St. Paul’s United
Church Sunday, November 6, 2011
Special Delivery – Rev. David Mundy
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Matthew 25:1-13
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Recently, one of our St. Paul’s Sunday School teachers asked
me to write a letter to her class of grade twos and threes. The request came on short notice and it was
on my day off but I dutifully complied. I really felt that I had to, given that
I have been married to this teacher for thirty-five years and she is the mother
of our children!
The idea from our Sunday School
curriculum was that I as the minister of our congregation would write a letter
to help the children get a sense of the letters the apostle Paul wrote to the
fledgling Christian communities of the first century.
In my note I told them how important they all are and how much
I appreciate them. And I encouraged them to grow in faith in Jesus Christ. T
was just a few sentences long. In turn a number of them wrote notes to me in
handwriting that was barely decipherable in some cases because they are young.
They eagerly sought me out after worship to make sure I got their letters and
it was a pleasure to receive them. Talk about special delivery.
Letter writing is a dying art, don’t you think? Do any of you
still write letters? I say “still” but there are probably a fair number of you
that have grown up “post letter” for the most part. This is remarkable because
it’s not all that long ago since putting pen to paper was a primary form of
communication in our culture whether it was a note sent across town or around
the world. When people emigrated to new countries, letters were lifelines in each
direction, even though it might take weeks for letters to get to their
destinations. This is our Remembrance Sunday, and during past wars soldiers and
their families stayed in contact via the mail and there are poignant stories of
a letter arriving home from a serviceman to loved ones who had already been
informed of his death in combat.
We live in such a different world from the Second World War,
let alone the first century when Paul established little congregations across
the ancient world, then followed up with letters of encouragement and
admonition and teaching.
Today we speak rather disparagingly of “snail mail” because
posted letters seem to take forever to arrive compared to our electronic
options. What we call email or electronic mail is now thirty years old, which
is more like a hundred cyberyears. Now you can send a
text message from your cellphone to a bunch of friends at once and have a flood
of responses in a matter of minutes if not seconds. Or you can throw a few
thoughts onto to your Facebook page and let your friends take a look when they
feel like it. Electronic communication is wonderfully spontaneous and
instantaneous but it’s not exactly the stuff of deep thoughts by any stretch of
the imagination. Talk about “here today, gone today.”
Are you aware that most Sundays during the year we have the
opportunity to hear from a letter as one of our New Testament readings? We don’t always do so because we also have an
Old Testament reading and a psalm and a gospel reading and we choose a couple
of them instead.
There are several letter writers in the New Testament but Paul
is really the “main man” because he wrote first. In fact, the first Christian
writings are not the gospels even though Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are first
in the Christian portion of the bible. The real first New Testament documents
are the letters and scholars are fairly sure that the first of those is the one
we heard from today, the first letter to the church in Thessalonica.
Thessalonica was a major seaport Macedonia and on the main highway to Rome. It
was a city of religious people with a Jewish synagogue and when Paul was in
town some of them heard and received the Good News of Jesus the Saviour, the
One whose death and resurrection bring new and eternal life.
Of course Paul moved on to other places so the letters were
his way of staying connected with these new Christians who needed leadership.
On their own they got up to some pretty weird stuff. It is a minor miracle that
these letters of Paul and other writers survived, although of course we don’t
have any of the originals. Somehow the letters were delivered by ship and
horseback and on foot through often dangerous conditions. They were read aloud
to these fledgling Christian communities and we can imagine these believers
eagerly listening to what Paul had to say to them as a word of hope.
Perhaps there were letters which never made it to their
destinations and others which disappeared after they were read. Letters are
fragile after all, so we just don’t know for sure. We can only trust that the
letters in our New Testament are the ones God wants to be there.
Paul didn’t actually do most of the handwriting of his
letters. He had a scribe to whom he would dictate the letters but in several he
emphasized his point by saying “do you see that I am writing this part this
myself” and in one he says “do you see that I am writing in large
letters!”
You know, even though we have so many electronic ways of
communicating today, we are still encouraged to pick up a pen and put it to
paper when something really matters.
We’re told that if we are having a problem with a business or service
provider we should forget about an email or even a typed page if we want to get
someone’s attention. A handwritten letter gets the best results.
Justice groups such as Amnesty International still have
letter-writing campaigns and they still encourage people to write letters
themselves rather than just signing a form letter or sending a message
electronically.
And we know that the only love letter that counts is one that
is handwritten.
Why is this so? Don’t
you think it is because a letter we choose to write, however labouriously, conveys a sense of thoughtfulness, of
personal investment, of conviction for the cause? When Paul wrote his letters,
they weren’t meant to just pass the time of day. He wanted to lead these folk
into the deeper truths of a living relationship with Jesus Christ.
Paul knew that the small church in Thessalonica was going
through tough times. As some of them began to die, they wondered if Jesus was
going to return in their lifetimes as many of them including Paul probably
believed, essentially to “beam me up Scotty” out of sorrow and woe.
So he writes them: 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 . .
. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Paul understood that the followers of Jesus are not immune
from suffering or even death. Still, in Christ we have a different
understanding and experience of life in the present and for the future which
gives us strength for each day.
What word of hope do we need in our church today? I don’t need
to tell you that there is a growing antagonism in our culture toward faith,
including Christianity, and particularly those of you who are younger may feel
that you are on the defensive even amongst your friends and family members.
Talk to our teens and they can tell you how much in the minority they are.
We’re also told that
while there are about three million people in Canada who identify with the
United Church less than 300,000 of them show up for worship each week. So,
ninety percent of us just don’t care enough to get up on a Sunday morning for
church. Not surprisingly, we’re told
that an average of one pastoral charge closes each week. We are the incredible
shrinking denomination and this trend is taking its toll on its leadership,
including the clergy.
We can choose to dwell in our apparent apathy and discouragement.
Or we can recognize that our situation today is more like the early church than
the church triumphant of fifty years or sixty years ago when the Baby Boom
families filled our buildings. So we need to recalibrate what hope means to us
as Christ’s people and deepen our commitment to our faith community. We need to
become even more focussed on what the Good News of Christ means to us.
I wrote that letter to the Sunday School
children and it was only a few phrases and it was all “upbeat” because they are
kids. It got me wondering what I would write to you if I was asked to do so.
Not that I’m the apostle Paul, but
I thank God for who you are and the unique gifts you bring to
this community of faith. No matter what your age, your experience in the
church, you have something to offer which is yours and yours alone. So, many of
you inspire me with your courage and commitment.
We’re not there yet. I encourage you to “step in up,” to
become mature Christians. For God’s sake go deeper, day by day! In a world of
so many choices, choose Christ! We can’t be half-hearted spectators. Instead we
are becoming disciples who love God with our hearts and souls and minds. Oh
yes, we can love our neighbours as ourselves.
Please remind yourself every day that you are loved. God loves
us so much that he took the risk of coming to us in Christ. And shucks, I love
you too!
In Christ,
David
Perhaps we all need that Sunday School exercise of writing
down what it is about our faith we cherish, the hope we have received in
Christ, and the importance of our community to our lives which we might
otherwise take for granted.
I need to tell you that all the letters from the children were
sweet, but one in particular played a tune on my heartstrings. A girl thanked
me for teaching her about Jesus and said that she liked that I smiled at her in
church and it made her smile too. It touched me because she is this sweet-faced
child who is always smiling, so when I see her I can’t help but smiling back.
What she has really been seeing is her openness mirrored back to her.
Friends, we have all received God’s Special Deliver love
letter in Christ. Whatever we write back, we are called to respond in hope.