mgpcpastor's blog

Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday (now generically labelled Pancake Tuesday).
Which leads us into the season some Christians observe as Lent.
Look it up somewhere to find the details.
The evangelical wing of the Church (us) seems to be developing a growing fascination with practices which our forefathers (and foremothers) had the good sense to realise were needless additions to the freedom of Christian life.
You could spend forty days a year living as a single person to help you appreciate marriage better.
You could spend forty days without your children to make you a better parent. (That’s not tempting)
Or, in the real world, you can simply spend everyday enjoying the freedom and responsibilities of those relationships.
I think it’s the same with being a Christian.
Declining the use of that for which we’ve been set free doesn’t make us more free.
Growing in our usage of that freedom is what we’ve been set free for.
Lent is as useful to growing Christian freedom as an ash-tray on a surf-board.
Evangelical Protestants should mark it with forty days of sausage sizzles.

Douglas Wilson puts it to verse with A Lenten Meditation For Meat Lovers.

Sing if you can the affair of the sausages,
Brave Zwingli taking on Lenten observances.
Honor then Wittenberg’s 95 theses,
But Zurich was first with the meat reformation.

What could be better than fat, roasting sausages,
Striking a blow against vain gnostic scrupling?
What could be better to set the soul soaring
Than meat on the grill and then meat in the stomach?

Blame if you will the book printer Froschauer,
Who, printing editions of Pauline epistles,
Decided that he should feed all hungry workers
Just like it says in Colossians and elsewhere.

That kind of set down the cat midst the pigeons,
Nothing like sausages riling archbishops.
Battle was joined with liberty flourishing,
And the gospel aroma of meat lovers’ pizza.

As Lent now approaches and you think to ignore it,
Know that you really have good antecedents.
You have all your freedom, no need for indulgences,
So kick off the season with breakfast at Denny’s.

Don’t give up Facebooking, don’t give up chocolate,
And don’t give up charbroiled innocent pleasures.
If you must give up something else, why not the fussing,
Along with all gnostic, ascetic inventions?

Alternative titles:
The Affair of the Sausages
Giving Fat Tuesday a Promotion
Protestantism: Where Every Day Is Mardi Gras
Dogmatic Doggerel