Stir-Up Sunday
A sermon by Rev’d Dr. Paul Peters Derry on Matthew 25:31-46
May only Truth be spoken, and only Truth received. AMEN
Well, Alex, I’ll take “Bits of Liturgical (Worship) Trivia” for $200:
We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in your abundant and great mercies.
We are not worthy so much as to gather up
the crumbs under your table;
but you are the same Lord
whose character is always to have mercy.
What is “The Prayer of Humble Access”? Or, more colloquially, “What is the Zoom Prayer?” So named because it’s at the point of “We do not pre-SUME” that congregants are alerted to join in with the presider announcing that phrase from our communion liturgy.
OK, Alex, “Bits of Liturgical (Worship) Trivia” for $500, which turns out this is our DAILY DOUBLE. Sunday, November 26, 2023. “What is ‘The Reign of Christ’”? or, taking a deep-dive into the language of The Book of Common Prayer, “What is ‘The Sunday next before Advent’?” Or again, borrowing even informal terminology, “What is ‘Stir-Up Sunday’?”
“Stir-Up Sunday” is an informal term for this last Sunday before Advent, getting its name from the beginning of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) collect assigned for the day,
STIR up, we beseech thee, O Lord,
the wills of thy faithful people;
that they, plenteously bringing forth
the fruit of good works,
may of thee be plenteously rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
And – who knew? – there’s a connection between this Sunday and the custom of making Christmas puddings, an essential British tradition said to have been introduced Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, or as some historians maintain, introduced from Germany by King George I in 1714. Since most recipes for Christmas pudding require it to be cooked well in advance of Christmas and reheated on Christmas Day, “Stir-Up Sunday” and the “STIR up” collect served as a helpful reminder that it was time to get working on those Christmas puddings.
Per tradition, families would gather to mix and steam Christmas pudding, parents teaching children how to mix ingredients, everyone taking a turn to stir, each person making a special wish for the year ahead. Since stirring was hard work, the more the Christmas-pudding merrier, as many people as possible would be involved. The expectation, or practice, was for the mixture to be stirred from East to West, in honour of the Magi who came from the East to visit the baby Jesus. In some households, silver coins were added to the mix, alongside the belief that finding a coin brought good fortune, and hopefully, not a chipped tooth!
It’s an interesting notion, that of our wills being “stirred up.” With the changes and chances life throws our way, or post-pandemic emergent realities, let alone paying even the slightest bit of attention to world events, violence happenings far away, or mere blocks away… there’s no shortage of material that supports the notion of being “stirred up” on this or any other Sunday.
Tonight’s gospel reading provides stark, unsettling words that stir us up as disciples of Jesus, to become harbingers of God’s promises in a beautiful-yet-broken, broken-yet-beautiful world.
Some translations carry the section heading, “The Judgement of the Nations,” and it offers a fearsome, apocalyptic portrait of the Son of Man coming in glory, and all the angels, sitting on the throne. All the nations are gathered, and what follows is a separation of people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep are placed at the right and the goats at the left. Then announcement to those at the right, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”
Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Then the announcement to those at the left, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’
And that, as they say, is “good news”!
Interestingly, the “feast” of “Christ the King” is a relatively new addition to the Church’s rhythm of seasons. It was first proclaimed in 1925 by Pope Pius XI to reassert the primacy of Jesus’ lordship over the rise of nationalism and authoritarianism in European politics in the years following World War I. “Christ the King” or “The Reign of Christ” carries the undergirding promise that Jesus is Lord of All, and a life of discipleship is a life of being stirred up and compelled into action.
It seems that this metaphor of stirring, mixing, gathering, grounding, etc. has long captivated the imagination of many within the Christian tradition.
From the Didache, part of the second-generation Christian writings, has developed communion prayer phrases like this:
As the grain once scattered in the fields,
And the grapes once dispersed on the hillside,
are now united on this table in bread and wine,
So, Lord may your whole church seen be gathered together,
from the ends of the earth into your promised reign.
For his part, Augustine of Hippo, in the early 5th century, in his Sermon 227, preached,
In this loaf of bread you are given clearly to understand how much you should love unity… Was that loaf made from one grain? Weren’t there many grains of wheat? But before they came into the loaf they were all separate; they were joined together by means of water after a certain amount of pounding and crushing. Unless wheat is ground, after all, and moistened with water, it can’t possibly get into this shape which is called bread. In the same way you too were being ground and pounded … Then came baptism, and you were, in a manner of speaking, moistened with water in order to be shaped into bread. But it’s not yet bread without fire to bake it. So what does fire represent? That’s the chrism, the anointing. Oil, the fire-feeder, you see, is the sacrament of the Holy Spirit.
In like manner,“Stir-Up Sunday” calls our attention to how a finished culinary product, whether bread or pudding, loaf shared or common cup poured, is predicated by a whole lot of stirring that has come before. When we come forward and are handed a morsel of bread broken off from the loaf, there are important processes and steps that have been followed long before. And in taking those morsels from the common loaf, or sips of wine from the common cup, the promise is that we are stirred up yet further, and become for the world, an integral part of what God promises.
STIR up, we beseech thee, O Lord,
the wills of thy faithful people;
that they, plenteously bringing forth
the fruit of good works,
may of thee be plenteously rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
So may the Word from Scripture, as the Word in Worship,
be the Word each of us, and our world, so desperately longs to hear. AMEN
