Today is Valentine‘s Day and on this day, two saints called Valentine are commemorated. One was a bishop of Terni (who was beheaded in 270 A. D. in Rome), and the other was a priest or physician who was martyred the year before in 269 A. D. Neither saint seems to be responsible for the tradition of courtship and love we‘ve come to attribute to this day. It has been theorized that it may be a continuation of the Roman pagan mid-February season of Lupercalia, a festival in honor of the goddess Februata Juno, when boys drew by lot names of unmarried girls. Birds were also said to choose their mates on that day. But regardless of its origins, Valentine‘s Day is meant to remind us of the most enduring quality in the world, that which should be practiced not just one day of the year but EVERY day and in EVERY relationship.

Not long ago, I was discussing the subject of marriage with someone when the person asked me what had been the most important discovery I had made in my OWN relationship with Rose, my wife. I thought about it for a few seconds and then told him it was the realization that there is nothing in the world that makes ME happier than when I do something for her that makes HER happy. It was discovering that my GREATEST sense of enjoyment and satisfaction comes in seeing a smile on her face and hearing laughter in her voice. Thus, it was grasping how my OWN happiness was derived from making somebody ELSE happy other than myself, and that the more I made HER happy, the happier I became.

I suspect God‘s love is very much the same. When God created Adam, he also created a helpmate for him and it would be through their mutual love for each other that he would derive his OWN sense of love and fulfilment. However, we are only able to love others ONLY because God first loved US; any love on OUR part is always a RESPONSE to what God has ALREADY done for us and not a means of EARNING his love. As St. John writes in his First Epistle, “We love, because he first loved us. ” It is impossible to understand, not just the nature of God and his love but just what it means to be a CHRISTIAN and lead a real CHRISTIAN LIFE without grasping the importance of this truth. In it lies the essence of all grace and forgiveness, the fact that God‘s activity on our behalf and in our lives begins and ends with GOD taking the first step and with US doing nothing more than accepting it and responding with love and gratitude for it. It‘s always about GOD‘S efforts and never our own. If we can understand this and more importantly allow our lives to be guided by this truth, then we might be able to honor St. Valentine‘s Day, not just every February 14th, but even MORE, EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR!

This past Sunday, I preached a sermon I entitled “God‘s Love For the Stranger” based on Leviticus 19:33,34 and Luke 10:25-37. It was really a biblical response to the great debate going in our country over the issue of immigration and the status of refugees. Presently, we are witnessing the greatest humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II and we are told that it is only going to get worse. It has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced more than 11 million from their homes with half of those affected being children. Within Syria itself, 95% lack adequate healthcare, 70% lack regular access to clean water, the economy is completely shattered, and four-fifths of the population now live in poverty.

Of course, the church--as the conscience of our culture—must continue to remind our leaders of the importance of looking after the poorest and most vulnerable of the world‘s citizens. When I ministered in Syracuse, NY, our church housed rooms filled with furniture for incoming refugees to the area, and in Waterloo, Iowa, we supported and gave free office space to Clementine Msengi—herself a refugee from Rwanda—and her Bright Moves Network- an organization she created to help assist other refugees adjust to their new country. Meanwhile, I worked with local Catholics to help establish “Hospitality House” in downtown Waterloo- a center to which homeless people can come to relax and receive free meals, take a shower, get their clothes washed, and receive counseling before returning back onto the streets. My church there continues to deliver hot meals each week so that people who own nothing but the clothes on their backs might experience some relief and know there are people in the world who DO care.

Our Old Testament lesson expresses God's attitude towards the stranger in our midst. In Leviticus 19, God instructs Moses to not only love their neighbor even as they love themselves, but they are to take it one step further and love the stranger residing in their midst: "When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall do him no wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, AND YOU SHALL LOVE HIM AS YOURSELF; for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. " Israel was to accept and love the foreigner in their midst because there was a time when they THEMSELVES were foreigners, strangers in a strange land, yet God never ceased loving and caring for THEM. Now they are to show similar care and concern towards the stranger in THEIR land.

The Old Testament word for "stranger" did not mean a transient or person passing through; nor did it necessarily refer to a foreigner in the sense of a non-Israelite. The Hebrew word "ger" meant a stranger who dwelt under the protection of a family or a tribe to which he or she did not belong, a term that was later broadened to mean anyone who lived in complete freedom in the midst of a community in whose customs he or she did not participate. Quite often, a Gentile--that is, a non-Israelite--would move into Israel, but because that person was not a Jew and therefore forbidden to participate in any of the Jewish festivals or ceremonies, he was still to be considered a "brother" within that community. One was accepted, not on the basis of his or her religion, but solely because he or she had been created by the very same God. Thus, strangers were put on an equal footing with the Israelites in all matters of charity and justice.

In the New Testament lesson, we have the familiar story told by Jesus of the good Samaritan. In short, a man is traveling from one city to the next when he is robbed, beaten, and left for dead. Passing by and doing nothing were a Temple priest and a Levite (the equivalent of a church elder), while a much-despised Samaritan not only stops and binds the man‘s wounds, he puts him on his horse and takes him straightway to an inn to be cared for. Then the next day, he returns and gives the inn keeper enough money to care for him until he has fully recovered. After finishing his story, Jesus asks the lawyer, “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He responds, “The one who showed mercy on him. ” Jesus then instructs him to go and do likewise.

The moral of the story here is that the ones expected to show great compassion in this instance—the priest and the Levite—were the ones who demonstrated NO love, while the man who would have been expected to pass the injured stranger by is the HERO of the story. Jesus redefines the term so that a neighbor isn‘t one who happens to be White and a good American or attends a Presbyterian church or who may live on the same street as we do. Rather, a neighbor is defined by his or her VULNERABILITY, that is, by whatever NEED happens to present itself at that particular time. Jesus reminds us that we all have an obligation to help others REGARDLESS of nationality, race, or religion, and we are obligated to do so precisely because they TOO are God‘s children, and because we TOO were once refugees, that is, until Jesus Christ came and took us in and gave us a NEW home and now we inhabit a kingdom which will never allow us to feel homeless or abandoned or rejected ever again.

What these two texts do is that they serve to warn us that as Christians, we are not to close our eyes or bury our heads in the sand about it, nor must we give in to all the hysteria or the xenophobia--xenophobia being any unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers--that has dominated so much of our political discourse especially where immigration, legal or otherwise, is concerned. As Children of God who at one time were a dispossessed people OURSELVES, our attitudes towards this problem must ABOVE ALL be guided by an abiding sense of understanding and compassion, remembering how our OWN families at one point in their past had been immigrants.

Nicholas Kristof, the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, has been reporting from the frontlines of this crisis and has written, “If you don‘t see yourself or your family members in those images of today‘s refugees, you need an empathy transplant. ” And we ARE to care for them because we know that even Christ HIMSELF was a “stranger. ” As an INFANT, he became a refugee in Egypt to escape the swords of Herod‘s army; as a MAN, he was rejected by his hometown; as a RABBI, he was expelled by his own congregation; and as a SAVIOR, he was killed by the very people he had come to save. As Jesus took strangers such as ourselves--with our varied backgrounds, sexes, and ages; with our diverse nationalities, races, and personalities--and forged US into a living community, so does he ask US to receive those different from ourselves and to give THEM a home. So does he ask US to reach out to the welfare mother with four kids and say, "we will accept you;" to extend our arms to the young addict struggling with his addiction and say "we will help you;" to open our hearts to some disabled adult or mentally-challenged child and say "we will love you;" to open our doors to those of different sexual orientations and say “we will affirm you. ” God makes “love for the stranger” the standard by which we are to measure our commitment; it becomes the TRUEST test of who we are. It, more than any other, reveals to us whether we are IN FACT the “Body of Christ” or some kind of social club that would rather PLAY church than actually BE the church.