“Carnival” today often conjures-up the worst images of Mardi Gras celebrations: drunkenness, debauchery, sequin-laced costumes, gaudy masks in diamante, etc. Unmoored from the Gospel Carnival loses its Christian origin and becomes little more than a kind of sad “last hoorah” before the severities of Lent, a Barnum and Bailey inspired revolt against the upcoming sobriety. Carnival and Mardi Gras have become in their modern forms the epitome of what Guy Debord criticizes in The Society of the Spectacle:
“[Our] age presents its time to itself as a series of frequently recurring festivities. It is an age that knows nothing of real festivals. The moments within the cyclical time when members of the community joined together in a luxurious expenditure of life are impossible for a society that locks both community and luxury” (p.84).
The low and soiled feeling most folks experience after participating in such spectacles is nothing at all like the joy of a Christian Feast. But this has not always been the case.
“Carnival” comes to us as a word from two Latin words: “caro” meaning meat or flesh, and “levare” to raise-up or remove. In older Christian times it named the days before Lent —that is, the days before the giving-up of meat. It began the countdown to Lent, which was itself a countdown to Easter. Formally it began on the Sunday three weeks before Ash Wednesday —historically called “Septuagesima Sunday”— and was dedicated to the preparation for Lent: all the fatty and sweet food was eaten-up or put away, the final festivities and parties of Epiphany were held, priests made their rounds to each home exhorting and encouraging the parish to make a holy Lent.
It was a transition season between the glories of Christmas and Epiphany and Candlemas and the penitence which marked Lent. The Mardi Gras colors (purple, green, gold) symbolize this transitional nature: its not quite Lent yet, its no longer Christmas, and Epiphany is passing quickly. The colors of our calendar bleed into one another, directing our attention to the season ahead with a kind of boldness that is not arrogantly goofy but rather courageously playful.
At All Saints this year we are intentionally going to press into the richness of the Christian story and recover something of the ancient sensibility around Carnival, which at its heart is a joyful confidence in the Cross and Resurrection: I will feast now, looking-down the long Golgotha-road of Lent, thankful for the cross and the way ahead because all of it leads to the Victory of Jesus. Carnival taken seriously calls us into mission: the meat is not taken from us, we are the ones who raise it up, we give it up, we gladly and riotously surrender it for the joy that is set before us in Christ.
And we will live into Carnival this year in some specific ways:
We have saved our Epiphany House-blessings for these weeks. Go ahead and sign-up for a slot to have a priest from All Saints come and bless your home! Find ways to make that event a blessing and a neighborly function… e.g. “Hey our priest is coming to bless our house next week Tuesday, do you all want to join us for the blessing and then share a BBQ?”
As you think about Lent you likely already know what will be the hardest thing to give-up during the fast. Be intentional these next few weeks as you enjoy that thing (bacon!), be thankful for it, pray that God grants you grace not to squander the fast (e.g. “ugh fasting is so hard…”) but to make it a sweet place of being hungry for the greater things. That prayer can sound like this: “God, this [bacon] is so good, thank you for it. Also please prepare my heart for Lent that I might not fast like the pharisees so as to be seen but in order that I might know you deeper and walk more closely with you. Even now as I eat this [bacon] stir-up a holy hunger for your Word and Spirit in me. Amen.”
Try to make the days of this countdown missional: take the extra effort of sharing the gospel, of praying for your coworkers and neighbors, of doing the things necessary to volunteer serving the needy during Lent —things that need to be in place before Lent starts if we are going to do them in Lent. Lent is not a time for doing things we never do any other time, but rather an intensification of parts of Christian life that receive a special emphasis during the Fast.
We are praying towards launching-out two new priories (our fancy word for community groups) during Lent. Here’s a Carnival Challenge: each time you eat or drink a thing you will be giving-up during Lent take a moment to pray for those new priories and pray that they would be places where people who do not now fellowship with Christ would be brought into an encounter with Him.
Finally, the two Sundays following Septuagesima Sunday are very special days: World Mission Sunday and Transfiguration Sunday. On World Mission Sunday we will have a special time of prayer for missions around the world and will conclude the service with a special rite of commissioning. On Transfiguration Sunday we will have a service of Holy Baptism. Aim to be with us for both of these Sundays and aim to invite others, especially those who do not know Jesus or who do not have a church home, to come and worship with us.
Out count-down to Lent should enliven us, encourage us, and fill us with zeal for the mission of Jesus. As we prepare to lift-up our meat to God in fast let us prepare by lifting it up to him in preparation... not anxious but at peace, not drunk with much wine but rather —as St. Ambrose glosses— inebriated with the Spirit.