You are worth it!

Planning

This would be an ideal service/event to hold in a different setting and/or as an outreach opportunity.

The following are a few ideas:

• Hold the service in a café or café style and adapt it so it is a bit more informal – you could serve drinks and pastries/croissants, use pop music rather than hymns and just use one or two of the ideas here such as the quiz, cupcake decorating activity, Bible reading or Chocolat clip rather than the whole service.
• Advertise the service as a welcome to people who have recently moved into the community.
• You could share food afterwards with a heart shaped theme, making the tables look celebratory and special by adding balloons or red roses.
• Hold the service as an afternoon tea party or in a residential home or sheltered accommodation.

You will need:

• The Message translation of 1 Corinthians 13.1-7 is available from Bible Gateway (use quick search for Bible passage and translation)

• For the cupcake activity you can buy silicone heart shaped cupcake moulds and piping syringes and sprinkles from Lakeland or try your local cookware shop. You can buy tubes of coloured writing icing, sprinkles and heart-shaped chocolates from most supermarkets.
• You can buy heart-shaped post-it notes from Amazon.
• Chocolat is available on DVD, 2000, Miramax, directed by Lasse Hallström, rated 12 – suitable clips could include Chapter 4, 'The Radical Atheist', Chapter 6 'Fasting and Favourites', or Chapter 7 'Know Your Enemy'. If using the clips during the service please check their suitability for your audience first.
• Joanne Harris, Chocolat, Black Swan, 2000, ISBN 978 0552998482
• Sam McBratney, Guess How much I Love You?, Walker Books, 2007, ISBN 978 1406300406

Music

If you are holding a service or event for people who are not used to being in church, hymns and songs can be off-putting. You could consider choosing a more 'secular' pop song to sing along to or just to play.

Music quiz suggestions

(Songs with 'love' in the title: people/groups have to guess song title and artist from a clip a few seconds long):

    'I feel love' – Donna Summer
    'When I fall in love' – Nat King Cole
    'I can't help falling in love with you' – Elvis Presley
    'I want to know what love is' – Foreigner
    'I will always love you' – Dolly Parton/Whitney Houston
    'Crazy little thing called love' – Queen
    'The power of love' – Huey Lewis and the News
    'I'm not in love' – 10 cc
    'Tainted love' – Soft Cell
    'I just called to say I love you' – Stevie Wonder
    'You've lost that lovin' feeling' – Righteous Brothers
    'Caravan of love' – The Housemartins
    'Baby love' – The Supremes
    'Pride (In the name of love)' – U2
    'Like someone in love' – Björk
    'Love somebody' – Robbie Williams
    'It's only love' – Simply Red

Music for reflection (or while doing an activity such as cake decorating)

    'Can't buy me love' – Beatles
    'You have a friend' – James Taylor
    'Che gelida manina' – Puccini, La Bohème
    'Un bel di vedremo' – Puccini, Madame Butterfly

Hymns/songs

    God's Love is the Best Love (Flintstones tune)
    We lay our broken world (CG)
    A man for all the people (C&P)
    God is love, his the care
    Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love
    Love divine, all loves excelling
    God is love, let heaven adore him
    The love of God comes close
    Carer's Song (by Anna Briggs, 1999, in Praying for the Dawn , ed. by Ruth Burgess and Kathy Galloway, Wild Goose Publications)
    Caring, Sharing (BBP)
    Christ in the Stranger's Guise (WGWG)
    I am for you (WGWG)
    In the bustle of the City (C&P)
    Now we sing to praise love's blessing/the Hand of Heaven (Iona Abbey Music Book )
    Think, think on these things (Someone's Singing Lord )

Gather

Prepare the space

Create a display with some beautiful red fabric. Add some chocolates (a heart shaped box would be ideal if available or some heart shaped chocolates) and some red roses. Or if using a more café style/serving lunch, decorate tables with a red rose in a vase and place a heart-shaped chocolate in each place.

Gathering words

Today we are celebrating Valentine's Day by reminding ourselves of God's gift of love to each one of us that says 'we are worth it'. In turn we are called to share that love with others saying to each person 'you are worth it'.

Call to worship

God stands with arms wide open,
ready to welcome us home with an enormous hug.

God sits with hands held out,
ready to listen to our troubles and sooth our worries.

God whoops with hands punching the sky,
ready to delight and celebrate all that we can be.

So come, worship the God who first loved us.
© Clare McBeath, 2010 www.dancingscarecrow.org.uk

Gathering activity

Devise a musical quiz to get people into the theme. Either play some music clips and invite people to put up their hand and call out the singer/group and the name of the song or by getting small groups to confer and write the answers down. Give the table that got the most correct and the table who got the least correct a small box of chocolates to show that love is not dependent on getting all the answers right.

To devise the Musical Quiz you could use any 10-12 song clips on the theme of love but try to chose songs from different decades (including this one!) and different genres e.g. pop, opera, musicals. See Planning for suggestions.

Prayer

You are worth it – a prayer of praise and confession

God who turns the world's values up-side-down,
we think of our world
where un-needed luxuries
are sold with promises
of increasing our feelings of self-worth.
And we thank you that you love each one of us
here and now, as we are.

God who turns the world's values up-side-down,
we think of our world
where beauty's secret,
we are told,
is hidden in a jar of face cream.
And we thank you that beauty comes from within
and is a reflection of your love for us.

God who turns the world's values up-side-down,
we think of our world
where love is shown
by the size of the bouquet,
or packaging of the chocolates.
And we thank you that your love is shown
in flesh and blood, community and stories.

God who turns the world's values up-side-down,
forgive us when we look to the world
to find our self-worth,
forgive us when we value others,
according to their looks, or their age, or their mobile phone.
And we thank you that we receive your forgiveness and your love
and hear you say to us, 'You are worth it'!
Amen.
© Clare McBeath, 2010 www.dancingscarecrow.org.uk

or

Valentine's Day Opening Prayer

People skipping in the blustery February wind,
heading for the florist's shop or newsagents on the corner,
choosing a gift with care and attention
that will speak the words 'I love you'.

God delights in her children's love,
setting the snowdrops quivering on the breeze,
taking pleasure in thoughts of giving
as the winter sunshine paints a smile across the sky.

For Valentine's Day breaks into the February grey,
an opportunity to celebrate midst the gloom of the receding winter,
flowers and chocolates and cards and kisses,
and we celebrate the people we love.
Amen.
© Clare McBeath, 2008 adapted www.dancingscarecrow.org.uk

Open the Word

Today we draw on the American and Canadian traditions around Valentine's Day where cards are given not just to partners but to family members and friends as well.

While it is easy to be cynical and see this as a good marketing opportunity for the chocolate companies and card retailers, it is also a good counter balance to the rather unhealthy British emphasis on Valentine's Day as exclusively about romantic love, expressed in red roses, slushy cards and pink chocolate boxes. This can make many people who are not in such a relationship, or whose relationship has hit a difficult patch, feel lonely and low in self-esteem. So the emphasis today is on God's love for each one of us as a model for how we should, in turn, love others. It also subverts the advertising slogan that suggests we are only worth it if we can afford the latest shampoo or face-cream and says to each one of us that 'you are worth it'. So what does the Bible, God's word to us say about the nature of love?

Ask people to close their eyes and listen as someone reads 1 Corinthians 13.1-7 from The Message.

Explore the Word

Watch one of the clips from the film Chocolat suggested in Planning, or read the few pages from the book.

Reflection

In the book and film, Chocolat, written by Joanne Harris, the central character, Vianne Rocher, arrives in a French village and sets up a Chocolaterie, a chocolate shop situated across the square from the austere medieval-style church. Much to the dismay of the priest and the mayor, she arrives at the beginning of Lent, when they are urging their community to repent and to fast. Somehow this seems to bring out the worst in everyone and the cracks in relationships are starting to show.

In contrast, Vianne and her daughter set about their chocolatière's craft with great enthusiasm and love, cleaning and painting the little shop and creating delicacies never before seen in the village.

One by one, Vianne welcomes the reluctant but curious villagers into her shop, gives them chocolate and hears their life's stories, their problems, their pain. And gradually, gently, as the story unfolds, she encourages them to make changes in their lives, to rebuild relationships or move on from broken ones. She welcomes those others reject and treats them with the same love and respect. And the more the church condemns her lack of restraint or respect for the church's teachings, the more people are drawn to her and to one another.

The grumpy grandmother gets to know her grandson and appreciate his talent for drawing, the elderly man after decades musters up the courage to date his childhood sweetheart. The young woman escapes from her violent, drunken husband and a little girl makes new friends. A married couple rekindle romance, travellers are met with a smile and music and dancing are heard on the edge of the village.

Isn't this what the God of love is about: the healing of relationships, the blossoming of love, the helping out of friends in need of a home, the welcoming of outcasts and foreigners, the quashing of prejudice and discrimination? Isn't this what a celebration of Valentine's Day should be about – our demonstrating God's love for each person that says very clearly, 'You are worth it!'

Respond to the Word

Try to use the one or two ideas that best suit your congregation or the wider community if you are holding more of an event, or a service inviting those who don't usually attend church.

• Instead of taking up an offering pass round a basket of chocolate hearts and invite each person to take one to take home and give to someone.
• For an evening or midweek event watch the film Chocolat (12) and talk about which character best lives out God's love for each person and how that love changes each person and their relationships with others.
• Make cup cakes using a heart-shaped tin or heart-shaped silicone cup cake moulds and decorate them. Alternatively if you want a quicker activity that everyone could be involved with give each person a ready made heart-shaped cup cake or biscuit and invite them to decorate them. You could provide a piping syringe of icing on each table, some tubes of writing icing and some sprinkles or sweets for decorating. Invite people to swap their creations with someone else. You may need to have a sugar free or wheat free alternative for anyone with special dietary requirements.
• Make 'You are worth it' cards from coloured paper, collage materials such as textured papers, scissors and stick glue. You could then invite people to write 'You are worth it' on the front or inside of each cards and send them to someone who needs to know we are thinking of them. If you have a prayer board or prayer book make sure each person named receives a card – you could pass the cards round to make sure everyone signs them.
• For your prayers for others (for a café-church or outreach type event aimed at those not used to being in church you could call this a 'time to think of others') hand round heart-shaped post-it notes and invite everyone to write or draw a name/person or situation who needs praying for (or who needs our thoughts). Gather the post-it notes up and place them on a large heart drawn on flip-chart paper or place them around your display at the front. You could use the Valentine's prayer of response.
• Buy a packet of 'love heart' sweets, place them in a bowl and ask people to choose one. Now invite everyone to have a go at making their own 'love heart' by cutting out different colours of paper. Ask everyone to write on their own love heart a word of phrase to speak of God's love for them.
• For younger children read the picture book story Guess How Much I Love You? It is very likely that adults will enjoy this story too.

Valentine's prayer of response

At the entrance to the supermarket, a woman stands
with a collecting tin and a box of fabric daffodils
reminding us that life is not always
a bed of roses or a box of chocolates.

So as we gather today,
we pause to remember those who will find today difficult
due to illness and side effects from toxic treatments
or waiting for the results of the latest tests.

As we pass the advertising hording,
we see a heart-shaped chocolate box
with a boxing glove instead of a chocolate
reminding us that romantic love is not all it is cracked up to be.

So as we gather,
we pause to remember those who will find today difficult,
where relationships are broken or full of pain
or where our search for love leaves us feeling rejected and alone.

In the florists we see a loved-one's favourite flower
or a wreath of white flowers that spell out a name;
a son's giant-sized photo on the side of a pub,
the words, 'our hero', surrounded by red poppies.

And as we gather,
we pause to remember those who will find today difficult,
those whose loved ones are no longer with us
but are held in your eternal embrace.

God dries our tears,
and smiling, reaches out to take our hand ,
to soothe and caress our broken lives
and slowly make us laugh again.
Amen.
© Clare McBeath, 2008 adapted www.dancingscarecrow.org.uk

Send out

You're worth it responsive blessing

God shows us love through friends and family,
in cards made with crayons and glue
and sticky homemade cupcakes.
God knows that beauty is not found in a pot of face cream
and sends us out into the week saying,
'You're worth it.'

Jesus, shows us love through stories and parables,
through sharing food and friendship
with those who have made a mess of life.
Jesus knows that value is not found in the status society gives us
and sends us out into the week saying,
'You're worth it.'

The Holy Spirit shows us love in unexpected places,
in random acts of kindness and welcoming of strangers.
The Spirit knows that worth is not found in bunches of flowers,
In slushy cards or boxes of chocolates
and sends us out into the week challenging us to say,
'You're worth it.'

So let's send each other out into the week
By saying the words, 'You're worth it' to one another.
'You're worth it!'
© Clare McBeath, 2009, adapted www.dancingscarecrow.org.uk

or

Chocolat Blessing

May the God who created chocolate and laughter,
shared stories and friendships ,
go with us.

May the God who embraced the vulnerable
and healed the broken hearted,
go with us.

May the God who challenges injustice
and encourages us to love our neighbour,
go with us.

And may we live our lives as Jesus lived,
celebrating life in all its fullness.
Amen.
© Clare McBeath, 2006 adapted www.dancingscarecrow.org.uk

These resources were first published in issue 51 Jan/Feb 2011.