Glorious Valentines

Friends, as I’m sure you well know, this weekend marks the observation of a relatively divisive holiday: Valentine’s Day. Some of you are thinking, Wait, how is Valentine’s Day divisive? And if you think that, you’re very lucky. Count your blessings. 

For Sean and I, Valentine’s Day is the day we gird our loins. Our kids come home from school, and everything seems quiet and normal for a mere moment. Then the goody bags of candy erupt over every flat surface in our home. A tsunami of sweets. I spend three to four days on average walking around my house with a trash bag collecting wrappers, the cards the kids didn’t read, the sticks from the lollipops, candies that were discarded after one bite, fruit candies that are now stuck to tables, walls, and floors, and slime (because some kid passes that out every year). FEMA could learn a few things from me. Then, of course, the effects that high levels of sugar have on our dear children. Friday night, I went in Lily’s room to tuck her into bed and found her passed out face down, sticky and surrounded by wrappers. Sugar coma. I turned off the lights, closed the door, and let her recover in peace.

If you think more like my little sister, Scary Aunt Gwen, who’s had her ups and downs in relationships over the years, Valentines Day is Singles Awareness Day, or SAD. She’s happily married now, but when she was younger and reeling from situationships that didn’t work out, she regularly bemoaned how Wegmans and Target would be draped in red and pink displays of candy, stuffed animals, and flowers for your beloved, just rubbing it in. Sean and I have always enjoyed celebrating our relationship and treating one another, but I’ve had a lot of guy friends over the years gripe about the guilt and pressure they feel on Valentine’s Day, amplified by advertisements from perfume and jewelry stores with manipulative messaging: get your partner the perfect trinket or you’re sleeping on the couch.

How odd that this old Catholic holiday–the feast of Saint Valentine–has spun out into all of this. I did some historical research on the man this week, but unfortunately not much turned up. We don’t know a whole lot about him. We know he served the Church in the Third Century CE, but we have two different accounts of how: one that says he was a priest in Rome, and one that says he was a bishop in a city called Terni. In either case, we know that he was martyred for his Christian faith in the year 269. A very popular legend held that, before his death, he wrote a note for his girlfriend signed “your Valentine”, and that this is why we give out Valentines Day cards. Romantic as that sounds we’re about 99% sure that didn’t happen. It’s not backed up by any reliable historian, plus he was a Catholic clergyman, which means no girlfriends.

But, when I started digging into his life and service, I uncovered some interesting things. Saint Valentine is the patron saint of people living with epilepsy, because he is believed to have healed a little girl who was having seizures. He was a deeply supportive friend and neighbor who stood by folks who were persecuted for their faith, helping them find their courage in their greatest hours of need. In fact, despite our romantic associations with the word “valentine”, the name comes from the Latin word “valens” which means strong, brave, and powerful. It’s the same root from which we get the word “valor”. 

If you’re one of the folks who doesn’t love Valentine’s Day, consider this: what if, instead of focusing on the lovey dovey stuff, we spent Valentine’s Day thanking our friends for standing by us when we needed them, for showing us the meaning of valor, just like Saint Valentine?

That provides the perfect segue to this morning’s Gospel reading from Matthew. A mysterious passage about a day that scared the pants right off of Peter, James, and John (good thing they wore tunics). Three of the twelve disciples hung out with Jesus for this moment, a moment that felt utterly ordinary until it wasn’t: come on a walk with Jesus. Sure thing, boss, they were voluntarily homeless, they were always outside walking somewhere. Let’s walk up a mountain. Yeah, ok, why not. Let’s pray. Seems reasonable, this is Jesus afterall. 

GLOWING LIGHT SHOW, GLOWING SHINY JESUS, AND TWO LONG DEAD GUYS MATERIALIZING OUT OF NOWHERE, WITH GOD’S VOICE BOOMING.

I think I understand why James and John said absolutely nothing and cowered like dogs under the bed during a thunder storm. Can’t honestly say I would have done any better.

Matthew reports that Peter was no less terrified, and may have darted under the bed, too, for a moment, but then poked his head out and got curious…is it possible there’s something bigger going on here? Something worth opening our eyes for? Maybe even something worth remembering? Celebrating?

Some Christian folks talk about “glory sightings”. Moments when we feel like we’re seeing at least a glimpse of what God is really like. Moments of profound love, or beauty, or awe. And let’s not make the same mistake as James and John, and assume that those experiences must be mutually exclusive of fear. Awe and fear are two sides of the same coin to God, and the biblical language of “fearing God” means big reverence mixed with big scared.

The best glory sighting story I have comes from a trip to Ocean City, Maryland that I took with Sean way back in 2013. Our last vacation pre-kids. We were at the beach, on the Atlantic Ocean. We went parasailing over the ocean, and 800 feet up, and absorbed at once how magnificent the earth is, and how awful it would be if those harnesses broke and we fell. Then I wanted to see how deep I could walk into the ocean. I got chest deep, with the sun setting over me, and waves crashing at every angle, shoving me in every direction and nearly knocking me right off my feet. Beautiful. Powerful. Scary. Awesome. Lit.

That’s God.

When we have glory sightings of our own, where we come face to face in life with the overwhelming, unexplainable, and kinda terrifying, we can be curious like Peter, and come out and say hi to the Divine, who’s saying hi right back. Sometimes, a glory sighting is this kind of moment, where we feel a compelling, transcendent connection not just with God, but with our ancestors. For Peter, James, and John, that means Elijah and Moses, a revered prophet and a fearless leader without whom their people wouldn’t even be alive. I can’t claim to have ever seen the glittery faces of Elijah and Moses. Nor can I claim that Jesus was ever standing right in front of me, with a lit up neon sign pointing to him saying “Hey, That’s Jesus!” It’s ok to envy this brilliant moment of clarity that Peter, James, and John had. One where God took out the Divine Bullhorn and yelled into it: “Attention attention, that’s my son, listen to him.” Some of us would give up a limb to have such an obvious, undoubtable faith experience.

I don’t know if I’ve truly felt that before. But I can tell about the invisible strings that drop from heaven to tie me to my most beloved ancestors. Not Elijah or Moses, but my Grandma. My great grandparents. John Wesley. Howard Thurman. Walter Rauschenbusch. Sojourner Truth. Jarena Lee. Not people who will be regaled in volumes upon volumes of world history texts (maybe one or two in Wesley’s case). But people who lived and fought and loved and died so that the life I live today is possible.

More than that, more than remembering the moments when my own ancestors in the faith have reached out to connect with me like Elijah and Moses in this morning’s story, I lift up my distant ancestors, my living family, and my dearest friends in the faith who have been my Valentines. Moses was a Saint Valentine for the Hebrews, never giving up on them until they fled slavery in Egypt and reached Canaan. Elijah was a Saint Valentine for the Israelites, proclaiming the truth of God every time they were tempted to give up. Jesus, Peter, James, and John appropriately revered those men for their valor. They also lifted up one another, friends in the faith who kept showing up even when it was hard.

So, consider this: if naming a glory sighting feels like too much, if you feel like you don’t know if you’ve ever experienced something that extraordinary, then don’t worry about that. Don’t focus on the glowing, obvious signs. Instead, look at the ordinary people around you, and name your Valentines. The brave, strong friends who show you your own courage. The friends who stay, and keep showing up. The loved ones who, by their own example and strength of character, show you how to be the best version of yourself, come what may. Because those folks, those Valentines, are also showing us glimmers of the face of God.

Amen.