A Sermon for Mardi Gras
17 Feb 2026 - Mardi Gras
John 6:1-21
[Note: I preached this sermon for today’s Vespers for Wittenberg Academy. — Ed.]
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
Today is the last day of feasting before the Lenten fast. It is known as Shrove Tuesday or Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras in French). Some Christians are not comfortable with feasting, and are eager to get on with the rigors of Lent. But Jesus calls us to both repent and to fast, but also calls us to rejoice and to feast. And the Preacher reminds us that there is both “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Eccl 3:4). We weep because we are sinners, but we laugh because we are saints. We mourn in the face of death, but we dance because Jesus has overcome death and the grave.
Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday are the both/and of our faith – even as Jesus is both God and man, both Priest and Sacrifice, both our Creator eternal in spirit, and our brother in time according to the flesh.
And our Creator designed us to eat, and placed us in a lush garden, where food was plentiful. Sin created the shortage of food. Sin caused us to take extraordinary measures to feed ourselves – painstakingly growing wheat, laboriously beating it into flour, and mixing it with water and baking it: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,” says the Lord, “till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19).
In a sense, bread is a curse. It is a substitute for the perfect fruits of the garden. But Jesus comes to us in space and time, in our mortality, into our cursed world, our world of hunger and struggle – and He sanctifies bread. He reclaims it as sacred. He multiplies it and shows us that hunger is but a passing curse of the very sin and mortality that He has come to abolish. Not only did five thousand men, plus women and children, eat their fill, twelve baskets were left over beyond what they could eat – even as there were twelve tribes and twelve apostles. This was all planned by God down to the last crumb.
And Jesus will also take bread, “and when He had given thanks,” will consecrate it. He will give it to the twelve disciples. He will employ the word “is” from the verb “to be” that is the sacred, eternal name of the Triune God. He will perform the miracle of the multiplication of His own body and blood. The miracle will continue beyond the cross, beyond the grave, beyond the lifespan of the twelve. Jesus promises to be with us “always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).
As we move from the laughter and dancing of Fat Tuesday, making our way to the weeping and mourning of Ash Wednesday, as we shift from the time for feasting to the time for fasting, as we remember, O man, that we are dust, and to dust we shall return, we do so keeping the feast of the Lord’s body and blood on the Lord’s Day – even in Lent. The miracle of the multiplication of His body and blood, distributed by the successors of the Twelve, is a feast that will not go away – even in the midst of the fast.
Let us take both times of feasting and times of fasting seriously, dear friends. Let the feast teach us to rejoice in God’s goodness, in forgiveness, life, and salvation. Let the fast teach us to lament because of our sins and to yearn for the reestablishment of Paradise in the age to come. Let our feasting and our fasting be done with our Lord Jesus Christ at the center. We fast not in despondency, but in hope. We feast not in gluttony but in joy. And week after week, through feast and fast, we confess our sins and we feast on the Lamb who has forgiven them in His own body and by the shedding of His blood. We move one week closer to death, but also one week closer to eternal life.
As St. Paul reminds us in this time where the feast and the fast meet: “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.