Stir Up Sunday

Proper 29 The Sunday closest to November 23

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all
things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of
lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided
and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together
under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

“The Old Days” were different for each of us, and even from thought to thought. In the old days we had a full day of school the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and back to school on Monday; this year the schools had a whole week off, which is better except that also having a “Fall Break” is ridiculous. In the old days we got out of school the first week of May, and reported back the day after Labor Day: the old days were best.

In the old days you went to church Sunday morning knowing exactly what was going to happen down to the last letter of the last word of the liturgy, because it was all printed in the Book of Common Prayer. Nowadays the church offers two prayer books with nine Eucharistic prayers, various lectionary choices and limitless forms of Prayers of the People, for endless liturgical variety such that it never need get boring. The new days are best.

Bread costs over a dollar a loaf, sometimes two or three dollars, which is outrageous; in the old days a loaf of bread was a dime, which was much better if you had a dime. A pound of bacon was fifty-nine cents and a dozen eggs were sixty-five cents. In the old days every car in the garage and on the road was made by “the big three” unless you drove a Nash, Hudson or Studebaker, not to mention Packard. These days most cars are made in Japan or Korea. The old days were best even if the cars weren’t.

A sense of striving for churchwide unity, ecumenism, has drawn us closer together with other “mainline” Christian denominations, with the Roman Catholic Church as defacto leader and the Consultation on Church Union and Consultation on Common Texts giving us common creeds and liturgies and psalms and lectionaries and calendars. This is true today as we observe “The Feast of Christ the King” or “Christ the King Sunday,” which will show forth in the hymns we shall sing this morning and in our lectionary. Perhaps most noticeably in our opening collect, above, which sets the tone for our worship.

Christ the King Sunday was given to us by Pope Pius XI in 1925 in response to concern about growing nationalism and secularism, including fascist movements in Europe. The date was fixed in 1969 by Pope Paul VI as the last Sunday in the Church Year. It’s pretty good and in some churches they will stand and sing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah.” In the old days we had no such observance. In fact, this was unofficially “Stir Up Sunday” based on the then-collect for the day:

The Sunday next before Advent.

The Collect.

STIR up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And therefore the custom in the old days, anticipating the feasting of the Holiday Season, was to go home after church and stir up candied fruits into various kinds of cake batters, pour it into loaf pans, and stick it in the oven to bake, yielding jewel-like fruit cakes to be enjoyed throughout the Days of Christmas. At our house I was the mixer, the stirrer. The fruit cakes were delicious and the old days were best.

Tom in +Time