Not Just “Fat” or “Super”: (Re) Defining Tuesday for the Long Haul
by Fred Weidmann
The continuing relevance of the great blues song, Stormy Monday, popularized by T. Bone Walker and re-popularized by the Allman Brothers and—on any given weekend—by various bar bands across the country, is self-evident. But what might it mean? One listens to the narrator’s voice work through the (fatalistic?) week, declaring Tuesday “just as bad” as that Monday which gives the song it’s title. What about the weekend—does it provide a welcome and renewing respite from the difficulties and challenges of the week, or simply a mundane, if perhaps a bit more playful, recasting of the same? And Sunday—are those Church prayers which are referred to hopeful, thankful, confessional, desperate or some combination thereof?
The brief period of time bookended by Super Bowl and Transfiguration Sunday, on one side, and Ash Wednesday, on the other, punctuated by Super-, or as some would have it, Super-Duper -, Tuesday and concurrently Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras, provide us with quite an extraordinary, and arguably quite a stormy, set of days. Political races, whether despite themselves or due to the possibilities they suggest, tend to provide some degree of hopeful, even inspirational, rhetoric; at the same time, they inevitably descend into, or even actively court, mudslinging and contemptuous rhetoric. Transfiguration Sunday, for those who care—and dare— to engage it, provides some pretty heady, and very gutsy, stuff for our own, and our churches’, journeys. The Super Bowl—well, is it even about football anymore? I guess we do see some between the “dot.com,” junk food, and car commercials. Mardi Gras, by its very name, suggests— and by testimony of those involved includes—various “rich” offerings of (at least fleeting) delight. And Shrove Tuesday, bless it’s quaint and foreign (to most Americans) sounding name, interestingly and insightfully suggests not a one-sided, solemn, guilt-ridden confession, but genuine relationship, consideration, sharing, and even dialogue on the way towards, one hopes and prays, forgiveness and recommitment to, and from, the community.
Indeed one important and missing (from the lives of all too many in our world) ingredient which might tie together these seemingly disparate days and activities is related to the “shriving” and “shrift” from which Shrove Tuesday takes its name. Too many individuals and organizations in our “communication age”—now there’s an irony!—give each other only “short shrift.” That is, we—as a society, as a set of individuals, as consumers and as providers, as competitors on the gridiron or in the (far more ruthless) marketplace, and even (sadly) as coworkers, team-members, lovers, family members, etc— simply don’t listen to and engage one another as God intended and intends. The full phrase in which “short shrift” is found in the old English saying is telling: “short shrift and a long rope.” That is, as we might translate it into our vernacular, “don’t deal with him/her, let him/her hang.” We’re good at that!
The Transfiguration Story, in marvelous fashion, joins the glorified Jesus on the mountaintop while he is “in conversation” with that deep and rich tradition of the law and the prophets which provides his religious identity and impulse (Luke 8:30). And what was the conversation about? Jesus’ “exodus” (the word is clear in the Greek , if not in most translations). Peter wants to bottle the moment (v. 33)—not a bad impulse, arguably. But, God knows, there’s work to be done “down” there (v. 37). And so Jesus takes his followers there, to encounter and engage others.
Returning to our song—Tuesday is indeed “bad” in that course of things in which “short shrift and a long rope” rules the day. But insofar as it may offer some real playfulness along the way, and some real engagement and encounter for the journey, Shrove Tuesday offers a suggestion of God’s will and God’s way for God’s people and for the world. In every exodus there is the high point of liberation and the low points of wilderness wandering. Fellow travelers, let us be there for each other along the way in order to point the way to fuller and truer engagement of each other and of God! Now that’s rich. And super.