We Letters From Christ
©
by the Reverend Dr. Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers,
February 27, 2000; 8th Sunday in
Ordinary Time, Year B;
Black History Month)
Mark
2:13–22 (NT, p. 37); II Corinthians 3:1–6 (NT, p. 189)
(some use has been made of the article
“letters,” in The New Columbia Encyclopedia, ed. William H. Harris and Judith S. Levey [New York: Columbia
University Press, 1975], pp. 1566–1567)
“Sir,
more than kisses, letters mingle souls;
For,
thus friends absent speak.”
Thus
wrote the young English poet John Donne in 1598
to
his friend in the court of the Queen, Sir Henry Wotton.
“Sir,
more than kisses, letters mingle souls;
For,
thus friends absent speak.”
My
own ability to write letters good enough to mingle souls
peaked
some forty years ago, when I was in college,
and
it’s been all downhill ever since.
In
those days, decades before calling cards and cell phones,
long
distance calls seemed extravagant and unnecessary,
so,
prompted by my parents, I cultivated a habit that lasted for
four
years of college and three more years of seminary—
the
habit of writing them a rather long letter once a week.
They,
of course, responded in kind.
Indeed,
my mother usually wrote me twice a week.
And,
as I look back on it now, our exchange
of
letters was indeed a mingling of souls.
Then,
too, there was one particularly long summer during college
when
I was separated by a great distance from Margaret,
the
young woman I hoped to marry—and that summer was
my
peak period for composing passionate love letters.
But
I’ve produced no profound correspondence since my twenties.
These
days I’ve heard it said that letter-writing is experiencing
something
of a revival, thanks to the e-mail phenomenon.
Well,
maybe it’s just me, but I don’t fully agree with that.
I
mean, I have yet to press that “send” button with any sense
that
the person on the other end is about to receive
a
great piece of literature, let alone my very soul!
So
I wonder, do any of you mingle souls by e-mail,
or
find it, as Donne suggests, better than kisses?
Still,
in days gone by, the art of letter writing really was cultivated
as
a branch of literature, so much so in fact that the word “letters”
still
has as one of its meanings: “literature as a discipline,”
as
in the phrase, “a college of arts and letters.”
Of
these well-honed and -polished letters of yore,
some
were addressed to the public, some to friends,
some
from lover to lover. Some discussed concepts,
some
conducted business, some conveyed thanks—
but
the quality common to them all was a lively style
that
both expressed the personality of the sender
and
addressed the mind and heart of the recipient.
There’s
an intimacy to great letters, a “mingling-of-souls” quality,
that
makes them fascinating reading for the general public.
For
example, who wouldn’t want to read
the series of letters
written
by Groucho Marx to T. S. Eliot—for what a tanta-
lizing
“mingling of souls” that correspondence promises!
Now,
it was long, eloquent letters, called “epistles,” that was the
favored
means of communication in the ancient classical world,
the
world in which Christianity was born.
In
the century before Jesus’s ministry in Palestine,
the
Roman orator, politician, and philosopher Cicero
wrote
a series of luminous letters
to
his best friend Atticus, his brother Quintus,
to
the
conspirator Brutus, and many others—letters
that
reveal more of Roman life and politics in
the
1st century B.C. than any other source.
After
Cicero’s death, the undisputed master of Latin letters
came
to be the poet Horace.
His
correspondence offers us a vivid picture of Rome
during
the age of Augustus Caesar.
It
was in this context of the Roman empire, of a classical world
that
treasured letters like those of Cicero and Horace,
that
the Apostle Paul established his new churches and
corresponded
with them through a series of great epistles
that
came to comprise much of the New Testament.
II
Corinthians, from which this morning’s Second Lesson comes,
is
a collection of fragments from several originally independent
letters
written by Paul to the Christian community
that
he’d founded in the Greek city of Corinth.
And
we find in this collection of correspondence
that
there
does indeed take place a “mingling of souls,”
as
Paul both reestablishes contact
with
those whom he has baptized and served
+
also takes issue with other Christians there
who
oppose his teachings and actions.
Paul’s
credentials as an apostle have been challenged
by
these opponents, and
Paul
uses the metaphor of letter-writing itself to refute them.
Paul
writes (II Cor. 3:2–3): ”Surely we do not need, as
some
do, letters of recommendation to you or from you,
do
we? You yourselves are our letter,
written on our
hearts,
to be known and read by all; and
you show
that
you are a letter from Christ, prepared by us,
written
not with ink but with the Spirit of the
living
God, not on tablets of stone but on
tablets
of human hearts.”
What
a powerful image it is that Paul offers us here—this image
of
Christians like ourselves being “letters from Christ,”
letters
written by the Spirit of the living God
on
the tablets of our bodies,
letters
addressed to those in the world who would know
where
and how it is that God is at work,
letters
written so that the soul of Christ
may
mingle with the souls of all humankind,
letters
written so that the Risen Christ
may
speak with absent friends,
letters
written from Christ
in
response to letters written to God.
I’ve
found that some of the wisest and most disarming letters
ever
written to God have come from children.
Many
of these letters are quite touching; others bring smiles.
All
are addressed to God with the hope that there will be
an
answer.
The
first published collections of such letters that I’m aware of are
these
slender volumes that came out in 1966–67 entitled simply
Children’s
Letters to God and More Children’s
Letters to God
(compiled
by Eric Marshall and Stuart Hample), and they’ve inspired
a
spate of other such books since then,
including
this one—Dear God:
Children’s
Letters to God (compiled by David Heller, 1987).
In
these books we find actual letters written by real children,
in
response to the instruction, “Please write a letter to God.”
Now,
in 1967, when these books first came out,
I
was a doctoral student working on my dissertation in Old
Testament,
and it was the following letter that really caught my
attention
and persuaded me that I’d love these books.
It
reads: “Dear God, Your book has a
lot of zip to it.
I
like science fiction stories. You
had very good ideas
and
I would like to know where you found them.
Your
reader Jimmy”
Well,
that one, and this one, too, from Norman,
that’s
sure to cause any pastor to laugh!
“Dear
God, I am sorry I was late for Sunday School
but
I couldn’t find my under wear.”
Well,
I just can’t help chuckling over that letter
every
Sunday morning around 11:05 or 11:10,
when
I look back at those busy doors out there!
&
I say to myself, “I wonder if they forgot their …”
In
an uninhibited and quite natural way, children feel free to express
the
kinds of questions and concerns and apologies
that
are on all of our minds and hearts.
For
example, little Harriet Ann writes quite poignantly:
“Dear
God, Are you real? Some people don’t … believe it.
If
you are you better do something quick.”
Now,
Harriet Ann, like all the other children in these books, writes
her
letter hoping to get some response back from God.
And
as Paul says, it is we who are the “letters from Christ”
written
to respond to people’s expressed concerns.
So
I hope there was a “letter from Christ” sent to Harriet Ann
in
the form of a person who said to her something like this:
“Yes,
Harriet Ann, God is real,
and
God has done ‘something quick.’
God
has sent into your life many people who love you
and
care for you.
And
it is we your friends who are God’s
response
to
your letter, to show you that God is real.”
For
God is in us people!
Here’s
another child’s letter to God—from Jamie, age 8:
“Dear
God, I live in a very religious place,
but
you already no (sic) that because you
visited
What
I want to know is was New York City a mistake?
Please
tell the truth. We’ll keep it a secret.”
And
I hope there was a “letter from Christ” sent to Jamie
in
the form of a person who said to him something like this:
“No,
Jamie, New York City is not a mistake,
and
you don’t need to keep that a secret.
Oh,
we’ve got plenty of problems in this city.
Not
every one loves each other.
Not
every one trusts each other.
And
there’s a whole lot of tension right now
between
the police force
and
various community groups.
But
there’re a lot of people here whose hearts
are
filled by the Spirit of the living God.
And
we dare to pray that that day may soon come
when
people will be able to think
of
even the police as ‘letters from Christ.’”
Here’s
a letter to God from Wayne, age 11:
“Dear
God, My dad thinks he is you. Please
straighten him out.”
Well,
I hope there was a “letter from Christ” sent to Wayne
in
the form of a person who said to him something like:
”No
dad should play God,
but
every dad should be like God,
having
a heart full of love and kindness and joy
and
wanting to keep each child safe and sound.”
And
one last child’s letter to God
“Dear
God, Do you get your angels to do all the work?
Mommy
says we are her angels and we have to do everything .
Love,
Maria”
I
hope there was a “letter from Christ” sent to Maria in the form
of
a person who said to her something like: “God
does
a lot of work to keep this whole wide universe going well!
And
God wants us to do a lot of work, too,
to
keep our homes going well,
our
families, our schools, our offices, our city—
to
keep all of them going well.”
It’s
a heavy responsibility to be a “letter from Christ.”
It
means we have to say or do something on Christ’s behalf
in
response to all the difficult questions
and
problematic situations that come our way in life.
It
means we cannot remain silent or inactive
in
the face of an injustice or need.
Please
look with me at the cover of this morning’s bulletin and at
the
quote there from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
who
certainly was a “letter from Christ” to our time.
Martin
says in that quote, quite provocatively:
“We
shall have to repent in this generation,
not
so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people,
but
for the appalling silence of the good people.”
Martin
was referring specifically to good people’s silence
about
the sins of racism and classism and fighting unjust wars.
And
some thirty years after Martin’s death, we could today
catalogue
the sins about which good people remain silent
and
the sins about which good people fail
to
be “letters from Christ” to the world—
we
could catalogue those sins by simply
copying
Martin’s old list and then expanding it.
One
of the items that needs to be added to Martin’s list is
a
topic spoken of by practically no good person in Martin’s time
and
a topic still spoken of by only a few good persons today—
I
refer to the sin of homophobia.
How
good it is that we are a More Light Presbyterian Church,
that
we have broken that silence and offered ourselves—
gay
and straight together—
as
“letters from Christ” to our denomination.
Last
week we ordained + installed a new group of elders + deacons
without
regard for their sexual orientation.
And
today, a number of our elders and deacons have joined
Kate
and me in proudly wearing for all to see these stoles
that
honor and memorialize other “letters from Christ”—
gay
and lesbian Presbyterians from across the nation
who've
been endowed by the Spirit of the living God,
have
walked in God’s light,
and
have led lives of faithful witness to Christ.
What
a powerful image Paul offers us this morning—this image
of
Christians like ourselves serving as “letters from Christ,”
letters
written by the Spirit of the living God
on
the tablets of our bodies,
letters
addressed to those in the world who would
know
where and how it is that God is at work,
letters
written so that the soul of Christ
may
mingle with the souls of all humankind,
letters
written so that the Risen Christ
may
speak with absent friends,
letters
written from Christ
in
response to letters written to God.
We
thank God for all persons who have been “letters from Christ”
to
the world,
but
today we give special thanks for those who have broken
the
silence by naming the sin of homophobia.
May
we like them offer our lives in witness to the love of Christ.
Let
us pray:
By
reading us, O God, may others be able to know You.
This we pray in the name of Christ. Amen.
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