This is Monday, February 27, 2017. In the Eastern Orthodox churches, both Catholic and Protestant, this is Clean Monday. Tomorrow, in the Western churches, both Catholic and Protestant, it is Fat Tuesday. And on Wednesday in Western churches, it is Ash Wednesday. Fat Tuesday is also known as Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday (in England) and Mardi Gras in France and New Orleans, which is just Fat Tuesday in the French language. Ash Wednesday commences Lent. During Lent, each Sunday is actually not Lent, which is important. In the last week of Lent, which is commonly called Holy Week, we have the Friday of Sorrows, Palm Sunday, Holy Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and ends with Easter.

          During Lent, we are to give up something of value. This could be a food or treat or something such as an activity. This is where the idea of Fat Tuesday comes from. During Lent, if you are really seriously into all of this, you are to give up all animal products except for Fridays, at which time you can eat fish. In the days when meats and dairy products could not be stored, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, the commence of Lent, was a feast day out of necessity. Everything was going to spoil, so you ate it. Hence, Fat Tuesday and Pancake Tuesday. In time, this became a huge celebration, even after the restriction of animal products was eased. Now, Fat Tuesday is a celebration of debauchery. We can see the wild celebrations of Mardi Gras on TV, viewing the parades, the drinking and the nearly naked (and sometimes completely naked) women dancing in the streets. At midnight, it must all be over because Lent is starting. Hard to believe, but the insanity of Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras is part of a Christian religious celebration.

          It is also hard to understand, but the Sundays during Lent are not a part of Lent. Therefore, all restrictions of Lent are not in force. A pastor I once knew, and his entire family, gave up TV for Lent. This was no small thing for these folks. All meals were taken in front of the television. There were TVs in every room with a VCR (this was a few years ago). Giving up TV seemed like a real sacrifice. However, because Sundays were exempt, they taped all their favorite show during the week and binged on Sundays.  

          Someone from another part of the world, say Cambodia, where their worship does not include Christ, would likely fail to see the point in all this celebration, especially over something so bitterly sad. And if they were in, say, New Orleans at the Fat Tuesday celebration and saw a woman in next to nothing drinking and whooping it up and then happened to be in a church the next day and saw that same woman in a somber dress kneeling before the priest and having the mark of the Cross placed on her forehead in ashes, what kind of insanity would they think they had stumbled into?

          We have made Christianity so confusing and so complicated that we turn people away. Then, in order to made it meaningful to us, we do everything except what we should be doing, which is to share the simple plan of salvation to the lost.

          I once asked a acquaintance of mine what the Biblical connection was with giving something up for Lent. His immediate reply was we give up something important for the 40 days of Lent (It is actually 45 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter, but Sundays don’t count, so it is 40 days.) to link ourselves with Jesus and His fast of 40 days. But, even when someone fasts for Lent they only fast during daylight hours and they can eat all day Sunday if they want. We had a bit of a scandal in my hometown about 40 years ago. At the Catholic church, there was a pre-Lenten meal going on in the church hall for one of the women’s group. The priest was invited and apparently the women were boasting about what they were giving up for Lent. Finally, the priest was asked what he was giving up. He said he was giving up sex for Lent, to which every woman in the place let her mouth drop open. “Well, why not?” The priest was reported to have said. “You ‘give up’ things in your lives that are unimportant to you. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to do the same?”

          We are coming to an amazing time of the year, the most amazing time, as far as I am concerned. We are remembering specifically the last few weeks of the life of Jesus. His ministry on earth is coming to an end. Soon we will be faced with the intrigue of those who hated Him, the betrayal of one so close to Him, the fear of those who had pledged themselves to Him, the mocking of those who, only a week earlier, were hailing Him as King, the pain of His beatings, the awful nobility of His crucifixion, the despair of His burial and then the glory of His Resurrection. Why do we feel the need to clutter all this up with the banality of tradition? Shouldn’t the shear majesty of His love and sacrifice be enough?

          The greatest story ever told and then we riddle it with empty actions and pointless tradition. ¹Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, you are ²very great! ³You are clothed with splendor and majesty.