Dionysus on a Bike

Psalm 89 – 6/26/2026

Today’s Psalm (specifically 89:15), as it is translated in the NRSVue, reminds me of something I read a couple of years ago in one of the Ancient Church orders, the Apostolic Canons of the 4^th Century. It’s only an accident of translation that I am reminded of the Canons because the word translated “festal shout” could be translated without specific reference to the “festal.” The Hebrew word תְרוּעָ֑ה has no direct English equivalent. It can refer to the call of the Shofar blast on Rosh Hashanah, any joyful shout, or even an alarm. The reference to feasts in the NRSVue is in keeping with he theme of the Psalm as happy praise to the Lord.

This reference to the “festal” reminds me of the Apostolic Canons because of a striking reference to the feasts of the Ancient Church found there. The Apostolic Canons are a series of rules for the regulation of the early church. Most of the content has to do with the role of Bishops, rules regulating the clergy, liturgical guidance, codes of moral conduct, and ordinances around the Sacraments. Significantly more important in the Ancient Church than it is in the Protestant West, fasting regulations receive particular attention especially for the clergy who are threatened with losing their office and other punishments if they do not keep the designated fasts.

Since antiquity, the church year has been divided into festival periods which are preceded by preparatory fasts, the two most famous of which are the Lenten fast before the Easter feast and the Advent fast before the Christmas feast. What is interesting to me about the regulations for clergy in the Apostolic Canons is that there was a duty for clergy to keep the feasts as well as a duty for them to keep the fasts. The punishments for failure to keep the feast were as strict and severe as those for failing to keep the fast. We are used to thinking of fasting as an obligation, as something one would not do without some kind of extrinsic motivation. It is striking to read about keeping a feast in those same terms of obligation and extrinsic motivation. We think of feasting, not as an obligation, but as a joy, as something one does for its own sake because it brings pleasure. For Ancient clergy, even if there was certainly joy and motivation to feast independent of duty, the duty to feast and not continue fasting remained.

Why a duty to feast? Certainly it might have been a practically motivated command meant to keep overly pious clergy from over-fasting in their zeal. It’s probable that this reasoning was part of why feasting is required, but I think there is also a deeper reason. We need communal joy. We need reasons to shout with happiness as a community. Especially for those who renounce many worldly goods and pleasures for their vocation, for survival, or for the good of others, it is important that one indulge with pleasure from time to time, especially with other people. A faith of only renunciation and fasting denies the goodness of bodily pleasures, happiness, and our material existence.

In contemporary America perhaps we do not need a reminder to feast. For many Americans, life is one long extended feast with no break. That is the visible excess of the side of America that is doing well economically. For the side of America faced with deprivation and forced renunciation just to survive, the command to feast can stand as reminder that God wants our joy. For those who give up much so others can live, the call to feast is a call to enjoy even in the midst of suffering. There are still things to be thankful for and to shout for joy about, even if the world seems bleak. The joys you experience with good friends, good food, and celebration of the bounty we enjoy are ordained by God.

And for those whose life is one extended feast won by oppressing others, the command to fast, to renounce worldly goods from time to time, stands as a reminder that joy in celebration is only one side of existence. To affirm all that is, all that God has made, fasts are needed as well. The command to fast and the command to feast each stand in different relationships to us depending on how we live. Put together they are reminders to all of us of the need for balance and tension in our lives in this broken world.

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary by Justin Marquis