The "Just One Letter" Project

The “Just One Letter” Project
Introduction

copyright 2013 Printery, Greensboro, NC. 

So … the Bible is not a book really … it is more like a small portable library of many stories, lectures, letters and poems written over many centuries.  Each one telling pieces of one central Story that leads to or from one central Character – Jesus.

Included in the “portable library of many stories, letters and poems” is a personal letter written from Paul, the apostle of Jesus, to a young church in the Macedonian city of Philippi.  They had been a community for about 10 years[i] when they received this letter.  A decade[ii] after some of them first heard from Paul himself about the grace, forgiveness and restoration that had come to all through Jesus.  Beyond this relational connection, Paul wrote the letter while in prison[iii], which gave it some urgency, importance and added weight.

And since Guttenberg’s printing press was still a few years off and Tim Berners-Lee’s HTML was even still more years out, this short letter may have been the only “Bible” this young church ever knew.

So … this was all they had. This was their Bible.

Just … one letter … from …

            a friend;
            the person who introduced them to God’s grace and forgiveness;

            the guy who personally encountered the resurrected and risen Jesus;[iv]

            the guy who went from Jesus persecutor to Jesus follower;[v]

            the guy who went from Christian hater to Christian community organizer;[vi]

            the guy who believed all this so much … he took beatings

            and imprisonments.[vii]

The only had this one letter.

So what would happen if this were the only “Bible” you had?

As a whole, the Bible can be a bit intimidating when you first pick one up and think to yourself, “You know, maybe I should read this thing.”  When I first started with the Bible, my longest read up till then was a Sports Illustrated article that probably ran only 8 pages. So picking up the Bible felt like I was setting out to read an encyclopedia.  At that time, I didn’t get very far since I didn’t know about the “portable library” idea!

How helpful would it have been to be encouraged just to read one of the short letters to get started? Like the one Paul wrote to this church in Philippi.  And listen with the mindset that they had when they first received it. What about you? How helpful would that be for you?

What if for next couple of months, you imagined yourself being part of that ten-year old church who had just received this letter?  And imagine further: you are the guardian of the letter for the entire community.  So you keep it with you or near you at all times (since the “cloud” isn’t here yet either). So it stays with you – on your nightstand, on your desk or in your purse (or if we must … your murse!).

It is not been placed in a large white, gilded paged book designed to look pretty in the living room either.  It is “just one letter” – personal, utilitarian and accessible.  And since you have it, you read it. You read it alone. You read it with friends. You read it with your kids. You read it with family after dinner. You read it at night. You read it in the morning. (And … even if you don’t like green eggs and ham … you can read it with a fox or you can read it in a box.)

So you do … each week.  The "Bible" that is … “just this one letter.”  Like a  project, reading the only “Bible” you have until you

• become familiar with the words and ideas; 
• hear the encouragement and love; 
• appreciate the song of humility; 
• empathize with the tension and conflict; 
• note the example of the lives portrayed;

Until you find that it magically has gotten inside you! And the “Bible” has become more accessible, more real, more human, more personal, more communal and more helpful than you imagined possible.

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[i] You can see how this community came about by reading the account by Luke in the “Acts of the Apostles” in the New Testament, chapter 16, verses 6-40.  Luke wrote a two volume account of the “Good News Of Jesus” – The Gospel of Luke (volume 1) and Acts of the Apostles (volume 2).

[ii] Scholars date Paul’s arrival in Philippi (as recorded in Acts 16:6-40) around AD 50 with the letter written around AD 60 (written at the same time as the letters he wrote to the churches in Ephesus, Colossae and the personal letter to Philemon … all found in the Bible’s New Testament).  All these dates are developed using evidence from Luke’s two volume accounts and are supported by solid archeological evidence. As one modern scholar has stated, “Luke was a first rate historian”. 

[iii] Since the early centuries, Christians have held that Paul wrote this letter while imprisoned in Rome. In recent decades, others have thought the city of Ephesus.  It is not known for certain but Rome is probably still the best assumptions for many reasons.

[iv] One of the places you can read Paul referring to that event is found in his letter to the Church in Galatia. In the New Testament, it is found in Galatians 1:11-17.

[v] Paul’s Jewish name was Saul. Luke, his future traveling companion and coworker, tells us of Saul/Paul’s past reputation and conversion beginning in Acts 8:1-3 (chapter 8, verse 1 through 3) and Acts 9:1-30. If you read that, pay attention to the first word Saul hears from the mouth of a Christian then consider what that must have felt like when he heard it!

[vi] Paul was given a two-fold mission by Jesus, “to preach the gospel to the non-Jewish world (the “Gentiles”) and to bring out the plan of the church,” the communities of Jesus followers in cities throughout the world.  You can read Paul’s own understanding of this mission first hand in the letter he wrote to Ephesians found in the New Testament found in Ephesians 2:8-10.

[vii] In a letter to a church in Corinth in about AD 56, Paul said this about his life over the first 10 years of his public ministry to the Gentiles.

Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. ²⁵ Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. ²⁶ I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not. ²⁷ I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm.

This was before the imprisonments that he is experiencing when he writes the letter of the church in Philippi, 4-5 years later. Like the way Nelson Mandela’s life and imprisonments force me to listen and consider his words and leadership, I similarly find Paul a disruptive figure. I am intellectually forced to listen to what Paul has to say because what he says is what gets him beaten and thrown in prison. Over and over again, he does not back away or change his message. Then, to add to the disruption, he receives beatings and imprisonments not only from the Romans but also from his own ethnic group, something Mandela did not experience as much.

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