"The Church’s Valentine," the senior sermon of Scott Jones, from the Diocese of Southeast Florida, given on February 14, 2007, in Christ Chapel

February 14 th is a Lesser Feast day. Today we celebrate the lives of St. Cyril and St. Methodius, missionary brothers to the Slavic peoples. Certainly, these 9 th century men were great saints deserving of a day of remembrance in the Church.

But, need I remind you, today is also Valentines Day.

It’s funny that our culture recognizes Valentines Day, but no longer does the Church honor St. Valentine, this “patron saint of lovers” whose legendary life gave rise to this holiday. You see, about 40 years ago the Church’s commemoration of St. Valentine fell victim to ecclesial downsizing. In a larger effort to pare down the number of saint days of purely legendary origin, the Roman Church removed St. Valentine's Day as an official observance from its calendar.

If you’d like to know more about St. Valentine and how this holiday and it’s traditions came to be, I would direct you to the current issue of Anothervue, our seminary newsletter. On the front page, Alexandria Gomez has done a great job chronicling the history of one the “most popular of saints”.

While the world today offers its own version of love expressions to one another, what kind of Valentine can the Church offer? What message of love does the world hear from us?

It is comically ironic, that I of all people stand before you this day to preach my senior sermon on the topic of love. After all, I’m not the most romantic person, and even that might be an understatement. For the 22 years of my marriage to my wife Yolanda, I haven’t developed much of a reputation for romance. In fact, she might even say that I don’t have a romantic bone in my body. Isn’t that right honey?

I have to admit that I’m the kind of “Romeo” who thinks that Hallmark can say “love” a whole lot better than I can. I believe the $10 flower bouquet bought from a guy standing in the street on my way home that evening, says “I care” just as much as the expensive ones delivered from the florist. Candy? Who needs it when we’re still trying to take of the extra pounds from the Christmas Holidays. And why should we endure a crowded restaurant on this day when a homemade meal cooked by my lovely wife would be just as good, mean just as much, and be less of a hassle….for me anyway.

I guess that to be standing here before you on this day is proof that God’s sense of humor, like Cupid’s arrow, is forever sharp and on target.

Naturally I look towards today’s readings for a “Word from the Lord” on this subject of love. Yet, I don’t see it at first glance. Where do we find love in our reading from 1st Timothy? Someone please tell me where love is hiding in Mark’s account of the challenge to Jesus authority by the Temple establishment or in his parable of the Wicked Tenants?

Help! Where is Paul’s love discourse from 1 Corinthians when you need it!

Unlike St. Valentine, neither Jesus, nor Paul (or whoever wrote that first letter to Timothy) could be accused of being romantic sentimentalists. If there is a message of love contained in our readings, it lies between and beneath reproaches and shrouded in do’s and don’ts.

Any love here sure doesn’t read like a Valentine card!

And unlike a Valentine expression of love, with its sappy, schmaltzy words of affection, these hard readings challenge us to firm, righteous action. Love is well disguised in these narratives.

In the letter to Timothy, Paul has left Timothy behind in Ephesus for the purpose of bringing false teachers in the Christian community back under control. Paul wants to re-establish a righteous order to the church. Timothy is charged with bringing unity to a community that is threatened by the dissident teaching of insiders and the suspicion of outsiders.

The letter is filled with instructions, rules concerning Christian living and social interaction. It seeks to establish guidelines of respectable behavior in the Church. It exhorts its leaders to enhance the Church’s mission and image in the larger world. In its task to unify the Church, it calls the Church leaders to be responsible and accountable.

The portion of Timothy’s letter we read today begins with a description of the Qualifications of Bishops and Deacons. How nice that some of our bishops who have joined us this morning had a chance to hear this! It holds these leaders of the Church to a strict level of right behavior. Paul is much concerned with the strength of their character and actions, and how it impacts the outside world’s view of the Church.

Paul outlines to Timothy that Bishops “must be well thought of by outsiders, so they may not fall into disgrace and the snare of the devil”. And we Deacons and future Deacons aren’t off the hook either. We are commanded to “gain a good standing for ourselves”.

Paul believed these measures were needed to strengthen the Church’s witness to the truth of God’s love. It is a sort of a “tough love” approach he felt was necessary to ensure the health of the Christian community.

On the cable network, Comedy Central there airs a satirical news program called the Daily Show, hosted by the comedian Jon Stewart. Some of you may be familiar with it. If you haven’t seen it before, it spoofs the news of the day, lampooning current events and public people. I find it to be a very clever and funny show and their satirical insights often expose painful truths. One evening a couple of months ago, I had the TV on in the background when I heard something that caught my attention.

“Episcolypse Now!” Stewart blurted out, these same words projected as his graphic backdrop. He was making an obvious association with the classic Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now.

I cringed, but like a good train wreck, had to watch to see what was coming next. The headline was the lead-in to the story of the 8 parishes in the Diocese of Virginia which had voted to leave the Episcopal Church. Our Church was portrayed to be in chaos and crisis, and the studio audience loved it.

Great! Here we go again! It was yet another incident involving our Church, which was being negatively profiled by the media and broadcast to the world. Our dirty laundry aired in public once more. Now the Church’s conflicts were being compared to the madness and misguided purpose that characterized the Vietnam War.

It was also a painful truth. Torn by disunity and disagreement, we have become our own worst enemy. As the comic strip Pogo put it, “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”

The consequence of such public conflict is that the church’s “Valentine” message, the truth of God’s love and plan of salvation for the world through Christ, becomes hard for people to hear. The behavior of our Church today cannot be furthering the cause of making the Church “well thought of by outsiders” as Paul had hoped.

 As leaders in the Church we have a responsibility to do something about our Christian witness. If we are to make known to people, the love of God, we must stop our fighting and learn to live with our disagreements and differences. The integrity and effectiveness of our witness is dependent upon that. We can’t afford to be distracted from the mission of Christ’s Church.

Not too long ago, I came across an editorial cartoon, though I don’t recall now where I saw it. In the foreground were the dominant figures of two bishops, one clearly Episcopal and one Anglican, dressed in full ecclesiastical garb. They were vigorously arguing with one another.

What were they arguing about? Were they quarrelling over the controversies within the Anglican Communion? Maybe they were questioning one another’s authority, like the chief priests, scribes, and Temple elders tried to do with Jesus in the Gospel today?

It doesn’t really matter what their dispute was about because, it wasn’t the point. The real meaning could be found in the illustration’s distant background. There, a solitary, featureless, stick-like silhouette was visible; the faint image of a forgotten and starving human being. In that moment, our hypocrisy was exposed and our Church indicted.

Our Church’s preoccupation with its own internal dissensions has caused us to neglect the needs of those around us for too long. In the process of working out our own beliefs, we seems more concerned about who is right and who is wrong on matters of biblical interpretation, while we desert the real and urgent call of Christ to feed a spiritually hungry and malnourished world.

At this time, I would like to address my classmates who will be soon be ordained and called to the high standards Paul has set for us. As we live into our calling, Christ alone should be our focus. The Church can send a real message of love to the worldby testifying to the truth of his deity, incarnation, resurrection, ascension, and return. It is what the world desperately needs to hear now.

This, I believe, is the essence of Christ’s love to be found in our Scriptures and that which the Church is to testify to. Christ offers an unconditional love to the world that lives with difference, loves despite disagreement, and invites all to share in his fellowship. In our own future ministries, my hope is that we strive for a Church that models for the world, that kind of love.

Paul charged Timothy with upholding “the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth”. That truth is found in the mystery of Christ that all of us here are called to proclaim.

Our mission is to make known each day, the saving love of Christ Jesus who came into the world as God’s living and eternal Valentine, given for each one of us.

It is a Valentine that has always existed; that has been written to us since the beginning, which has been sealed by covenant, announced by Divine messenger, delivered by God’s Spirit, and signed in God’s own blood.

When we proclaim Christ to the world, its mysterious message of love unfolds before us, and it reads:

He was revealed in flesh,

Vindicated in spirit,

Seen by angels,

Proclaimed among Gentiles,

Believed in throughout the world,

Taken up in glory.

All done for us.

I don’t think anything says love more than that.

Amen.