Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

The Epistle today begins with a simple note of hope and teaching.

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.”

It is tempting, in a culture, nation, and world of many faiths, to give in to a certain kind of nonchalant deism. In our eagerness to not seem to condemn or criticize others, to be good citizens of a pluralistic society, it becomes fashionable to waffle a bit. We say things like, “All paths lead to the same God.”

Yet the decisive claim of Christianity for Creation is that this life is not all that is. All that you have and all that you have been, will be, and are, right now, is being brought to perfection in Christ.

That process is not one that ends with our death but finds a new beginning there. We learn and grow and change by our encounters with Christ mediated by some thing or another now—Christ in Bread, or Word, or in one another works his will on us, sometimes by fits and starts.

But God will bring with him those who have died. And in bringing us with him will bring us into the fullness of life—into his very Presence. And we will bring to that day all our deeds— good and bad. All our hopes—fulfilled and unfulfilled. All our sins—things done and left undone. All our trials, victories, and frailties. Our whole humanity will be taken because God, who is truth and love, hates nothing he has made.

More than that, he has called us not to grieve as others do but to rest in an eternal and unchanging promise: He loves us. That love has always been at work. In the cosmos. Over the waters. In the soil. In the heart of the squirrel and the roar of the lion. In the rush of waters and the whispering wind of the plains. In each and every beating heart. In all that has been and in all that will be.

In you. God’s love is at work.

His work will not end when this life does. For he will bring with him those who have died. Those he loves. This is no vague spiritual notion but a promise as deep and everlasting as God’s will. That is a hope we can share with the world—that God so loves it that he has given his only Son that all may come within the reach of his saving embrace.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert