Writing a weekly newsletter is a rather odd experience, especially in lockdown. There’s no feedback on what you write, so you have no idea if what your writing is helpful, or useful. I have no idea if people are simply seeing the newsletter, scanning it for what’s going on, and then assigning it to the digital bin. There is a very human part of me that wants to know that it is, in some way, helpful to people. This form of one-way communication is very rare in the current time. With social media allowing people to respond with a ‘like’, or a short comment, or even a little picture expressing short emotions (emoji), there’s always some form of feedback – feedback that is almost instant.

This form of instant gratification is a world away from those that wrote the scriptures – not that the people writing them knew at the time they were writing books that would one day be considered holy. Even the writers of the letters, St. Paul, St. James, St. Jude, St. John – they would have had to wait months for a reply. Even for those of us who still remember sending letters, we would expect a response within a relatively short time-frame, even for letters sent to the other side of the world. The letter writing process for them would have been far different. In the most well known case, that of St. Paul, we know that he dictated his letters to a scribe. While we can guess this from the habit of the time, we can see in Galatians 6:11 that it reads ‘See what large letters I write with my own hand’, clearly St. Paul marvelling at how the neat handwriting of the scribe compares his own, less eloquent hand.

These letters would then be passed to people who were travelling in the general direction of the intended recipient. Sometimes with people sent specifically with that mission, other times entrusted to travelling merchant who were going that direction, and then into the hands of other merchants and so on until the letter arrived at it’s destination. Even with the letter arriving at it’s destination, there’s no guarantee that the recipient would be able to read the letter. While most people were functionally literate, things like letters may have been beyond them. There were people who’s jobs it was to read out these letters, and then write a reply (a scribe). The letter would then travel back almost the way it came, taking equally as long. It’s possible that rumours would arrive at their destination long before a letter would.

When we look at the letters with this in mind, we can see that letters like Romans, and Philemon, don’t really expect an answer. They are written in a way where St. Paul tries to guess what the questions might be to what he is writing, to anticipate the answers. Then all that St. Paul can do is to trust that he chose the right words. Or, perhaps, that St. Paul had listened attentively enough to what God was asking of him. We guess that St. Paul was, by nature, a prolific letter writer, but most of them don’t survive. One and Two Corinthians speak of a third letter which may or may not be contained in the texts we have. Sometimes we see phrases like “As I have already written” (Ephesians 3:3), but what we don’t have is any replies (though, we can assume that St. Paul got them, otherwise he wouldn’t have used phrases like ‘as you wrote to me’, and we wouldn’t have follow-up letters like Corinthians). In such a world, St. Paul had to trust that God would be understood through what he wrote. History tells us that his letters were read aloud to congregations, and over the years have been read aloud to congregations far removed from the ones he wrote too.

While St. Paul’s writings have caused much theological ink to be spilt, we can marvel at the trust that St. Paul had in the simple writing of the letter, trusting that God would speak through his words, and reach their destination and make a difference. We know that St. Paul never saw the full impact of his letters, as he was martyred a long time before the letters became canon.

Letters require us to take our time, to think about what we are going to say. We can rephrase things, explain ourselves, and even, start again. We have to think about our words. In a modern world of instant messaging, our words are out there before we really have to think about it. Perhaps the slowing down of lockdown can teach us a little something about how we treat our words. Like St. Paul, our words in the digital world can last for years, which words would we like to be remembered for?