by Demi Prentiss

Did you send a valentine to anyone this year?  Did you receive a valentine? I hope it warmed your heart, and that it came to you from someone special.

This year, Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday were only days apart. And in the midst of all that, as the Sunday Gospel, we read Matthew’s story of the Transfiguration of Jesus (Mt 17:1-9).  That intersection of holy days and holidays and God-at-work over the centuries struck me as special.

Steve Garnaas-Holmes’s poetic imagination set my wonderings in motion:

                Transfiguration valentine

Do you know how you shine with my radiance?
Can you hear my name for you?
“My beloved, my delight.”

I said it to you at your baptism;
I whisper it to you every day.
You were born of light.

Sometimes it’s only a mountaintop experience
that reveals it clearly,
but once you’ve seen, you know.

No one can build a monument to it,
no one can capture it,
but it’s there, as secret as the sun.

Do you realize the ancients
walk with you, murmur to you,
cheer you on?

It’s true, from the mountain
you see the cross,
but also the horizon beyond.

Will you go there?
Will you walk in love?
My dearest, I want you with me.

Will you be my Valentine?
Will you take my love
to an uncertain world?

Will you carry my love
like a little red candy heart,
to a world needing to know?

I’m with you.
I love you.
Will you be mine?

Then Gail L. Miller, in Luther Seminary’s “God Pause,” chimed in with words of her own, adding a grace note to Pastor Steve’s “Transfiguration Valentine”:

“…Interestingly, it was [God’s] voice and not the vision that knocked the disciples to the ground and filled them with fear. But just as they were overcome by fear upon hearing God’s voice, they were comforted and encouraged by Jesus’ words to “get up and not be afraid.” “Get up!” Interestingly, in Greek it is the same word as Resurrection! Jesus gently resurrects the disciples this side of the grave, so that they can travel with him down into the valley, into the way things really are….”  

So even when we come down from the mountain and wear the ashes of repentance and mortality – when we’re surrounded, in the valley, with “the way things really are” – we can claim our identity as children of God, beloved and called, equipped by Christ’s gentle call to “Get up!” and go down into the valley, perceiving all around us the presence of Christ.

May you walk your path during Lent with God’s Transfiguration valentine in your pocket. “I’m with you. I love you. Will you be mine?”