Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

One of the truths of life, I think, is that how we treat those who can’t repay us is a reflection on our soul.

I think this is broader than people, too. How we treat animals too is another example. How we use or misuse our power over other people or creatures not only says something about our soul but I think it also says something about what we think of God.

If we imagine God is immensely compassionate, generous, merciful, and full of lovingkindness, then it becomes much more difficult to live our lives in such a way that is the opposite of that. Our own kindness will mirror God’s. Our own forgiveness and compassion, too. Living with that kind of grace reveals and reinforces a belief in a gracious Creator.

Of course, the opposite is true.

People obsessed with being right imagine a God obsessed with doctrinal purity. People who find it hard to forgive do not, I think, ever quite get to a place where they can imagine God being forgiving.

Judgmental people need a judgmental God to justify their judgment. People who live for division and love divisiveness imagine a God that is always on their side and too hard-hearted to love another tribe much at all.

The hard part of religion is not God, it is who we imagine God is.

Too often that imagination is spoilt by the pain and pettiness of human conceiving. We imagine a God we need to justify our need to avenge a hurt, or that judges the people we want to see cast out, or that condemns the undeserving who never meet our standards.

The difficult thing for Christians is that we do not have a God of imagination but of Incarnation. In the flesh and blood life of Jesus we see modeled for us how humanity should live. We do not get to take the spiritually dishonest way out by imagining a God to suit our moods.

We must take the God that God gives us in the form of Christ.

This is why it is crucial for churches to remain fixed on Christ and him alone.

In Word and Sacrament we encounter the risen Lord still speaking. We encounter Christ alive and challenging us to live no longer for ourselves alone but for him who died and rose again. Each and every Gospel lesson points us toward him. Each and every service of the Church’s worship is an act of love at the throne of grace.

We do not get the God we imagine to worship. We get far more.

We get the ever compelling, convicting, sanctifying, healing, forgiving, and restoring Son of the Most High. We get to hear of his life and ministry and of his death and resurrection. And, best of all, we get to hear how we still might yet live as his hands and feet in the world sharing the Good News of his enduring love.

We don’t get the God we imagine. Thanks be to God.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert