Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends,

As almost all of you know, we’re adoptive parents. The boys came to us from challenging circumstances, they didn’t know us and we didn’t know them, they came with challenges that still emerge, we’re not the perfect family and certainly not the perfect parents, but we hope that the message we send day in and day out is that we’re striving to be more than an accident of fate - that we’re destined to be together by love and grace. The definition of family has expanded much in recent years. The happy picture of a mother and a father and 2.5 smiling children has given way to the complexities of people caring for people - of people loving people in ways that are complicated and profound. On his first night living with us, our oldest said, at five years old, “Am I going to live here now?” We said, “Yes, this is your new home.” He replied, “But, I don’t know you.”

This all settled in my heart in a recent trip to the border. Clergy, staff, and lay leaders went with the goal of helping our new staff and clergy who moved here from far flung parts better understand the human and cultural dimensions of life near the border. What struck me was just how unique and complicated this experiment with multi-cultural democracy is. We strive to be a country that welcomes huddled masses yearning to be free and yet we stumble. We’re not the perfect country. The people we welcome come with challenges. We don’t know them and they don’t know us. Immigration has stretched the definition of culture and nation in ways that are complicated and profound.

We’re a nation brought together, I believe, by love and grace. We can be a shining city on a hill - if we dare. We can model what it means to adopt people lost and lonely. We can take in those who wonder if they will ever be accepted. We can love the poor, the lonely, and the hungry. We can make room at the table and feed the five thousand even when what we have seems scarce enough to feed five. We can allow ourselves to be changed by the grace found in the simple act of welcoming the stranger.

The crisis at the border is just that - a crisis, it is not a crisis because our borders are being overrun. It is a crisis because our values are being overrun. Fear, a sense of scarcity, distrust, resentment, and more are overrunning our values. Scripture offers 366 verses that exhort us, in some way or another, to not be afraid. God knows we will fear and co forts us with the hope found in small acts of rebellious hospitality. Whether it’s the Good Samaritan or the woman at the well we see again and again that true religion is found being practiced by those despised by the majority. Our faith is one that smashes borders. Whether it’s the border between life and death smashed by the resurrection or whether it’s the border between humanity and divinity smashed by the birth of God to a human mother, God is always at work creating a path through the no-man’s land of human blindness and division.

Imagine children separated from families saying, “Do I live here now? But I don’t know you.” What do they know about us now? Imagine DACA recipients brought here as children whom we now threaten to send back to countries they’ve never known. What do they know about us now? Imagine workers and neighbors lured by the promise of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty - men and women making $5.00 per day in a border factory longing for more for their children. What do they know about us now? Imagine refugees whose neighborhoods have been ravaged by gangs and whose children have been threatened with violence of all kinds. They’re turned away. What do they know about us now?

May God warm in us the wonder of a spirit of adoption. We have been welcomed by adoption into the fellowship of Christ. We who once were far off have been brought near through the blood of Christ. We who once thought ourselves unloved and unlovable have, through no merit or good work of our own, been called children of God and heirs of the promises of Christ, it’s a joy to know the Church as our home in Christ. May we who have been so blessed to be welcomed to our new home find our hearts swelled with Christ’s own merciful welcome that we may seek and serve him in those striving to find a way to their own home in a strange land.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert