Recently, I have noticed an interesting trend surrounding a particular question. “If the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the Church in America, what would he say to us?” While an intriguing thought experiment, the first time I heard this question it raised a second, possibly more important question alongside. Just who is the Church in America?

 

Now, that question might seem obvious when you think about the prevailing state of Christianity as a whole in the United States, but I want you to delve into this with me for just a minute. When Paul was writing his letters, he was writing to individual church groups who were based in particular cities. Romans, for example, was written to a group of Christians (both ethnic Romans and Ethnic Jews) who lived and worshiped in Rome. Paul was not writing to the people of Rome writ large. Same goes with Corinth, Caesar Philippi, Thessaloniki, and the rest. So, when you think about Paul writing to the “Church in America,” just who would we want that to be?

 

Better yet, I’d like to have us turn this thought process around. Let’s engage with Paul’s process for a few minutes together. Paul was traveling for much of his ministry. However, on the occasions he was prison-bound, he would write letters in response to messages sent to him. If Paul were around to write letters to the churches of the United States, what would you ask him to get a response?

 

Let me deepen the question: If you had access (via letter only) to speak with someone who had spoken directly to Jesus in a vision, who had turned his entire life upside down, and who spent his time trying to encourage Christian communities to keep and grow their faith, what would you ask him? It might be something about your particular church. It might be something about the state of your community, our state, or the world. I might want to ask about his testimony and journey, because I find his life and letters so fascinating.

 

The one thing in this situation that I feel is the exact wrong question is “What are other Christians doing wrong, and can you tell them?” While he is not actually here to answer, I can almost hear Paul yelling the answer back to me. “Why are you so concerned with how others are acting when you aren’t the perfect model either?” We want to think that we have the exact way to be the church as God intended and as Paul wrote to, but we know that he wrote to churches in many different countries who faced varied questions and issues in their societies. None of those churches were told that they were better than any other. Most likely, none of them read the letters that Paul wrote to any of the others. Paul treated each church as its own life, needing specialized care and teaching. Paul was a specialist, not a generalist, but instead of healing with medicine, he used the Word of God and the fruits of the Spirit.

 

I want to encourage you this week to write an actual letter to the Apostle Paul. I know we don’t have an address to send it, but just the act of writing could help us clarify our anxieties and our understandings. Ask the questions that have been burning inside you. Then, turn to the letters we do have, along with the rest of the scriptures, and see if your newfound clarity of questions might lead us to the answers that were there all along.