Fr Robert Hendrickson
Dear Friends in Christ,
Writing this the night before, I’m not sure where the election is at this point. I’m not sure who is up or down. I don’t know if the polls are proving accurate or will be off in some way. It’s stressful to be sure.
Elections feel like a referendum on the kind of country we want to live in. We can’t imagine that someone would want to live in a nation not like the one we imagine is possible. Our sense not only of the future but also our bearings in the world are put to the test every four years. In almost every election, some portion of the country wakes up and says, “I don’t recognize this country anymore.”
For Christians it can be especially disorienting because we have two value systems that overlay the results. We have the aspirations of a republic and the hope of a Kingdom that both intersect with the realities of our electoral process.
In some ways, each and every day is one in which Christians wake up and don’t recognize where we are because we are citizens of the Kingdom of God first and foremost.
We are citizens of a kingdom where no sword is drawn but the sword of peace. We are citizens of a kingdom where the poor have been lifted up and the mighty scattered in their conceit. We are citizens of a kingdom where our neighbor’s needs are ours and ours theirs. We are citizens of a kingdom in which everyone has a place at the table and none are turned away hungry. We are citizens of a kingdom where death has no more dominion over us and every tear is wiped away.
It’s an already, not yet reality.
It’s a place fixed firm in the heart of God and it is the longing of a pilgrim people struggling to get there. We wake up each day, on the journey, and sometimes say “I don’t recognize this country anymore.” Maybe it’s because women can vote, or because a constitutional amendment gives all the right to vote. Maybe it’s because our gay and lesbian friends can get married in the eyes of the law or maybe it’s because of some other step that once seemed too far.
There will be times when we don’t recognize this country.
For Christians, on the journey, it’s a longing and hope that we might say it with pride. It’s a longing to see a culture in which the Beatitudes are the law of love—and we suddenly realize that we do know this place. We do know this country. We know it because we’ve heard tell of it again and again. We’ve heard of the Kingdom’s promise and it is already alive if not yet here.
We may not recognize this country. We may be lost. But we’re still on a pilgrimage that faithful people have been on since we were first told that the Kingdom of God is at hand. We are on pilgrimage to the heart of God, to the place of promise, to the hope of the nations. That won’t change with one election but it may be one more small step along the way.
God’s Kingdom is not of this world. That’s why we labor on the journey. Because this world might still yet reflect something of the Kingdom.
But it won’t today. No matter who has won. Because the journey is long and the way is none other than the way of the cross. It’s a royal road but one which makes its way through every valley, every haunt, and every deep hollow. That’s why we journey together. Through the valley. Fearing nothing.
Wherever you find yourself this morning know that so many share your journey. So many walk the pilgrim road with you. It’s well worn. It’s been walked by many and more who woke up saying “I don’t recognize this country” and sometimes they even said it with pride as they resolved to keep walking, together, toward the promised land as a people full of Kingdom hope no matter the toil and divisions of the day.
Yours in Kingdom Hope,
—Fr Robert
