The day of love

It is terribly bad luck that Lent begins on Valentines Day.  It is the death knell to every abstemious vow that involved chocolate and probably several other things that are perhaps best not speculated about . . .

Ash Wednesday seems a dive of a day by comparison with its romantic counterpart.  Who'd ever give an Ash Wednesday Card?

Try this.

It's not going to revive the flagging High Street retail sector, is it?

Yet of course the two days are linked by more than a calendar coincidence.  They are linked by love.  The Valentine love that overwhelms but can never last and the other a Calvary love that died but can never die.

The Abode of Love

Valentine's Day brings us to but one subject - love. 

London has an endless supply of weirdness for those who have a mind for such things. On Valentine's Day I can think of no more deserving place to ponder than the Georgian Orthodox Cathedral whose vast steeple overlooks Clapton Common, these days surrounded by synagogues of the Stamford Hill Jewish community.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, this was not always a Georgian Orthodox Cathedral.  Just one look at it tells you it was formerly a Church of England parish church (or just possibly a Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist or less likely Baptist imitation of one).

Wrong.

Notwithstanding its appearance, this building has never been any of those kind of churches and has written into its former trust that it can never be used by the Church of England or the Salvation Army.  In the early 21st Century it passes for just another old religious building, but at the end of the 19th century it was, to put it mildly, the centre of attention.

This 'Ark of the Covenant' as it was called, was the London location of the Agapemonites.  Together with a vast communal estate in Somerset and various minor outposts in Britain and Europe it represented the influence of an End-Time preacher who centred his followers on the Song of Solomon.  Mr Prince's followers included several wealthy Victorian merchants and several more Victorian single and separated women. 

Like countless before, contemporary with and following his day, Mr Prince gathered a following of those who knew they would not die for they were the last generation.  As it was to turn out they did die and so did he, but that was just the start: into his shoes had stepped the ample figure of Mr Smyth-Pigott, formerly of the Anglicans and Salvation Army (note above) under whose charismatic auspices this phenomenal building was erected.  And later besieged by rioters.

The Abode of Love (the community) and this building (the Ark of the Covenant) gave the Victorian press plenty of juicy speculative material of preachers with multiple wives (spiritual brides) and various goings on imagined.  Well, not entirely imagined because a spiritual bride fell pregnant . . .

As the Church of England worries itself sick about same sex marriage it might look a little closely at a building from which it is banned in Upper Clapton and figure that even a church with a high steeple is not enough to give spiritual dignity to an entity that has misunderstood the kind of love the church should really be talking about to the world.

Lurv

His love to you has been MOST FREE.

It was unbought, and even unsought. In Hosea it is written, "I will love them freely". and surely, if ever there was a case in which that verse was transparently true, it is in my case. Was it not so in yours? What was there in you that could have won his love? If he could see any beauty in me, it must have been first in his own eyes. They say that love is blind; and certainly, though our heavenly bridegroom is not blind, yet he was somewhat kinder still; for he saw our deformities of sin and folly, and yet he loved us notwithstanding, all.  Let us love him because he first loved us. Beholding the generous upbringing of a love which we could not deserve and would not seek, let us freely love in return.

This love of our Lord's, so free, so full, so forceful, was and is MOST AMAZING.

We shall never bear better or more surprising news than this, that Jesus loves us. Nothing more surprising ever came to me than to learn "he loved me, and gave himself for me." Others may, perhaps, see what is wrought by the Lord's grace in us, and this may make them the less astonished at the Lord's love towards us; but we know ourselves, and see our blemishes as well as our beauties, and hence we know that there is nothing lovable in us by nature. We are amazed at our sin, and more amazed at his love. We shall go on reading in the golden Book of Christ's love throughout all eternity, and the longer we study it the more we shall be astonished that ever the Holy and the Glorious and the Ever-blessed should have espoused in love such insignificant, polluted, and fickle-hearted creatures as we are.

The love of Jesus is love MOST PRACTICAL.

Christ loves not in word only, but in deed and in truth. There is a greater force to my mind in Christ's deeds of love than in all the words which even he could have uttered. His deeds emphasize his words. Words cannot to the full express the mind of love: language filters from the lips, while feeling gushes from the heart. Jesus has written out his love in living characters. "O Master! never man spoke like you, and yet it was your most eloquent discourse when you said but little, but stretched your hands to the cross, that they might be nailed there. Then you poured out your heart, not in oratory, but in blood and water.  Said I not well that his is practical love? It is love full of tenderness, rich in bounty, lavish in thoughtfulness, firm in constancy, strong as death, mightier than the grave.

Think, again, that it was PERSONAL LOVE.

The Lord Jesus Christ loves each one of his people as much as if he had not one more. All the heart of Christ goes out to each one of us. The great sun shines today on this round earth, and while it pours its limitless flood of light on all, that one tiny daisy, as it bathes in the brightness, is able to say, "The sun is all mine." Though there be myriads of flowers in the meadows and the gardens, yet this one flower may freely possess all that the sun can give, or rather all that the little flower can receive, as much as if it were the only flower that blooms. So Jesus is to me, to you, to each one of us, all our own; neither lose we anything by the fact that he is all the own of so many millions.  The Lord Jesus, his own self, delighted in us, even in us who are not worthy to be named in the same day with him. Glory be to his holy name for ever!

C H Spurgeon September 1887

The Food of Love

I know Valentine's Day is important but I also know that jet engines are important.  It doesn't follow that I understand them or know what to do when one comes near.  (Actually when a jet engine comes near it is a good idea to duck . . .)

I read a survey that explains what women don't want for Valentine's Day

Don't buy clothes.

So I didn't buy clothes!

Don't cook a heavy meal.

So I didn't cook.

Don't treat her as though she's any other woman.

So I didn't.

Instead, we went shopping in the local supermarket for our week's groceries . . .

Happy Valentine's Day!

'Valentine' comes from the word for 'worthy'. Many of the first Christian martyrs had this name, and it is a reasonable guess that they earned the name for their bravery before they were put to death. St Valentine's Day celebrates martyrs of that name.

What has that to do with Jack and Jill giving each other kisses and chocolates?

Not much perhaps. But love and worthiness (or 'worship') go together quite well when focused in the right place . . .