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Westminster Presbyterian Church
Bradenton, Florida

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Love Letter

Posted by wpcbradenton on February 15, 2010 at 10:59 AM
This is the last in a series outlining and introducing our new mission statement. Our new mission statement is Loving God, Loving Life, and Loving our Neighbors. Read below for a little love...

Love Letter
2 Corinthians 3:1-6
The Reverend Chris Adams
February 14, 2010

Today, of course, is Valentine’s Day!  I hope I am not informing anybody of this little arrival on the calendar, especially you men out there this morning.  If you didn’t know it was Valentine’s Day before you got here this morning, you are in BIG trouble already.

This is a church, and we are prepared to offer you asylum today if you need it.  We certainly don’t want anybody getting hurt out there today...

Since it is Valentine’s Day, the official day for love, I think it’s time for me to profess my love today.  There’s something I have been meaning to say publicly for a while now, and I would like to take this opportunity to make such a statement.  Are you ready?

I love my cell phone!

I mean, this is just about the best little cell phone anybody could ever ask for.  You can get emails, check your Facebook account, watch YouTube videos, listen to music, surf the Internet, order food from Chipotle, and of course once in a while you can even make a phone call.  It’s just an amazing little device.

Does anybody out there know what I am talking about?  Do you have something like this in your life?  

As I said, I love my cell phone.

However, there might be trouble for me on this Valentine’s Day.  I mean other than the fact that my wife will be waiting for me when I get home, after all this silly cell phone talk.  Do you think that asylum would be available for me?

There’s trouble for me, because just this week I realized that there is something I cannot do on my beloved cell phone.  Of all the vast things I can do, there is one thing I can’t.

I can’t write a love letter on my phone.  Now wait a minute you say, you certainly can.  You just said you could send an email with that phone, right?

Now REALLY!  You are not going to suggest that an email could take the place of a real live, honest to goodness, pen and paper, from the heart to the page, love letter are you?

I mean they are not even in the same category of communication.  Again, men, let me give you a piece of advice here this morning on Valentine’s Day.  Don’t even try it; please.  Don’t try and send your wife or girlfriend an electronic love letter.  If she has to download or print it, it’s just not going to work out for you.

I am talking about love letters.  Those like George and Barbara Bush published a few years ago, letters written over the course of their marriage, including times when they were separated by war or other service.

I am talking about Romeo and Juliet, Shakespearean interaction, “How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways...”  I don’t mean to say you have to be poetic when you write, but I do think at least you have to take out an actual pen and paper and write.

I am having some fun this morning, but have you noticed how “out of fashion” love letters have become.  I think it’s my cell phone’s fault actually.  We are so in touch with people at our fingertips, at every moment that I think we have forgotten how to “really communicate.”

Love letters are something I would like to see come back.  How can we lose something so important?  Paula and I used to write such letters.  I still have some of the ones she wrote me when I was at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina or Ft. Benning, GA.  Let me tell you, in those places letters are lifeblood.

In fact, in the past, letters of all kinds were important.  People couldn’t just dial, or text, or email and so they wrote letters.  We can go back into history and see letters and know things that happened.

The Apostle Paul, the author of our scripture lesson this morning wrote letters.  Of course you knew that, if you are a student of the Bible.  You might also know that the scripture lesson today, is actually a letter written by Paul to the church at Corinth, in the ancient world.  This is how Paul communicated with the church, letters!

Today our lesson is a bit of a play on words with letters.  Paul says that he doesn’t need a letter of commendation to go with this letter to the church.  This is the Apostle under attack from his detractors, and Paul is using his best letter writing skills to win the church over, and defeat his enemies.

There were those in Paul’s church that believed that Paul needed credentials and titles in order to have authority to preach and teach.  They would show their letters, letters of authority to challenge Paul, who apparently didn’t have such things.  It was church politics at its best, using ancient letters as communication.

So Paul, turns the tables and tells his enemies, that the only letters he needs are the hearts of those he loves, in the Spirit of the Loving God.  Paul writes a “love letter” of sorts to the church to demonstrate how important they are to him, and how important they are to each other.

Paul says, to those so-called super apostles, that if the people have to read your letters of authority to know that God loves them, then your communication is not even in the same category as that of the Spirit.

To Paul, the love in a person’s heart is what communicates the presence of the Holy Spirit.  A church that loves one another is the mark of a Jesus Christ filled body.  That’s what Paul admires about his church at Corinth, the way they love one another.

It’s classic Paul.  In a written letter, he writes that reading letters are not necessary, because the real letters are love letters that are actually the Spirit on the hearts of God’s people, called the church.  Wow!  That’s deep!  That’s love and that’s Jesus!

So today, on this official day of love, I want to recognize and profess the love of this church.  On this Valentine’s Day, in the spirit of the Apostle Paul, it’s time for all of us to recognize the Spirit of love that lives in a place like this.

Now I waited until commitment Sunday, the day when all your pledges are already written and ready.  I don’t want anybody to accuse us of receiving pledges and writing thank you letters.

And yet, maybe the day when we pledge our commitment to the church is the perfect day for recognizing the love of God that lives and works in a place like our church.

So... here’s my love letter to the church.  Are you ready?

To All the Saints at Westminster Presbyterian Church, grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today is a day for love.  Today is a time, regrettably not observed often enough, for all of us to look around at the blessings of God we enjoy and even come to count on and give thanks to Almighty God.  Today we give thanks for love.

Love is the essence of who we are at Westminster.  When I as a pastor observe love in the people of this congregation, I am more aware than ever of God’s presence in our midst.  I am more aware of God’s love in my own life.  The Spirit of God lives in all of us in love.

When I see a child welcomed, as today in Baptism, I am aware of God’s love in the very same way as when I hear the voices of Happy Birthday sang to a senior member of our little family of God. God’s love is expressed by a full church for a service celebrating the end of a life well lived, in the same way as the church giving hope and a shower of gifts to an expectant mother for the promise of a life to be well lived.  It’s love.

Westminster Church, how you love the least of God’s creation through Family Promise, offering not only a warm, dry place to sleep but a cup of conversation and a embrace of encouragement.  That would be enough love for some, and yet for you it’s not.  There is also Hope Seeds, and Our Daily Bread.  You have loved those at Beth El, and Mission Peniel.  There are children that know love through an adult reader, and youth that are connected to one another in love that goes beyond congregation or denomination.

Look at how you care for one another in love.  To you, it’s only a phone call or a note card, but read from a hospital bed or a graveside seat, it’s the very definition of love.  Oh church, the Spirit of our God lives when love visits the heartsick and the heartbroken.  It’s the essence of who we are in God’s love.

So today is a day for love.  Oh, how I love this church and those that call themselves disciples here in this place at this time.  The truth is, offered again in love, that we never know what the future will bring.  Yet, I believe that if we love one another through all that time and space might bring, we will continue to thrive as God’s own people.  We don’t always get it exactly right, and yet in love we continue to try.

If nothing else happens from this point forward, we can look back and remember the times we loved and were loved at Westminster Presbyterian Church. 

I don’t claim to be a romantic.  I am certainly not in the category of Shakespeare or some other great writer of poetry.  Yet, my expression of love this morning comes from the heart.  I am truly proud to be here in this place working and worshiping together with you and all the saints of Westminster Presbyterian Church.

I really hope I am not informing anybody of anything today.  It’s Valentines Day, but more than that, it’s another Sunday here at church.  You all know how special it feels to be here, that’s not news from me.

We are not the biggest church, the youngest or the oldest.  There are other churches with more activities going on, with more money and more ways to influence the world in which we live.  There are taller steeples than this one.  But we do have love.

As Paul said, as long as we can witness love in the hearts of those around us in the church, then we will know we are successful.  There is nothing else we need than that.

Happy Valentines Day Church!  Thanks be to God for love...

Amen.

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