By Goodie Bell

Friday is Valentine's Day. If you have been to the grocery store and seen the displays of candy or pulled up Amazon.com and gotten advertisements for Valentine's Day deals, you are probably aware of this already. However, you may not recall that Valentine's Day has its origin in the Christian feast day for St. Valentine.

Who was St. Valentine? Well, that's a good question. There are records of at least two Christian martyrs named Valentine during the 3rd century. There are legends about a priest in Rome who comforted persecuted Christians, witnessed to an emperor, performed clandestine marriages and restored sight to the blind. But perhaps the best answer we can give is, "Valentine was a follower of Jesus who died for the faith."

By the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer associated the celebration of Saint Valentine with the courtly love tradition. The association of St. Valentine with romance persisted, as Shakespeare, and John Donne, and our own Hallmark attest. But the Valentine's Day celebration of romance derives from the celebration of a very different kind passion and a different kind of love: the Love of God.

This month, we have preached three sermons on 1 Corinthians chapter 7. You may have noticed that Paul says a lot about sex, singleness, and marriage, but he does not mention romance. You can look elsewhere in the Bible to get a more complete picture of marriage and romance (like the book Song of Songs!). But it is clear that romance does not dominate Paul's thinking about sex, marriage, or even love. Paul's ode to love in 1 Corinthians 13 (Love is patient, love is kind...) calls on the members of the body of Christ−not just husbands and wives− to love one another.

So let me suggest two alternative ways to celebrate St. Valentine this year:

First, consider how you might show your appreciation not only to a spouse or significant other (if you have one), but consider how you might demonstrate your appreciation and love for fellow members of the body of Christ.

Second, attend to the voices of those followers of Jesus who have forsaken romance but known love. To that end, I leave you with some words from Julian of Norwich.

Julian of Norwich (1342-1416?) spent the last forty years of her life as an anchorite (hermit), writing down her Revelations of Divine Love:

"God, of your goodness, give me yourself, for you are enough for me,
and I can ask for nothing which is less which can pay you full worship.
And if I ask for anything which is less, always I am in want;
but only in you do I have everything....
For he is everlastingness, and he made us only for himself,
and restored us by his precious Passion and always preserves us in his
blessed love..."
(Chapter Five, Long Text).

How's that for passion?