The lost art of biblical correspondence
In his 2019 essay “The lost art of writing letters” the CBC journalist and veteran correspondent Michael Enright writes: “My millennial son is now a full member of The Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society (HLAS), headquartered in Swanage, Dorset, England. His membership number is 0117. How and why he joined are something of a mystery, much like his ongoing obsession with expensive footwear and vigorous exercise. The mission of the HLAS is of course to foster and promote sit-down, pen-written letters sent to friends, or even enemies. I can’t remember the last time I sat down with a pen and wrote a letter by hand to a friend. Postcards, yes; letters no. The last real handwritten letters, printed actually, might be when I handwrote letters to Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.”
Our own Wilna Parry wrote on this very theme in her contribution to the September edition of the Diocesan newspaper. Wilna told the story of recently coming across the letters she had received over the course of some 50 years while she was living away from her home country of South Africa. She wrote about the excitement of seeing the “familiar light blue airmail letters drop through the door” and then writing letters in return from places as far flung as England, Nepal, Vancouver, Saskatchewan, and Papua New Guinea. Wilna’s concluding words in her article spoke to something that I reckon a lot of us grapple with. She said, “There are clear advantages of modern technology: instant communication, freedom to share photos and videos, FaceTime, and the ability to instantly catch up with lives lived in countries far removed. At the same time, I want to leave a trail of breadcrumbs leading to the unique place and time that was once occupied by me, created by a loving and creative God. I wish to be and remain a correspondent.”
When you think about it, the fact that we have 21 letters in the New Testament is something of a treasure of the Christian faith. It’s this art of biblical correspondence—or as my colleague likes to call it “Reading other people’s mail”—that I’d like to focus on this morning.
The 21 letters in the New Testament were sent by early Christian leaders—followers of Jesus trying to figure things out as the church continued to grow and as Christianity as a religious movement began to form. Among the 21 letters, some were written to specific individuals such as Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and the third letter of John addressed to a church elder named Gaius. We can think of these individuals as colleagues in neighbouring churches, like Peggy, Jenn, or Elizabeth writing to a fellow deacon at St. John’s in Lonsdale or St. Christopher’s in West Vancouver. The letters written to individuals often include practical advice on church governance and administration, and pastoral advice for interpersonal conflict. Most of the letters written to individuals include a word of encouragement to the individual to keep up their own faith as they seek to spur others on in theirs.
A good chunk of the correspondence in the New Testament was of course written to specific churches in specific regions throughout the Roman world: churches in Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Phillipi, Colossae, and Thessalonica. These letters addressed situations that had arisen in a particular community, often because of the people who had gathered from that region. The church in Philippi, for example, was founded during Paul’s second missionary journey. It was made up mostly of Gentile (non-Jewish) Greeks and Romans living in a military colony. It included local business owners like Lydia the dealer in purple cloth. It included slaves who had been exploited and Roman guards who had come to believe in Jesus. Like every church, it had some big personalities, too: Euodia and Syntyche, two women leaders at odds with each other over a heated theological disagreement. There was Clement, who had faced persecution right alongside Paul, and Epaphroditus the go-to person for assembling supplies and soliciting financial support for Paul while he was in prison.
Then there are letters in the New Testament that were written for a more general audience: Hebrews, James, First and Second Peter, and Jude. These letters are more universal in nature and tend not to address a specific community. They address issues that were likely common across all of the churches, issues like how to live out your faith, what to do when facing persecution, and how to spot a false teacher.
Biblical correspondence in its many and varied forms is the “trail of breadcrumbs leading to the unique place and time that was once occupied by the earliest followers of Jesus”. I encourage you over this next week to choose a letter, any of the letters in the New Testament, and to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it.” Ask yourself: Is this letter being written to an individual? To a specific church community? Or to the community of early Christians more broadly speaking? Ask yourself: What in this letter resonates? Where do I see myself? Where are there issues I see my own community facing? Once you have a moment to sit with these questions, I invite you to write a letter back. If you’d like, you can leave a copy with me to include in the Good News Gazette. It can be anonymous or you can attach your name to it. Or, you might prefer to keep the letter in your own personal binder of correspondence. Whatever you decide, I hope you’ll humour me in this experiment to resurrect the lost art of biblical correspondence. Amen.
Photo credit: Ann H, Canva Teams for Non Profits