HEALING: EMBRACING JOY
Genesis 2:15-17; Genesis 3:1-13; Psalm 100; John 16:16-22
February 26, 2006
By Rev. Dr. Jeanne Knepper


When four friends gathered and the conversation turned to their religious practices, one asked the others, “How do you decide how much to give to God?� “Well,� the first friend replied, “I pay my bills and all my bank charges, set aside money for recreation and beer, and figure, whatever God gives me beyond what I want is what I give to God.� “I have a simpler system,� the second friend said. “I draw a big circle on the floor, stand in the middle of the circle, and throw all my money in the air. Whatever falls outside the circle is what I give to God.� “I don’t believe either of you,� the third friend replied. “ I’ve got a very close relationship with God and know that everything I have comes from God’s blessing. So I put all my money, everything I have, into an offering plate and throw it up to God. And anything that comes back down, I know God wants me to keep that!�

Are we like that, knowing utterly that God loves us and letting that knowledge carry us to a sort of smug belief that God wants us to have it all? Do we imagine that a God who asks nothing of us can command our respect, our love, our lives? Or do we sometimes wonder if there might be more to life than being showered with all the coins and things we can claim?

Today, we celebrate what we are calling Mardi Gras Sunday. We made that name up, you understand, to recapture the spirit of Mardi Gras at a time when we gather for worship and life together. You see, Mardi Gras really means “Fat Tuesday;� but today isn’t Tuesday. Still, we do the best we can.

Several ancient church traditions come together this week, traditions we are going to observe through our small celebrations of work, laughter and joy, all in preparation of a time when we recognize, during Lent, that not all of life is reward and happiness.

If I say the word “Carnival� to you, what does it bring to mind?—[Time for answers]. Do you know that Carnival is another name for this season, a time of preparation before Lent? What do you think the word Carnival means?

Surprise! It means ‘carne vale,’ or “farewell to meat.� In the medieval church, the period of Lent was a time when everyday people remembered Jesus’ preparation for the choices that would lead to his death by making sacrifices themselves. Initially, Lent was a period when people seeking baptism and people seeking to return to the faith community prepared themselves to enter the Body of Christ. They did this through a period of fasting, the 40 days before Easter spent in abstinence from all meat and animal products. In addition, the people observing Lent fasted entirely during the daytime, eating only one meal a day, after sundown, something like the fasting of the month of Ramadan that Muslims observe. In time, however, the demands of the fast were relaxed, so that people could eat after 3pm by the 800s, after Noon by the 1400s, and then at any time of the day, but with abstention from meat and animal products. Then it became from meat, with dairy products allowed. Then fish were also allowed. In 1966, the Roman Catholic Church relaxed the necessity to fast during the period of Lent, naming only Ash Wednesday and Good Friday as days of fasting, although the Eastern Orthodox tradition are still much more strict in its observance of Lent.

Pope Gregory the Great, who lived in the sixth century, established Ash Wednesday as the beginning of Lent. By doing this, he asked people of faith to spend a time of fasting that echoed the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness before undertaking his life of ministry and service. If you decide to check out the numbers, you will find that there are in fact 47 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. This is every Sunday is observed as a mini-Easter and is not part of the 40 days of penitence. But, surprise again, because we come together on Sundays, we will observe the season of Lent on Sundays—another little reminder that church traditions are not written in stone.

Well, this may have been more history than you wanted on a Sunday morning. What does it all have to do with our celebration of Mardi Gras, and more importantly, with our lives?
Easiest questions first. If Ash Wednesday was the beginning of an extended period of fasting, then the three days before Ash Wednesday were spent in a great frenzy of feasting and visiting from house to house. Remember, if you will, that in much of the early church, the fat eaten in common diets—butter fat—is an animal product. For 40 days, there would be no consumption of meat, dairy, butterfat—what better time for feasting, and how better to use up all the rich foods in the household than with great feasts of pancakes, butter, meats? Hence, there arose a tradition of pancake suppers on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, as well as a tradition of giving lavishly from one’s stores on the three days before Ash Wednesday.

Did you know that he tradition of preparation for Lent involved cleaning—to clean out all the dairy and meat and fat products,--feasting—to eat up all that food, and finally, giving to others? And at what better time could this come. For behind all the talk of 40 days and preparing for Easter, there was another reality of life. Late winter and early spring are times of hunger in traditional agricultural communities, especially those in northern latitudes. Think about it—if you went outside today to search for plant food to eat, you’d find little that grows in this season. Only the plant foods that had been stored from the season of harvest would be available just now. And the poor would have had less to store. Likewise, cows cease to provide milk sometime during the winter months and cannot be milked again until they have “freshened� after the birth of a calf, which happens later in spring, when the new grasses are growing. The end of winter/beginning of spring was a harsh time for the poor.

In the midst of this reality, the religious duty, incumbent upon everyone, to rid the house of meat and fats and to engage in great feasts and parades and festivals—carnivals—was a way to ensure survival for the hungriest, as way to insist that everyone would share in the remnants of food left in the larders of the wealthy. If Lent was time when all of the faithful would confront the realities of sin, mortality, and falling short; it was preceded by a time of recognizing that we are mutually responsible for one another.

We are called to love ourselves, our neighbors and God. Today, we will prepare to enter into a season of focus on what it means that, even as we recognize that we fall short of who we would like to be, we still claim our connectedness to each other and to God. Today, we will clean house, as a faith community, and think about the abundance that we might be sharing with those who have less. Today, just now, I am going to pass out a reflection sheet on cleaning house, and challenge you to consider whether it might apply to your life this week. During this season, there will be other hand-outs, all designed to help us move along our own pathways of growth and change. None of this in mandatory; all of it is an invitation. but I hope it is one that you will take seriously, for it could lead to a life far richer, freer, and more joy-filled than we could hope to find.

In our searching for a life of happiness and joy, I am reminded of an earnest young Methodist who left the sanctuary after deep prayer and cried out, “Oh God, make me one with everything!� Standing near-by, a street-corner hot dog vendor hurried to comply, quickly serving up a hot dog with mustard, sauerkraut onions and relish. Embarrassed, the Methodist dug out his only money, a $20 bill. As the vendor turned to the next customer, the mystified Methodist questioned him, “But isn’t there change?� “I thought you’d know,� replied the hot dog vendor. “Change comes from within.�

Today, in this place, we have received an invitation to enter into the Realm of God, right here, right now. It will involve change, always, and also great rewards, as we come to understand, even more deeply than before, that we can choose to live, here and now, as the people of God, as a church of welcome and joy, feasting and sharing, laughter and service.

Amen, and alleluja!

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