The Valentine challenge: Will churches support inter caste marriages?

As we come across Valentine’s Day messages, loved up snaps of couples in courtship and already married, it will bid well to go back to the story of St. Valentine. Whether mythical or not, we are reminded of the story of the young priest who gives support to young couples who wanted to get married. The decree of Emperor Claudius that young men should not get married as he wanted a strong army is then challenged and opposed. Valentine is thrown into jail and later tortured and killed for this.

Churches and other religious institutions oppose Valentine’s Day because of the way it has been commercialized and has become a means of selling merchandise including red flowers, cards and other gifts. Special candle light dinners, vacations and offers are also added to the list of temptations. Young couples feel forced to spend money on each other to prove their love. The commercialization of this day can indeed be opposed even though I reject arguments that Valentine’s Day itself is against Indian culture.

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’ observation that inter caste weddings are the real remedy for breaking caste can be read and interpreted for Valentine’s Day. But what is really happening in India? Marriage murders and honor killings are the rule of the day even in 2024. Either men from a Dalit background are killed for marrying a girl from an upper caste or a girl who belongs to an upper caste is killed for marrying someone from a lower caste or another community. These killings are not limited to certain parts of India only as was seen in 2018 in the case of the torture and murder of Kevin Joseph in Kerala or as late as 2023 when a 14 year old girl in Kerala was tortured by her own father and given pesticide due to which she later died. All because she was in a relationship with a boy from another community. In all cases, the justification of the parents is that they killed because they loved their child!

1 Corinthians 13:6 says that love does not rejoice in wrong doing but rejoices in the truth. Since when has the church started being against love? Or is the church and are other religions thinking of caste over and ahead of God and love? Valentine’s Day is a time to go beyond celebrations and to light a candle for all the couples who deeply loved each other and yet could not live together because of the narrow mindedness of their family, religion and even church. The passion shown by churches to talk about and preach about their community and not about our Lord Jesus means that caste and community matter more to us and this should be called out and rejected at any cost.  

Today is a day of taking a stand, of supporting, of being strong so that those in love can be together. A priest should be a custodian of love, a custodian of couples who are in love and a custodian of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need more Valentine priests in our midst. Priests who can reflect the zeal of St. Valentine, who gave his life for the happiness of young couples. The church has to also come clear on this and stop preaching importance of community and caste and give protection, legal help and spiritual guidance to young couples from different castes and communities who want to get married. The church has to become a safe space for love, the preaching of love, the enacting of love and for people in love.

Valentine’s day : A spiritual explanation of a popular celebration

Valentine’s day has over the years become a celebration used to sell cards, flowers and goodies meant for couples to exchange. Many shops convert entire floors into Valentine’s themes with red being the dominant colour. There are also many groups which come out against the celebration, calling it a Western import and a blot on Indian culture. This being the case it always comes out, with or without the story of St. Valentine, as an unwanted and avoidable youth celebration.

But just like Father’s day, Mother’s day and even Independence day and Republic day celebrations are a remembrance of several things, Valentine’s day is also a remembrance of something. From that perspective Valentine’s day can also be a learning for age groups other than the young and single.

Love and relationships are also cornered as something which single women and men do and it is seen as having nothing to do with married couples and the aged. So much that love is not seen as a significant aspect of marriage but instead fidelity, faithfulness, morality and longevity are. This brings me to the point that celebrations about love should be seen as an opportunity to reenergize and reevaluate existing relationships.

The criticism of celebrating Valentine’s day is always centered around the fact that it has nothing to do with a marriage or a serious relationship going towards marriage but is rather a non-serious attempt of couples professing their love to a losing cause. This is why Valentine’s day is looked at with animosity and this is also why love marriages are looked at with animosity by traditional families. Even though times are changing, this animosity still exists and parents are worried about such celebrations. But if such traditions become part of family exercises in which the aged, middle aged and young are a part of, then this animosity will change.

What does the bible say about love? 1 Corinthians 13:13 says “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” and it shows that love is the foundation of all religions. 1 John 4:7 says “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” again suggesting that without love we cannot know God and this is a clear message to families who are against love. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” meaning that our very salvation is based on the fact that God loves us. The basis of every family and church thus must be love. We must do everything on this basis and whenever we question love, we are questioning God God’s self. Learning from this, we can question commercialization in society but we can’t question love, we can question erosion of true love but we can’t question love, we can question love which ferments abuse in relationships based on gender and caste but we can’t question love.

In today’s culture perhaps the biggest problem is that religion overall and Christianity specifically is adjusting itself to popular notions of security, gender relations, caste, race and class. A Valentine’s day celebration is an opportunity to pray and write that love is not a problem but the abuse of love in unequal relationships is. We need not jump onto the band wagon of love haters and groups which question love but rather need to read the bible closely and meditate on what God wants us to do.

In this context a Valentine’s day prayer would be

Lord of love, help me to pray for love that I may preach and live the gospel of love which Christ Jesus did. God of love, help me to be in active relationships of love in my house, school, college, work place and church which will make me sacrifice for the benefit of others. Holy Spirit, help me question love haters who reject couples and relationships, and thereby lead us together to spread the love of God on the cross. Amen.   

Picture credit: 4mygodsglory.wordpress.com

Will you be my Valentine? The sermon

February 14 is a very special day for young people in India and all over the world. There is also a spring in the step of young men and women in the UTC campus when you ask about Valentine’s day. Many will tell you that there is no such thing and all this is hype by greeting card companies and other people interested in pushing their products through on this one day. The flower vendor will tell you that he is getting flowers from Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan and that is why it is expensive today. Luckily Milli, our ever ready chapel steward has used his influence to buy red flowers. Sam Anbrasu, our gizmo head knows that he can project a red rose at no cost and Bright, our bhajan secretary knows that he can replace the rose with his smile.

The men and women on campus who talk about Valentine’s day are like a mad man in a mental hospital who confesses to the ward boy that he was the one who told all the patients that someone is offering free biriyani at the entrance of the hospital. The ward boy then asks the man as to why he who cooked up the story is also running to the entrance. He replies “What if someone is really offering biriyani at the entrance?” This is the same feeling on campus. Everyone knows it is not important or we should say that it is not important but in every mind and heart there is a voice saying “What if a red rose comes from some where?”

There is an element of curiosity here. What kind of a sermon can come out of Valentine’s day? The truth is that Valentine’s day does indeed provide the opportunity for reflection from the gospel. I turn my attention to one of the fringe fundamentalist group’s in India and what they have said about Valentine’s day. According to them this is a day when lust, immorality, perverted love and obscenity make an appearance and it is a conversion of Indian culture into Western culture. It makes you think that people here should be thankful if all the mentioned only makes an appearance once a year!! That should make the fundamentalists happy. They also go on to say that St. Valentine was an old priest who fell in love with a young girl. Both these points seem quite preposterous to say the least. But more on that later.

What seems equally interesting is that the some elements of the church and secular society also join hands in saying that this is a celebration which is morally degrading, against Indian culture and against the gospel. In the secular realm this is a celebration with not much thought given into it apart from being a celebration for young couples to come together and even profess their love for one another. The word I love you comes in the form of heart shaped balloons, cards and small toys. A man saw a woman sitting alone on Valentine’s Day. He thought she needed his company and went up to her and told her that she need not worry and that he will do anything for her as long as her wish is three words long. He expected her to tell him to say “I love you.” She looked expectantly at the man, the man closed his eyes to hear the special words and then she said “Clean my house.” Hope this is a clue to all the married men on what kind of gift to give their wife.

When religious elements say that such celebrations should be shunned and done away with completely, what does the gospel and church tradition tell us and why is it important for the church today in India to use the opportunity of this day to think about ministry in the church? Rev. Dr. Vincent has already explained a bit about the World Association for Christian Communication. As part of the Christian principles of Communication brought about by the WACC one principle is that Communication preserves culture. It is important to note that culture is one of the backbones of society. It helps society to identify its roots and look at certain facts. The erosion of culture is not as is suggested by fringe fundamentalist elements in society. The truth rather is that facts have been conveniently forgotten and have been replaced by half-truths and lies. There was early research that suggested that ok and Coca Cola were the most recognized words in the world. Coca Cola must have done quite some advertisement to reach there and what they did was a change in culture. We believe advertisements just like we believe stories. It is a culture pressure. I have already told a story in a couple of classes last week. I would like to relive the story here. It is about Mr. Sharma. Someone tells him that his daughter has run away with someone. In Indian culture that is humiliating and Sharma can’t stand it and he jumps out of the 18th storey of his office. By the 14th floor he realizes that he is not married. By the 12th floor he realizes that he never had a daughter. By the 8th floor he realizes that his name is not Sharma but Varma. Varma it turns out jumped for something which was not even true.

I would like to look at two traditions or story’s today evening which shed some light on Valentine’s day. They are both connected with the church. The first is about the tradition of St. Valentine. Valentine was a Roman Priest at a time when there was an emperor called Claudius who persecuted the church at that particular time. He also had an edict that prohibited the marriage of young people. This was based on the hypothesis that unmarried soldiers fought better than married soldiers because married soldiers might be afraid of what might happen to them or their wives or families if they died.
The idea of encouraging them to marry within the Christian church was what Valentine did. And he secretly married them because of the edict." Valentine was eventually caught, imprisoned and tortured for performing marriage ceremonies against the command of Emperor Claudius. There are legends surrounding Valentine's actions while in prison. "One of the men who was to judge him in line with the Roman law at the time was a man called Asterius, whose daughter was blind. He was supposed to have prayed with and healed the young girl with such astonishing effect that Asterius himself became Christian as a result."
In the year 269 AD, Valentine was sentenced to a three part execution of a beating, stoning, and finally decapitation all because of his stand for Christian marriage. The story goes that the last words he wrote were in a note to Asterius' daughter. He inspired today's romantic missives by signing it, "from your Valentine.” This was then not a romantic card exchanged by a couple but a more spiritual relationship between two people, one who had known God and another who came to God and through that increased the faith of Valentine. It is a mutual relationship of love which has been brought about by faith. In Matthew 22:37-40 love comes out as the foundation of Christian faith. “Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ This is what happens between the priest and the young lady. This is also why he signs off “Your Valentine.” Bringing love into the realm of morality is wrong and that is what is happening when fringe groups attack the celebration as a Western celebration. It may be true that youngsters are under peer pressure to do something on Valentine’s Day. But instead of bringing out the real meaning of Valentine’s day and what it means, attacking it will serve no purpose.
Valentine’s day should be seen as one opportunity among many to make a difference in the life of someone. It is not a celebration but a living out of one’s faith as is lived out on all other days. Identifying this becomes one of the important aspects of how religion can play a positive role in society and be a voice which identifies what humans can be to each other rather than what they can’t.

The second story or tradition is also from the early church. The early church contrary to what many people in the church think was not a conservative church. It was rather a believing and living church which reached out to people and that was also partly why the church survived. It is fascinating to revisit Tertullian who said that the Romans said of the early Christian community “See how they love one another.” This for me is so inspiringly strong that it draws a parallel with Valentine’s day but more than that it tells us as to how our life should be. “See how they love one another.” Today this has changed into the Christian community being one of the most nagging communities. I asked a church member what he was going to do today. He said he has to take his wife out otherwise she will keep nagging with him. A man once asked a Swami. Sir do you have a formula or a mantra by which my wife will stop nagging? If I come early she nags, if I come late she nags, whatever I do or don’t do, she nags. What can I do? The Swami told him that there is no mantra to help him. But he can start enjoying the nagging. How can I do that? He asks him as to how it was when he first drank wine. It was of course bitter. But now it is not. A few years later the man meets the Swami and the Swami asks him how his wife is. The man replies “She is now a wonderful nagger.” The man said that he started enjoying the nagging. But on the other hand the wife was not nagging but only talking sense to the husband which he now realizes after accepting her.

Justin Martyr talked of the church and said “We bring everything to a common fund for the needy, we pray for our enemies and live together with other races and country folk because of Christ.” Clement said that “A person who has come to know God impoverishes himself/herself for another and someone elses pain becomes our pain and hardship. That is why we tell couples they are mad and blind.

Rodney Stark in his book “The Rise of Christianity” says that the early church did something peculiar. They took care of the poor and the sick, they honoured women and gave them dignity and the church was a multi ethnic local church movement. He further says that Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world. Christianity revitalized life in the Greco- Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of relationships able to cope with many urgent problems. This was why the Romans exclaimed “Look/see how they love one another.” St. Matthew 25:35-36 says “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” This is the essence of Valentine’s day. It should not be seen as a limited relationship between two people but is a community relationship between many, all coming in to help one another. Amen.

The woman and Jesus on Valentine’s day

Another Valentine’s day is coming to an end with lots of flower sales and card exchanges. Lovers and couples are made to believe that they have to buy each other something to make the cut this Valentine’s. Love and sex will be most on the minds of the young and the old. But the modern day love and sex don’t need true arousal as they are ready made five minute mixes which are over even before they start. Relationships could also follow the same pattern. Luke 7: 36-50 could be interpreted as the valentine expression of a woman who is perceived as a sinner. She brings in a new notion to Valentine’s day as not just a ready mix day but one which explores the various senses of a human being.

Worship involves the activation and constant interpolation of the five senses of a human being. The senses include touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing. We obviously do not give much thought to the activation and the coherent expression of these five senses and many a time maybe even forget about their existence. Nevertheless these senses when used in various combinations bring forth very effective interaction. Two of the important senses are touch and smell.

1. Touch is one of the most active steps of sense activation that we can undertake. In many of Jesus’ miracle acts what he does goes beyond the miracle because it involves touching those who were not touched. This is not just a spiritual and inward touch but a clear physical touch which involved challenging the prevalent system of untouchability which was practised in various forms. When Jesus arrives at the Pharisee’s house there seems to be no indication that anyone received him with an introductory touch. Rather what we see is a woman referred to as a sinner who comes with an alabaster jar of perfume. She wets Jesus’ feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair, kisses them and pours perfume on them. As we usually concentrate on the woman who lived a sinful life in the town what we ignore is the woman who touched Jesus with her physical and sensual touch. Our feet are one of our most sensitive yet most ignored body parts. The sense we feel when we are touched by someone at the feet is indeed very arousing. Yet we usually refer to the touching of the feet as a mark of respect (as is done in Indian culture) and forget that it also has a very distinct and clear meaning which goes beyond just mere respect. In the church the main part of touching is the kiss of peace, which again should have been a kiss but is now a shake of both hands and even that is done half heartedly. At times members of the opposite sex try to avoid touching each other in this otherwise very meaningful ritual practised in church. The washing of the feet during passion week also becomes an act of service and is never seen as anything beyond that. The kissing of the feet by the woman adds to this sensual awakening. How can then a woman who had led a sinful life bring about a sensual awakening? Her love as mentioned by Jesus covers any sin that she may have been accused of. So what for many may seem as a passage of servitude, discipleship, and confession may very well also be seen as a passage of love, passion and sensuality. When everybody goes for Jesus’ upper body, the woman goes for his feet. The church is always seen as shying away from touch. We refuse to touch the untouchable, we refuse to acknowledge that touch is sensual and we in the mean time run the business of touching souls, while the bodies wither away. Maybe we need to look at scriptures more publicly and sensually for us to come to a different understanding of touch. Valentine’s day is a perfect punching bag for different religious groups and I wonder whether it is only because of the commercialisation of Valentine’s day or it is because of the refusal to acknowledge that expressing one’s sensuality is not religiously acceptable?
2. Smell is another of the senses which can arouse our feelings. Aromatherapy is now marketed in India as a spiritual and mental well being that we can feel when we use certain products which arouse and bring out our sense of smell. In India we live amidst the dichotomy of smell. We have what we can call the rich produced smell and what is the poor natural smell. The woman in the passage has a strange mix of both! She wets Jesus’ feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair and then pours perfume on them. Her tears are her own and they are as therapeutic for her as for Jesus. The drops which fall on Jesus’ feet may have caused a second arousal. She wipes off the tears with her own hair and then puts perfume. The base smell which she provides is her own. This is followed by the constructed smell of the perfume. The perfume adds to the olfactory delight that Jesus was being put through. Truly a great experience! The church more or less relies on incense to provide for the awakening of the sense of smell. This is complimented by the hundreds of smells emanating from the bodies of the congregation. If we care to take a dig into the variety of smells we will be aroused into action in church. What actually happens is that we turn off our smell sense and in our aim to attain holiness we keep away from everything which may awaken our minds. But think of using the smell as a welcome arousal of our senses to function better and to espouse this great feeling of love just like the woman who toyed with the feet of Jesus? In essence what happens in church is that we take away the senses of people or we try to numb them. This keeps our bodies in a state of non-orgasmic existence while our spirits are taken into ecstasy. The woman in the passage arouses us to our senses just like she may have aroused Jesus. Are we ashamed by our arousal or are we tickled to action? As others ignore Jesus, the woman welcomes him by arousing him and Jesus likes it! This Valentine’s the usual debate will continue. But Valentine’s or no Valentine’s are we willing to accept the closeness that people feel towards one another. Are we willing to allow others to be aroused? The flowers are only one particular way of doing this but there are other smells as well. This rounds up as the smell of love and warmth felt towards one another as well as the smell of passion which couples will sense and feel towards one another. Who are we to prevent this? The Pharisee tries to unlike the touch of the woman but Jesus reminds him of the woman’s love which refuses to subside. I am aroused, are you?

Will you be my Valentine this lent?

Yesterday in church I preached about preparing for the great lent. But I also preached on Valentine’s day. Obviously one would immediately resent any relation between the two. I would agree that Valentine’s as it is celebrated now does not have much in common with lent. But before we come to an obvious conclusion, let us look at both separately.

The great lent in the Jacobite Syrian Orthodox church starts after the Sunday worship, with the wedding at Cana as the gospel reading. The lent actual starts after the evening prayer on the same day. We are initiated into the great lent with thoughts from the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine to save the wedding attended by his mother Mary and his disciples. The act of Jesus suggests love, trust, mystery and satisfaction. The love for his mother and the love for the people makes Jesus intervene, although he himself says it is not yet his time. His mother Mary despite his disinterest maintains a deep and profound trust in him when she tells the helpers at the wedding to do as he says. What happens then is a total mystery, just as worship or qurbana is a mystery. The ordinary water turns into wine. How this happens is beyond us. Finally the chief steward tastes it and declares that it is so good. He goes on to say that usually the best is given at the beginning but in this case the best is saved for the last. The satisfaction is for those who have waited till the end!

Valentine’s day is a celebration in itself and is especially popular with young people. But the myth or even history about Valentine is quite different from what we see now. Sifting among the various stories, one which is believable is one in which the priest Valentine went against the emperor’s edict that young men should not marry because he wanted them to be in his army. The priest goes against this and encourages couples to get married. Truly by this account, it is a call to a life long commitment!

Valentine’s day now has become some kind of a pressure for girls and boys, men and women. The pressure of going out with someone and being a part of a cultural performance. But I wonder whether this is how it is meant to be. The church is helping to make people understand that love is a more permanent feature and not just some one off thing once a year. This is also why we can connect Valentine’s day and the great lent.

Of course this is not an attempt to impose something on to the younger generation. What they want to do is obviously their own decision. The church or priests like me cannot judge them based on this. But what we can do is to offer our interpretation of Valentine’s day. And at the end of it all, it won’t just be a one sided version of love and love between young couples only, but a more comprehensive definition of love and how this concept can help us. We can use the concept of Valentine’s day to understand, profess and spread love to not just young couples, but to all kinds of people, groups and dispensations. The love which is compassionate, involves trust, is a mystery and gives satisfaction for those who wait patiently.