WRITE A LETTER
Scriptures: Philemon 4-21
Luke 14:25-33
When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone? I mean a real, pencil or ballpoint pen to paper, hand-written note, not an e-mail or a text message. It’s a lost art, isn’t it? Oh, perhaps after a birthday party or anniversary celebration we will pen thank-you notes. But a three or four or, who knows, even eight-page letter revealing something rather intimate about what we are thinking or feeling has disappeared in the computer age. I don’t know about you, but I happen to have a trunk in our garage that has survived all our various moves and even a fire that contains shoeboxes full of letters I received in high school, college, and beyond. There’s something about personal letters that just seemed to me worth keeping. E-mails are ephemeral – so easily deleted after they’ve been read...or just skimmed.
Part of my vacation reading this summer was to re-read the seven novels of Charles Williams – books that have been called “supernatural thrillers”. I’ll probably use examples from them in sermons coming up, but for this sermon the important point is that because these were written in the 30’s and early 40’s of the last century the primary form of communication was letters – whether dinner invitations or lengthy, heartfelt discourse – delivered very quickly (this was in England and thus it was not the U.S. Postal Service being used) and counted on to build and sustain human community.
What’s even more important, though, letters hold memories. Jeffrey Sartain tells this story: “This week I found again the letter my grandmother sent to me when she heard the news that I had hurt my arm badly in an accident at school. Her handwriting brought back to me such an intimate connection -- more intimate than a photo or the fading memory of her voice or the recollection of her soft arms wrapped around me when I was only eleven, the year she died. That letter is such a tender gift to me. I also saved a letter my uncle wrote to me for a much later birthday, expressing his pride in my achievements at college and my decision to attend the seminary. These letters, kept in a shoebox with dozens of others, console me. Just knowing they wait for me in the unique handwriting that belonged to those who loved me most is a balm to my soul.”
Sartain then goes on to say: “Christianity finds a particular identity in letters. Much of our unique scripture -- I mean the scripture not shared with Judaism, our little book the New Testament -- is made up of letters. The Epistles, as we used to call them in my church growing up, these holy letters take us to ancient Rome, to house churches, and to prison cells. They reveal personal struggles. They help us glimpse the intimacy of community life.”
“The intimacy of community life.” Ah, now we’re getting into one of my major themes, as you well know. The kind of written correspondence we’re talking about here builds up community – it connects us with one another in ways both simple and profound. Paul’s letters or epistles can be rich and deep and theologically dense (I once had a seminary professor who gave a whole semester’s course just on the four chapters that comprise Romans 5-8). But they can also be homey, pastoral, and personal. This very short (in fact, I believe it’s the shortest book in the Bible) letter to Philemon is a perfect example of this. Paul writes “To Philemon our dear friend and co-worker.....” “I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus,” “I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.” Wouldn’t any of us cherish getting a letter like this from someone we admired and looked up to?
Paul is writing this as an old man and from a prison cell. He feels that it’s important to note that, "I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand." He does this because he needs a favor from Philemon and other members of the church in his house, and now is the time to call in his chits. Paul has taken a slave, Onesimus, into his heart; indeed, so dear is Onesimus to him that he calls him “my child”, and speaks of himself, Paul, as “whose father I have become during my imprisonment.” Now, realize that this is a complete upending of the social order of that time. To speak this way about a slave would be an abomination to Paul’s contemporaries, just as it would have been for someone in the mid-19th century southern United States. So, Paul is pushing things with Philemon when he asks him not only to receive Onesimus back again, but to receive him not as a slave, not even as a friend, but as a brother. Paul is changing the world one person at a time through a letter, written in love, from his heart, and with his own hand. He feels that he can do this because the love of Christ has freed him from worrying about “the social order” or what others may think.
A letter is a sacred and powerful thing, especially when it is written in love and intended to soften hearts, open minds, and to change the world. Think about a letter you have received that has made a difference in your life. What would have been lost if you had not received that letter? Perhaps at a level we can’t even imagine it would be a loss to our soul.
Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood here. As I think you know by now, I’m a big believer in electronic communications; in fact, I hope at some point in the near future that we can get everybody in this church who has e-mail onto a list-serve so that we can communicate with you about matters important to the church in a more timely manner. Our web page has attracted several visitors to come here, and the fact that we have sermons and newsletters and other information on the web enhances our ability to communicate Christ’s love far beyond what would have been possible, say, 20 years ago. While I know sometimes you don’t think so, it’s worth putting up with the spam that infests our in-boxes and the seemingly endless jokes our friends love to pass on to us in order to get to those messages that are truly important – like the one Kazuo sent me yesterday that I used to share with the kids.
So, it’s not a matter of nostalgia or wanting to hearken back to a simpler time when we talk about hand-written letters. It’s a matter of perspective on the meaning of community and the ways we have in the church to enhance that community. You may remember that in the sermon series this summer on God we talked a number of times about incarnation – which means the way that God becomes present for us: first in Jesus the Christ and now in community. God is uniquely revealed when we are together in community. Our souls are fed when there is human interaction much more so than when we are in virtual reality. When we are together we do things that, to much of the world, seem to be dated activities: such as singing together, reading aloud ancient writings, and even sitting in silence with not a pixel or a megabyte to help us. The digital, virtual world that we are now living into demands that we take far greater care with one another and give far greater respect to the sacredness of interpersonal interaction.
That greater care that we are to take with one another is part of what it means to be a disciple. Our other scripture reading from the Gospel of Luke seems at first hearing like a very hard saying from Jesus. Indeed, at the top of this passage in my NRSV is the heading, “The Cost of Discipleship” – which you may recognize again from the summer sermon series is the title of a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer that speaks about “cheap grace” and “costly grace”. The images Jesus is using here – of laying a foundation, of assessing the number of soldiers it will take to win a battle – have to do with preparedness. To be good disciples is not simply a matter of having some water sprinkled on our heads and sitting in on a few classes, whether as children, teenagers, or adults. It means a constant preparation that will sometimes get us in trouble with the established order. That’s what Jesus’ harsh words refer to: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” These words are not, I don’t believe, meant to be taken literally, but rather, like Paul taking up the cause of the slave Onesimus and perhaps finding himself in a jail cell because of it, we are asked to get out of our comfort zones when we seek to be Christ’s disciples. We are asked to be prepared to face difficult challenges and decisions. And we are asked to do this in the context of community.
Jesus makes this statement about the cost of discipleship while, as the beginning of this passage says, “large crowds were traveling with him”. It’s easy to get lost in a crowd – to feel as though you don’t have to put forward very much because there are so many others surrounding you. But Jesus wants his true followers to distinguish themselves – to come out of the crowd, take the actions, and make the kind of decisions that will establish the beautiful community – what Augustine called the City of God here on earth. And later, when the larger crowds had drifted away, Jesus gives the disciples what is needed – he gives them himself in the bread and the wine.
Here is the essence of what Paul was writing about to Philemon. At this table all barriers are broken down – as Paul says in another letter, Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” One. We are bonded together in the act of nibbling bread and sipping juice and experiencing Christ alive among us. In the community that is the City of God here in this place we are enabled to become Christ’s disciples because like Philemon, like Paul, we have heard and know in our hearts, “I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus.”
So, be good stewards of the digital age: use your e-mail to be in contact and to get work done; surf the Internet and find ever-creative ways to renew yourselves; put up a personal site on MySpace.com (as my son created for me when he was here); produce a video about something that’s particularly significant for you and put it on YouTube. Do all of those things. But every once in a while, when you’re feeling like touching somebody’s life, sit right down and write them a personal, hand-written letter. Feel the warmth and strengthening of community that comes from such an act. You just might be touching someone’s soul. And in doing so we will do nothing less than reveal God to one another.
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Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
September 9, 2007