Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

This past week or so has been quite the trial. We have construction at the house, painting in the parts that weren’t under construction, ten guests coming for whom we had to prepare rooms, and the kids alternated being sick which meant we got hardly any sleep. As a bonus there was a Vestry meeting, a meeting with the bishop, planning for an interfaith service next week, and all the other usual stuff too.

So I turned to this Sunday’s lessons for some encouragement. The Gospel ends, “As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

I thought, well I’ve been there this week—what’s next?!

These readings feel jarring amidst the steady sense of preparation for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the like. Even as we all get steadily busier, the lessons we hear on Sunday are telling us to prepare for something altogether different. You see, the Church calendar begins anew in just a few weeks. Advent will be here before we know it.

We are approaching a thin place.

We’ve domesticated Christmas a bit. We’ve given Jesus Hallmark cheeks and are told that no crying he makes. But the reality is that Jesus arrived amidst all the messy busyness of the world to call us to new life. He arrives to close the distance between us and God—to unite in himself the realities of the human experience and the hope of divine possibility.

We talk of thin places sometimes—places where the boundaries between this world and the next seem thin. Places that shimmer with possibility and promise.

Jesus comes to be that thin place. He comes to be for us the way to the life to come no matter the noise and clamor of this life. He offers himself as the way, as the truth, and as the light of all people.

Amidst all our crazy-making stuff—and the chaos and unsettledness of our earthly preparations—we are being reminded in these weeks ahead that a radical reorienting of the cosmic order is churning into being and the creation groans with eager longing for new hope.

We are approaching a thin place. He is on the move and is calling us to be still. We stand at the precipice of hope as all comes into its proper place. For that we are being called to prepare, to make ourselves ready, for all things are being brought to their perfection and the plan of salvation is turning.

We are approaching a thin place.

Thanks be to God.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert