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Some of you are old enough to remember Perry Como. There was a segment on his weekly TV show that began with this jingle: "Letters, We get letters, We get stacks and stacks of letters." Well, it’s that time of year when we get stacks and stacks of letters. These days, some of our holiday letters come through e-mail. Most are probably duplicated and there are still those precious few that are personal and hand-written. This summer I started a project that I still have not completed. For whatever reason, I had saved every letter that I had ever received since I went to college 40 years ago. Not only had I saved them, I had moved them every time I moved. It occurred to me this summer, that there was a chance I didn’t really need all those letters any more. I had them stored in a crawl space under my stairway and had to hire a svelte teen-ager to crawl in and drag out the boxes and boxes that contained all of these missives. At first, I was just going to make several trips to the recycling center, but then I started going through them. Did I say I haven’t completed the project yet? It was easy to throw away the ones who were from people I don’t remember. But then, I got to my family. Even though our extended family wasn’t particularly close, I found a few letters from each of my six aunts—only one of whom is still alive. I didn’t remember that my grandmother had written me quite so often—I couldn’t always read her writing, but she wrote. Mama wrote me once a week right up until two weeks before she died eleven years ago—that’s over 1500 letters! And my sisters—we mostly do e-mail now, but I have bundled their letters up and sent them back and they now have a 40 year diary of their lives! One of my favorite letters was from my sister Kathy who was in second grade when I went to college. She writes: "Dear Jimette," (that’s my real name) "next week is my birthday. Love Kathy." And the next letter read, "Dear Jimette, Thanks for the birthday present. Love Kathy." There is something special about those letters. It isn’t just the memories and the messages. It is the fact that Mama and Daddy and Grandma and my aunts actually touched that same stationary that I am holding. It’s a connection. When Mama died, my sisters and I found letters that Daddy had written her when they first married. It was 1941 and he was working in Harlingen, TX while Mama and my older sister who had just been born stayed in Albuquerque. We couldn’t believe that we had never seen or even knew of the existence of those letters. But there they were. Daddy writing Mama and calling her "Sweetheart" and referring to my sister as "Baby Dear." This was a side of Daddy that none of us even knew. My daddy was a romantic and we have the letters to prove it. Letters that he had touched and thought about and finally mailed. Letters that my mother had treasured as too precious to share for 50 years. In Robin Meyers’ book Morning Sun on a White Piano: Simple Pleasures and the Sacramental Life he writes, "Once upon a time, letters were the standard vehicle of courtship. They were thoughtful, contemplative, and considerate. They were the imprint of our dreams, swirling under cursive dress. They were the artifacts of emotion—intimacy expressing itself as art. Considerably beyond mere communication, letters, especially love letters, are addressed to the soul." He concludes, "If the long-lost art of letter writing were to be retrieved, the world would be much better for it." Let’s look at another love letter: St. Paul’s first letter to the Church at Corinth: Chapter 1 verses 3-9. Paul knew the Corinthians personally. He established their community of faith and cared deeply about its life and future. Following the formal greetings, he opens his missive with these words, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Surely two of the most beautiful words and indeed gifts we have from God are grace and peace. That grace which is God’s unconditional love—love with no strings attached--Love just for the sheer joy of loving. And peace: peace of mind, peace in the knowledge that we belong to God. What better way to begin a letter than with the reassurance of God’s grace and peace. Paul goes on to tell the people how grateful he is for them acknowledging that they are who they are because of their relationship with Christ. He encourages them by reminding them that Christ will continue to strengthen them until he returns. And just in case they still don’t get it, his closing shot in this greeting is that God is faithful. You can trust in God. God’s steadfast love endures forever. Do you send out holiday letters? Do you enjoy receiving them? I just love it. I’ll admit that occasionally I get a letter and I wonder if it is true that absolutely every member in that family excelled in absolutely every endeavor they were involved in AGAIN this year. And sometimes I wonder if some letters really needed to tell me everything that happened this year—like how much they lost in the stock market, what new recipes they found tasty since last year—you know—more than you really want to know about people. But by and large, I love hearing from people once a year and knowing that I’m still on their list of people they care about enough to include in the highlights of their lives this past year. It’s a connection that I treasure. I write a letter each year—it’s probably too much—both sides of legal sized paper with photographs of this year’s activities on one side and highlights of the year on the other. But today’s scripture challenges me. What if I began my letter with the assurance of God’s grace and love for my friends and family? What if I told each of them that they were on my list of blessings I thank God for every day? What if I encouraged them by reminding them that God will strengthen us all and endow us with the spiritual gifts we need for the journey? What if I closed the letter with the promise that God is faithful—that God’s steadfast love endures forever? Do I have the courage to witness to those 200 people on my Christmas card list? Will they think I have become one of those radical Christians that make everyone uncomfortable at a party or will they appreciate the encouragement and reminder of God’s promise? This is the first Sunday in Advent. Advent is the time of waiting that we have set aside to wait for the Christ Child. Today we remember that it is a time of hope: That Christ came to bring us a sense of hope rather than despair. We can use our Christmas letters to bring a word of hope—not just the word that was written in the greeting cards when we bought them. But the word of hope that we can give to the people we greet, albeit once a year with that promise from Paul’s letter—God is faithful: by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. As we receive the sacrament of communion, let us remember that promise. |
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12.01.02 - Those Darn Christmas Letters (1Corinthians 1:3-9)
