Link to a service sheet HERE.
The readings for the 14 February, the Sunday before Lent, are below. The usual source for links to our readings were not available for this Sunday, but they may be found on Oremus. The Church of Ireland translation for the Psalm is given below.
2 Kings 2:1-12
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9
Psalm 50:1-6
1 The Lord, the most mighty God, has spoken *
and called the world from the rising of the sun to its setting.
2 Out of Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth. *
our God comes and will not keep silence.
3 Consuming fire goes out before him *
and a mighty tempest stirs about him.
4 He calls the heavens above, *
and the earth, that he may judge his people:
5 ‘Gather to me my faithful, *
who have sealed my covenant with sacrifice’.
6 Let the heavens declare his righteousness, *
for God himself is judge.
Collect of the Day
Almighty Father,
whose Son was revealed in majesty
before he suffered death upon the cross:
Give us grace to perceive his glory,
that we may be strengthened to suffer with him
and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
If we were in church today, and able to sing, we would sing hymns about love. “Love divine, all loves excelling” comes to mind as a good one. “Amazing grace” is another. A couple years ago, around this time of year, we held an Evensong service with readings and hymns on the theme of love. The reason, of course, is that it is Valentine’s Day, a day about love.
Now Valentine’s Day, the way we do it, is about romantic love, with gifts of jewelry, flowers, chocolates, and so on — though a recent news article recommended that we skip all that and just give our valentine a good steak. I won’t make any recommendations myself. I’ll leave that to you.
We treat Valentine’s Day as a secular holiday about romantic love, but it is actually based on a real saint. After all, it is, technically, Saint Valentine’s Day. Not too much is known about St. Valentine, except that he was a priest or a bishop and was an early Christian martyr, sometime in the third century. Stories about him say that he was jailed for being a Christian, and that his jailer challenged him to restore the sight of the jailer’s daughter, and St. Valentine did. The jailer, who was a judge, and all his family and household were baptized as a result.
Other stories say that St. Valentine was caught marrying Christian couples and helping Christians who were being persecuted. Eventually he was jailed by Emperor Claudius, and when Valentine refused to deny Christ, the Emperor had him executed. The story is that before he was executed, he sent a note to the judge’s daughter, whose sight he had restored, and signed it, “Your Valentine.” Whether it was a romantic note or not, we don’t know, but the legend is that this is where our romantic Valentine’s Day notes come from.
Some churches around the world do remember St. Valentine on 14 February. This year, the 14th of February is another special day within the church year. It is the last Sunday before Lent, that season of self-examination and repentance that we observe each year as a preparation for Easter. I’ve heard a few jokes from people recently that we have been in a year-long season of Lent, with the Covid-19 pandemic. But the 40-day season of Lent is about to start again, on Wednesday, and so today, we read about the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop.
What happens here is that Jesus goes up a mountain and takes with him only his three closest disciples — Peter, and the brothers James and John. And there Jesus is “transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white.” And with him appear Moses and the prophet Elijah. The disciples are terrified, Peter starts babbling, a cloud overshadows them, and there comes a voice from the cloud, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.” And suddenly everything returns to normal. Jesus tells Peter, James, and John not to say anything about the event until after he has risen from the dead.
It may not seem like it, but this story of the Transfiguration of Jesus is actually a tale of love. Not romantic love, of course, but there are many ways to express love other than romantically. It is a story of Jesus’ love for his three closest disciples, to take them with him up this mountain.
It is the story of God’s love for the disciples, to allow them to be witnesses of this wondrous event, and to give them a clear message that Jesus really is God’s Son. (How often do we long for clear messages from God?)
It is a story of the disciples’ love of Jesus, to go with him, to accept what they had seen, and to keep quiet, as he told them to do.
And it is a story of God’s love for the person of Jesus. After the Transfiguration, things change. Jesus’ sight is set on Jerusalem, where he will be arrested and crucified. That is why we read of this event before we begin the season of Lent: to remind us of God’s presence on the mountaintops of our lives and experience, before heading into the trials and tribulations we inevitably face at some point. For Jesus, God reveals him in all his real glory, before he heads to death.
Several years ago, when we had that Evensong on the theme of love, we heard readings and sang hymns about love, as I said. Some were on the theme of God’s love for us. Some were about our love for God. Some were about our showing love to one another, as Christians. And we started with the simplest song of all, one of the first religious songs that many children learn — I know it was true of me: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
The Bible, you see, is one long love story — a love story between human beings and God, and mostly a story of God’s love for us. It may not seem that way at first glance. The Bible is full of tales of war and betrayal and oppression and all sorts of human sin. It is full of stories of people turning away from God, ignoring God, and of God being angry with human beings because of their folly. But the path of love is never smooth.
And the way the Bible story of love ends is with the story of Jesus. It tells of God coming among us in the person of Jesus, and then showing God’s love in what Jesus said and did while he was with us, by telling people that the kingdom of God is among us and within us, and by curing our diseases and forgiving our sins. And then God’s love was shown in Jesus going to the cross, rather than protect his own life or turn away from God himself. And then God raised Jesus from the dead, to show that God loves human beings enough to give us new life, a new start, rather than let us be overtaken by sin and evil and death. And then instead of leaving us with no comfort and no guidance to go forward in life, God sent the Holy Spirit to us, a continuing sign among us that God continues to love us.
Yes, it is a love story — tumultuous and intense, but that is love. The response from us is to love God. It’s not always easy to do; we might get confused and distracted. The Apostle Paul reminds us, if we think the good news of Christ is hidden, that “it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts” so that we know the light of God’s glory in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, God is sending us a valentine, “Be mine.”
So may the light of God shine upon you and within you. May God light the path before you in times of uncertainty. And may God give you the knowledge and the conviction that God’s love is revealed to you in the person of Jesus Christ and available to you through the power of the Holy Spirit.