like the way our Holy Scriptures describe the Kingdom of Heaven by metaphor, Jesus the Christ is referred to in the language of royalty and sovereignty. So we were taught of his love for us in the language of shepherd and sheep because that was what worked for the people in the culture and time when these stories first emerged. How do you describe deep and sacrificial love if you don’t use language that tells of the lengths to which someone will go to tend those in their care? How does the prophet Ezekiel speak of justice?

He speaks of caring for the sheep who have been harmed—the weak and injured sheep who have not been fed because they were exploited at the hands of the wicked sheep who have grown fat profiting off their backs – these sheep are beloved of God, the righteous, the followers who obey the commandments that were meant to teach us pesky humans how to live in community. Ezekiel’s language is incredibly tender. God says: “I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.”

And how does Christ the good shepherd use his prophetic voice? It’s not all sweetness and light. Ezekiel already told us what God will do to care for the victims of injustice. But Jesus, the incarnate God and that very fulfillment of the promise of King David, told us what WE are to do. He said, “ Take care of the weak, the injured and the lost.” We are not to retreat onto our beds, escaping into the future to look for hope, but rather we are to engage in the present, not just looking for hope, but creating it for others by doing justice: to take care of the least of these who are members of Christ’s family, because if any one suffers in this Body of Christ which is the church, Jesus himself suffers. And for those who will not give water to the thirsty or food to the hungry, and fail to visit the prisoner: their eternal punishment is estrangement from the Body of Christ that they have chosen. Jesus is clear that those who do not care for one another materially will face eternal punishment. But it’s not a punishment of fire and brimstone, it is an eternity of feeling isolated from the God within whom we live—the one from whom there is nowhere to run even if we wanted to. All one can do to turn from God is to close one’s eyes and heart to God.

If the punishment/reward language in Matthew disturbs you, remember it’s not a wrathful God that punishes us for failure to live justly; it’s the consequence of our own choices. So fear not. When we choose to take care of those who hunger and thirst, when we clothe the naked or visit the prisoner, we are the agents of Christ the King. We are the Body of the resurrected Christ. He is incarnate in this Body—our church. And when we bring justice into the world, we bring Jesus. And we bring hope. Christ the King.

When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was as important a family holiday to look forward to as Christmas, and we developed nearly as many Thanksgiving rituals as Christmas ones. In fact, the autumn became one really long holiday that started on the holiest of feast days for sugar-addicted children—Halloween. Especially in Maryland, where summer weather encroaches well beyond the time that the swimming pools have all closed for the season, November and December have been magical months for me because the heat goes away, and there’s candy, toys and nearly unlimited cookies, brownies and pie. And.

This is not true for everyone, because while our Declaration of Independence states, “that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” it is simply not true that all PEOPLE are gifted with equal opportunities. But that’s not God’s fault. It’s our fault that we do not possess the will to ensure everyone has something to eat on any given day and that everyone is treated with equal love in families or in countries. It’s so easy to forget that this planet is filled with abundance and that we actually have the power to make sure that no one goes hungry or has to live without love and hope. And that’s why we need the church now more than ever: we can be that equalizing force that gives from our own abundance to those who feel despondent and hungry and afraid, and especially so on holidays. Why have we created a comic book Justice League of America and a Legion of Superheroes when we have the real thing already, The Body of Christ: YOU.

We all know people who say, “What do I have to be thankful for? It’s easy for you to be thankful, but try walking in my shoes. That’ll wake you up right quick.” But not us, that cannot be, because we are called to be different. We are marked as Christ’s own forever, and if even one of us feels lonely and despondent, then the others of us are called to show up to you, out of gratitude for all God has given us, including and ESPECIALLY each other, beloved members of the Body of Christ!

“Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.” And because we have enough wealth to keep our families sheltered and fed, we have plenty of capability to be superheroes. To feed the poor, shelter the homeless, and love the people with broken hearts and spirits. Isn’t that what Jesus asked us to do?

Paul says in II Corinthians (9:8-9) “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”

Thanksgiving is not only something we should regularly offer to God; as a holiday it’s intertwined with myth, some true and some less true. It’s true that the early settlement at Plymouth Mass celebrated a harvest festival after their first successful growing season in 1621. It went on for three days and included a substantial amount of prayer. The version of history that we were taught in elementary school didn’t mention that there were nearly twice as many native Americans as pilgrims at the festival or that it is because the native peoples of the Wampanoag band of the Patuxet tribe taught the settlers how to grow foodstuff in that environment that the harvest WAS successful. In fact, the settlers were alive at all because the Wampanoag tribe of the Patuxet peoples gave them food to get them through their first winter. Those pilgrims at Plymouth were able to settle because of the hospitality of native peoples who were later rewarded with being pushed out of the very land they had so generously shared.

While Thanksgiving Day has been celebrated off and on since 1789, when congress asked Washington to declare a day of thanksgiving for successful conclusion of the Revolutionary War, it didn’t become a regular holiday until President Lincoln federally mandated it as a national day of gratitude in 1863 to celebrate Union victories in Vicksburg and Gettysburg. And while I am ever so grateful that we are a country, and civil war did not break us in half, the specter of brokenness is never far from us. Do we remember to thank God for our lives even if we should lose a battle? Can we be grateful just for food on the table? Can we remember what it is like to just make it one more day through a harsh winter in a strange land, having survived because of the kindness of strangers offering welcome?

Through the years, as we have become an industrialized people, buying our food at the grocery rather than producing it ourselves, we’ve become disconnected from the process of producing food and we don’t always appreciate how vulnerable we are to the health of the living things that grow to maturity and become our food. Thank God for sugar snap peas and pumpkins, tomatoes, spaghetti squash: chicken, fish, cattle and grain! Every time you lift that fork to your lips you have the opportunity to feel gratitude. And the more intimately acquainted you are with the process of producing and distributing food, preparing it and serving it, the circle of gratitude widens to include the many people who have had a hand in feeding you. So many people. And they are all equally beloved by God as you, though they may not have an equal place at the table tomorrow.

Gratitude is like a virus. When it finds a host, it grows and multiplies and it spreads to a new host—someone who becomes awakened to the generosity of God flowing through you, prompting a fresh wave of gratitude in the new host. Gratitude, like love is infectious. AND it prompts us to daring feats of compassion and inclusion. Jesus told us that in Him, all are welcome at the table. In him, there is bread that we might eat and not hunger and living water that we may drink and never thirst. We are here as one body and one life blood to ensure that each other never hunger or thirst, and if that is not a reason to be thankful, It don’t know what is.

As Moses said to Israel in Deuteronomy (8:10), You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you. So tomorrow, I pray you eat your fill and bless the Lord OUR God for the good land he has given us. Let it turn our gratitude into an attitude of compassion until every person on this planet knows they have a seat at God’s table.