Shrove Tuesday: A Feast Before the Fast

Shrove celebrates the Christ who has given us all things, including His own body for our sakes.

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Shrove Tuesday is a day of feasting. It marks the conclusion of the Epiphany Season. On this day, the Church feasts before she enters a more solemn and penitential season called Lent, known as the Season of Confession. Shrove Tuesday is celebrated with a pancake dinner, accompanied by eggs and syrup, and bacon can be added, and it should. This day allows the Church to celebrate once again the abundance of the Gospel in our lives and in the world, for the glory of the Epiphany season, which is that Jesus has given us life and life more abundantly.

Following the rich feasting tradition of our Hebrew forefathers, the English-speaking Church has broadly practiced Shrove Tuesday for over 800 years. Individuals or churches are not bound by such traditions, since it is not an explicit imperative in the Bible; yet if churches do practice this, it is vital for members to join in this festive occasion, as it gives the Church another healthy excuse to fellowship and form greater bonds through a delightful and bountiful meal. On the day before we enter into the Lenten story, Christians rightly prepare by celebrating God’s gifts to us, so that we can meditate, fast, pray, confess, and repent by remembering the sufferings of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Assuming a congregation is silent on the matter and has taken no theological position, families are free to celebrate Shrove Tuesday at home, invite friends, enjoy a pancake dinner, and sing hymns of praise. Traditionally, Shrove Tuesday is the day before the first day of Lent, and Wednesday marks the beginning of the forty days of Lent, Sundays excluded. Shrove celebrates the Christ who has given us all things, including His own body for our sakes.

To Shrive: Confession and the Joy of Eating

Shrove comes from the word “shrive,” meaning to confess. As we celebrate, we remember that the Christian life is a life of daily repentance. Confession is not reserved for Lent alone, but as we approach the Lenten Season, we receive a particular reminder through readings and singing that a repentant heart is a clean heart before God.

Shrove Tuesday is a glorious excuse to feast like the Hebrews, to swim in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory guilt-free, and to do what hobbits were made to do: have a second breakfast. Christians should be notoriously bold about eating and notoriously known for gathering to eat. Eating together is the virtue that toppled empires. While the Egyptians ate at elaborate banquets, God sent locusts to consume their banquets, for God will not allow competing banquet hosts in His world.

So how do we enter into God’s banquet? The requirement is not acute taste buds or a culinary degree, but the badge of love. Better a dinner of herbs with love than a fatted calf with hatred and disobedience. In our evangelical attempts to outdo the ascetics, we sometimes apologize for eating too much, yet in Scripture, apologies about eating can seem tasteless. The language of fatness in the Bible is often positive. The word anointing means to make fat. The Hebrew word Dashen means to grow fat. It gives our singing of Psalm 23 an entirely new meaning. David declares that God fattens the head with oil and the cup overflows. To be fattened means to receive abundance.

Shrove Tuesday becomes an opportunity to criticize our sensitivities, wash away the grammar of cultural gnosticism, and embrace fatty bacon as a gift from God. God is not stingy about butter, and just as Elisha asked for a double portion of the Spirit, children of the living God should ask for a double portion of pancakes. We only abuse food when we forget that food is a blessing to a forgiven community. Unrepentant communities merely consume food, but forgiven communities celebrate it. The Church’s table is wholesome because it is covered by the blood of God’s Lamb, Jesus Christ. Jesus was food for us, and now we eat with the hearts of forgiven saints. The mercy of confession is what makes food glorious and delicious.

From Table to Repentance

Tomorrow we enter a forty-day culture of repentance. For many, this means fasting, meditating, and focusing on our lack of gratitude for God’s gifts. We have eaten without understanding, communed without confession, watched without discernment, entertained ourselves without the table, and found refuge in feeble fortresses made by human hands. We have rebuked our children for lacking love while being unloving toward spouses and children ourselves.

We have forty days to flesh this out, but tonight eat well, laugh goodly, and love your neighbor like God loved the fat of the lambs in Israel’s sacrifices. Do not be shy. Jesus gave His life for the abundant table we share tonight.

Here is a prayer for this occasion:

Prepare us, O Lord, for the gifts of your table. When we forget you, we forget life itself. Give us the fat of Israel’s sacrifices, and more, give us the fulfillment of Israel’s sacrifices, Jesus Himself. For the riches of Solomon’s house and the banquets of this city do not come close to the glory of the marriage Supper of the Lamb. As we stand at the end of Epiphany and the entrance gate to the Lenten Season, may our hearts long for the kneeling bench of forgiveness, the peaceful ethos of a clean conscience, and the benediction of a loving God. Cleanse our hearts that we may eat as unto the Lord and live as unto the Lord, amen.

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