February 14, 2010
St. Valentine’s Day & Band Sunday
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-43(a)

      Let us pray.  Gracious, loving, and compassionate God of our fathers and mothers, we give you thanks for your faithful servants in every age who have struggled against injustice and oppression and who have fought to root out the evil and sin of racism and discrimination.  Through witnesses such as Harriet Tubman, Absalom Jones, and Martin Luther King, Jr. we have learned the merits of self-sacrifice, courageous action and redemptive suffering.  Grant that we in this day, following their example, may continue to resist oppression in all its forms and guises.  In this month of commemoration and celebration, may we resolve to remain committed to do the work to which you have called each of us and which you require of us all – “to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly”  with you, our God.  Trusting in your grace and mercy, and in the power of your holy enabling and sustaining Spirit, we ask this in the name of our Liberator, your Son Jesus Christ.  Amen.  (“A Prayer for Black History Month” composed by The Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris, Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of Massachusetts, retired.) 

      Today we have much to remember and for which to give thanks.  On this Second Sunday of Black History Month, the Last Sunday after Epiphany, we remember Harriet Tubman…the “Moses of her People”, who led so many slaves out of bondage into freedom.  Yesterday in our Church Calendar we remembered the life and witness of The Rev. Absalom Jones, the first African American man ordained a priest in The Episcopal Church, who is commemorated in that window right there, next to the late Bishop John Burgess of this diocese, the first African American elected as a diocesan bishop in the Church of ours.   

      And lest we forget, we also celebrated Ms. Angel Grace’s 9th birthday following our 9:15 service.  We have our friends in “The Band” back with us today thanks to the “Angelosity” (that’s the ‘generosity of angels’, by the way) of a handful of our parishioners.  And oh yes.  It is Valentine’s Day; a day full of symbols of love. The usual ones, of course, include hearts and flowers, little cupids and those flirty candy hearts with sayings such as “U R Hot”, and “Spank Me” on them.   Quite a full plate of things for which we can give thanks here this morning. 

      But as odd as it may sound, if you were in Rome today, you might be doing your Valentine’s Day shopping at the hardware store, not the Hallmark store.  That is because in recent years, it has become fashionable for young lovers in the Eternal City to take a romantic walk on the Ponte Milvio Bridge, where they profess their love by wrapping a chain around one of the lampposts, securing it with a lock and then throwing the key into the Tiber River. It symbolizes their eternal, undying, locked-together love, perhaps foreshadowing the day when both will adorn their lives with a marital “ball and chain,” as that unfortunate old expression goes.  

      Inspired by the popularity of Federico Moccia’s romantic novel Ho Voglia di Te (I Want You), the practice became so popular that the lampposts were threatening to plunge themselves into the river because of the weight of all that hardware. Unlike the city of Florence, which banned the practice and promised to fine any moon-eyed couples who attempted to chain up public property, Rome took the more romantic approach and put iron posts linked by chains on the Ponte Milvi. Lovers may now attach their bonds of love to these larger chains as a kind of rattling monument to love itself. 

      But on this Valentine’s Day, we might pause to wonder whether a chain and lock are really the best symbol for a loving relationship. Sure, there’s the whole idea of being permanently bonded, which is a good thing when it comes to marriage. But the image of a chain also implies some kind of slavery or prison from which you cannot escape. Pop music, for example, seems to see the chain as being more painful than romantic. Back in 1988, the pop hit “Chains of Love,” which Erasure sang, in an upbeat, ’80s way, was all about breaking the chains of love as a good thing. Some of you of a certain age might recall Pat Boone’s 1962 ode to “Chains of Love” which begins: “Chains of love have tied my heart to you. Chains of love have made me feel so blue.”   That’s not exactly the sentiment that you might want on a Valentine’s Day card – or a chain for that matter. 

      Taking this out of the romantic realm for a moment, it would be easy enough for me to make the obvious point that when Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday that “God is love.” It would be fairly easy for me to speak about all of the servant language that accompanies discipleship and how serving God involves making a bond of love.  

      But in this week’s epistle reading, St. Paul seems to be echoing Pat Boone more than Ponte Milvio. “Now the Lord is Spirit,” writes Paul, “and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17, italics added). For Paul, God is not about locking us up tight and throwing away the key but about using love as a liberating path to freedom – freedom to be all that we were created to be. To put it in other words, it isn’t chains that we are looking for – it’s Christ.  

      In the third chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul goes about the challenging task of reinterpreting symbols from Israel’s past, namely the stone-inscribed tablets of the law of Moses, as a kind of chain of love that could hold the covenant between God and Israel together only up to a certain point. Although the Law of Moses provided the boundaries for the covenant community, it had become a “ministry of condemnation” (v. 9) and, ultimately, “the ministry of death” (v. 7). The bond of the old covenant had become rusty and broken through Israel’s disobedience, having lost the “glory” that had once shone brightly on the face of Moses (v. 7). A new love letter from God was needed, one “written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (v. 3).  

      This “new covenant” (v. 6) came in the person of Christ, who taught that the kingdom of God was a revolution of love that would ultimately free the whole creation from its bondage to sin and death. Jesus’ death and resurrection would usher in the “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), the “permanent” glory that has come and is coming in Christ (3:11). It is this “hope” that enables those who are in Christ to “act with great boldness” (v. 12).  

      Notice how the Old Testament and gospel readings for this week provide a solid foundation for Paul’s joyous proclamation. The presence of God, the work of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit all result in transformation, which one of the reasons that we use the propers for the Feast of the Transfiguration this day. Moses is transformed as he comes down the mountain with the law, his face reflecting God’s glory. Jesus’ glorious transfiguration on the mountain left the disciples stammering at the connection between Jesus and the towering figures of Moses and Elijah – a solid connection between the old covenant and the new. Coming down the mountain, Jesus would begin his march toward the cross as the continuation of God’s great mission embodied by those two great Old Testament figures. No hearts, no chains, no silly little candy sentiments can compare to the symbol of the cross as our ultimate icon of love. 

      What Paul is expressing here is nothing less than God’s mission in the world – a mission that’s embodied by and finds its climax in Jesus. Thus, the “ministry of justification” (v. 9) isn’t simply a kind of theological valentine to a few individuals who have discovered the way to a distant heaven. Rather, it is a proclamation of God’s plan of liberation for all of creation. In his book Justification, N.T. Wright says that “God had a single plan all along through which God intended to rescue the world and the human race, and this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah.” The old covenant was necessary so the new covenant would build upon it as part of a missional plan of redemption.  

      In addition, Paul makes the point that God’s Spirit brings “freedom,” but what kind of freedom is it? Well, here’s where we have to recognize that while the old covenant has been replaced by the new covenant in Christ, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re free to do whatever we want, whenever and wherever we want to do it. The new covenant still has moral, ethical and missional components to it that require our assent and our obedience as a response to God’s love and work on our behalf. But, in a way that is decidedly counter-intuitive, obedience is the foundation of our freedom.  

      E. Stanley Jones, the great missionary to India in the first part of the 20th century, and author of The Christ of the Indian Road, put it this way: “The first thing in life is to obey, to find something, or rather Someone, to whom you can give your final and absolute allegiance. Where do I bend the knee is the ultimate question. For everybody obeys – money sex, society, self. … But [people] do want and do need freedom. How do they get it? The aviator is free to fly, provided he [or she] obeys every moment the law of flying. Freedom through obedience. Then total freedom is through total obedience to the total order – the kingdom.”  Pretty heavy stuff for Valentine’s Day, I admit. 

      But, to put it another way, the more we live into the mission of God, the more we engage the Spirit and allow God’s Spirit to work in us and through us, the more we are freed up to realize our true purpose as citizens of the realm of God and people of the new covenant.  

      On this Valentine’s Day, when a lot of you will be expressing your love for the special people in their lives, it’s a great time for us to remember the bigger picture. God loves the whole world and calls us to love it with the same kind of sacrificial, joy-filled and transformational love that God has demonstrated from the beginning. God has set us free in Christ, and it’s up to us to use that freedom to participate with God in making the kingdom a reality “on earth as it is in heaven.” 

      So I will be so bold to suggest that instead of heading out to an overpriced brunch with your sweethearts, those of you with romantic thoughts in mind bight consider making a different kind of statement this Valentine’s Day by skipping the candlelit dinner and giving the equivalent money to relief work in Haiti via the Missions Offering envelope found in your bulletin, or to the Island food pantry. Instead of trying to find the perfect gift for your sweetie, perhaps you might instead gift your time to someone who may be lonely on this for what is for many people the loneliest of all days. While taking that romantic walk along the beach, maybe you “coo-some two-somes” might consider picking up some trash or do a little creation care. This is a great opportunity for us to break the chains of sentimentality and cultural obligation and instead get serious about loving God’s good creation.  

      And that’s a pretty awesome practice to adopt as we prepare to enter the season of Lent!  Amen.

       
Sources: 
 
Jones, E. Stanley. A Song of Ascents. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1968.  

Popham, Peter. “The chains of love and a Roman headache locks.” The Independent, August 13, 2007. independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-chains-of-love-and-a-roman-headache-locks-461353.html.  

Wright, N.T. Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision. Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2009.