Thursday, June 7, 2007

We're Not in Texas any more. . .

As in, amongst the Lutheran folk, not many of us are celebrating "Corpus Christi" today. I hadn't realized that it was today (evidence that it isn't really celebrated that often) until I hit the blog circuit and saw the annual discussion of "why don't we have this - Roman gets all the cool holidays." My preceeding post wasn't about Corpus Christi Day - by the history class I taught last night.

Now I will talk about Corpus Christi. If you were to ask the people at your church what the day of the year was where we focus on the fact that the Lord's Supper is Christ's true Body and Blood - what answer would they give. Dimes to donuts they would say (if they had an answer) Maundy Thursday.

One of the things that stands out is that we still call Maundy Thursday "Maundy" Thursday. Maundy - from Mandatum - from "I give you a new commandent, love one another." That's the liturgical focus of Maundy Thursday - it's the footwashing day. It's the day where the marching orders for, not our worship life revolving around the Sacraments, but the marching orders for our life in the world are given - love one another.

We don't need to reinstitute "Corpus Christi" as a separate feast. We probably could safely reintroduce it (as long as we don't do something stupid like take the consecrated host for a walk. It is Christ's Body and Blood given for us sinners to eat and drink - not for us to walk like a dog) - but as we tend to focus on the supper in Lent maybe, if we add a celebration, it should be a Maundy celebration - a focus on our duty to love. Maybe we could make some day with lousy saints "Love Feast Day" -- which would be sort of poetically just - with the whole "love feasts" in Scripture being celebration of the Supper and for this day being about vocation, and the fact that we've taken the history vocation (love your neighbor) day and turned it into the Communion day.

Or we could just have the "Feast of Christian Vocation" - that probably sounds better than "love feast day" -- well, or at least less pagan or libertine gnostic sounding (no, do not go back and edit, continue forward at all costs and make this up on the fly!) - or some such thing. And such a day would fit well in the Trinity Season with it's focus on teaching. Either way - teach what you need to when you need to - and let the calendar turn how it will - every day ought to be viewed as the Lord's Day.

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