Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

“Overwhelming force will be used to restore order.” Those are the words the governor of Minnesota used to describe how Minneapolis would be handled tonight. “Overwhelming force will be used to restore order.”

You can imagine Pontius Pilate or Herod using those words in talking about the Church — which is what was gathered with Jesus at Gethsemene. The Church gathered with Jesus praying and hoping and fearing together.

What we are seeing now is the heartbreaking failure of our nation to embrace the overwhelming force of love. We are seeing the result of not just one incident of cruelty against one man but we are seeing the cost of hate. We are seeing the cost of fear. We are seeing the cost of dehumanization.

The Church gathered with Jesus as the state plotted to restore order and sought to ensure that the good and decent people who made up the religious and secular establishments were not too disturbed by the scenes of the Prince of Peace being hailed as a king.

Overwhelming force would be used.

God responded with his own overwhelming force. The force of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost which taught them to overcome the barriers of language, culture, and nation. The force of salvation which brings us a hope that transcends our sinful inclinations and desires. The force of the Resurrection which brings us the hope that death, that thing which haunts and blinds us, is hardly the end.

Overwhelming force was used to restore order. To restore to balance the good and holy. To restore to life the Son, and us, who also are welcomed to call God our Father. To restore to peace a world which had thought itself enslaved by violence and anger.

The overwhelming force of God is this — the Crucifixion. The overwhelming force of God is the intimate connection between the suffering Son and the suffering of the world. The overwhelming force of love is God’s victory.

It would be easy to pray for things to calm down. It would be tempting to pray for this all to stop. It would be a relief of our prayers seemed answered. The challenge is that our prayers have seemed answered before — after the riots of the 60s things calmed down. After the riots in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict things calmed down. After Ferguson things calmed down.

The challenge is that what has seemed like answered prayer to many has looked like God ignoring the prayers of too many others.

What we need to pray for now is the overwhelming force of God’s love to swell in our nation’s heart that we might have justice. We need to pray not for calm but for peace — true peace that comes of seeing one another as the beloved children of God. This peace, right now, passes our understanding.

Just as the disciples stood in the shadow of the crucifixion and despaired over what was to be next we, the Church, stand now in the shadow of not one death but in the shadow of a whole history of oppressive hate. Overwhelming force may restore calm but it is overwhelming love that might finally break this cycle of despairing violence and retaliation.

Now the Church must gather and pray. We must pray for the overwhelming force of God’s love to rise up in us, in our nation, and in the world. That force will not make things “better.” That force can restore all things and bind together in a new hope peoples who thought that no lasting peace could be found. That force is the Kingdom.

Peace cannot just mean and absence of conflict. Peace must mean the absence of hate. It must mean the absence of fear. It must mean the absence of oppression. In such times as this none of us are bystanders. None of us is simply an observer. We are now called to pray and to work for the spread of the Kingdom. That Kingdom isn’t an imitation of empire — it is the radical reorientation of our minds and hearts that we might see and know that all things are being brought to their perfection by the overwhelming force of love.

This is at the heart of our most known prayer. We don’t pray for things to get better or be calmer. We pray that we might yet see the peace, love, and hope that is the Kingdom — that is the consummation of the overwhelming force of love.

Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done. On earth as it is in Heaven.

Let us pray.

Fr Robert