Presented to River Street Cafe, 28 February 2017 (Pancake Tuesday)
Hosea 7:8 “Ephraim, he mixes himself among the nations.
Ephraim is a pancake not turned over.”
When I was asked to lead devotions on
pancakes for today I looked up pancakes in the Bible and came up with that
verse. The devotional thought today, however, will not deal with us being
pancakes but with us eating pancakes. Today we are going to chat a little bit
about the tradition of Pancake Tuesday (which is today!) in the church.
Pancake Day – also called Shrove Tuesday
- always takes place on the day before the first day of Lent. Lent is typically
a time a fasting from various food. Traditionally, Shrove Tuesday was a day for
using up food that could not be eaten during Lent, which was a time for
fasting.
It's a day of penitence, to clean the
soul before lent and today as pancake Tuesday is supposed to be a day of
celebration because it is last chance to have a big feast before Lent begins.
But there's more to Pancake or Shrove Tuesday than feasting on pancakes.
Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the
ritual of shriving that Christians used to do. In shriving, a person confesses
their sins. In the Catholic or Orthodox tradition, absolution (or forgiveness)
is pronounced by a priest. This tradition is very old. Over 1000 years ago a
monk wrote in the Anglo-Saxon Ecclesiastical Institutes:
In
the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess
his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him.
So Shrove Tuesday is the last chance to
indulge yourself, and to use up the foods that aren't allowed in Lent. Giving
up foods: but not wasting them. In the old days there were many foods that
Christians would not eat during Lent: foods such as meat and fish, fats, eggs,
and milky foods. So that no food was wasted, families would have a feast on the
shriving Tuesday, and eat up all the foods that wouldn't last the forty days of
Lent without going off.
The need to eat up the fats gave rise to
the French name Mardi Gras; meaning fat Tuesday. Pancakes became associated
with Shrove Tuesday as they were a dish that could use up all the eggs, fats
and milk in the house with just the addition of flour.
So then to paraphrase Marie Antoinette,
let us eat pancakes!
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