Twente 2 Cor 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Is this not the fast I choose?
A century and a half ago, Karl Marx argued that the essence of being human was to make things. Man was homo faber, man the worker, whose main purpose was to work and create. In the 1960s generation, man was homo ludens, man who plays and enjoys life (and resists any kind of social or moral control). Today, it looks as though, here in the Western world, we are now just homo consumer, man (and woman) the purchaser and consumer of products. In the last weeks, we have seen how the whole world economy gets nervous if we do not spend at the high level to which years of advertising and habit have accustomed us. Even if, in the last few years, some of us in the West are gradually beginning to understand what our voracious consuming does to our brothers and sisters in the global South and also to our planet.And that is why the world we live in has difficulty trouble with Lent. Lent is a challenge to that model of humanity that we are only about consuming. Lent is a time of spiritual fasting from materialism, and feeding on God’s wisdom and direction instead.Most of the great spiritual leaders of our faith have fasted: Moses the liberator and lawgiver, Elijah the prophet, David the King, Esther the Queen, Daniel the seer, Anna the prophetess at the Temple, Paul the Apostle, and of course Jesus the Christ himself. Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox all fasted. John Wesley refused to ordain anyone who would not fast twice a week. And non-Christians have fasted: Zoroaster, Confucius, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Hippocrates and Ghandi all fasted. All believed that fasting mattered.But we should be clear that fasting, which is a spiritual discipline of reducing what we consume, is to be distinguished from two other things: dieting and hunger striking. Dieting is focused on personal weight control and appearance. Hunger striking is refusing food to gain political leverage. But fasting is a spiritual discipline, which has no ulterior or personal motive. Its main purpose is to help us to find God again and learn again to rely on Him. Its main purpose is to test and prove that ‘one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4:4). Lent is a time of fasting, a time to repent of being nothing but a consumer of the world’s goods, sometimes at the expense of others. Lent is a time to return to God and rely more fully on Him.Must we fast? Jesus does not say ‘if you fast’, he says ‘16‘Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’ Jesus assumed that fasting was a normal part of the life of faith.But it is very important to note that Jesus put fasting firmly in the context of prayer. His teaching on the Lord’s Prayer occupies verses 7-15 which we missed out of Matthew 6. Fasting without prayer is like getting on a train without a destination, for finding God in prayer is the aim of fasting.After he came out of is own fasting in the desert, Jesus did not promote fasting during the rest of his earthly ministry. The Pharisees asked him why his disciples did not fast, and he replied that the wedding guests do not mourn while the bridegroom is among them. But when he is gone, then they will fast (Matt 9:15). Now is the age of fasting, until he comes again.But in our fasting, this Lent and at other times, let us not lose sight of its principal purpose: to connect us with God to rely on him. It must be God-initiated, God-ordained, and God-oriented, otherwise it is not spiritual fasting. God is the main purpose. But there are secondary purposes.One is to reveal to us what may control us. People often find that when they are (even voluntarily) hungry for a limited time, their behaviour changes. (NB: the physical side of fasting is only ever about reducing food, not vital liquids.) Hunger can make us more prone to be angry, or anxious, and put us on edge. We should resist the temptation to say that such irritation comes from hunger alone, though. Hunger may just bring out deeper problems within us.Lent is a time to become more aware of what is inside us, perhaps the anger, the bitterness, the resentment, the fear. It is a time to invite God to take hold of these things and transform them. Lent may reveal to us how self-centered our lives are. Lenten fasting is intended to turn us from focussing on looking after ourselves and our wants and to turn us afresh to God who can meet our real and deepest needs. Lent is intended to bring balance back into our perspective, which is too often tipped towards the material and physical.Focusing on the bodily aspects of fasting stops too far short. It misses the point. Fasting is supposed to liberate us to move deeper into God and his purposes. The idea is actually to get beyond the obsessions with the self and the body that we have. Isaiah speaks of how the right sort of fasting can focus us beyond ourselves to the things and people and purposes of God that really matter. Isaiah 58:6-7: ’Is this not the fast that I choose? To loose the bonds of injustice? To undo the thongs of the yoke? To let the oppressed go free? And to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house? When you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own people?’
If you, if I, do these things, Isaiah promises, then the Lord will be with us always. He shall go before us and his glory shall be our rearguard. Because God and his purposes are at the center.So here are some alternative fasts that we can all try:
- Try fasting from taking credit for things (Jesus’ teaching on fasting, prayer and giving is about humbling ourselves before God and not trumpeting ourselves before men.)
- Try fasting from selfish spending (and give the money you might spend on luxury to a good cause instead)
- Try fasting from unethical products (made in sweatshops, perhaps by children) and buy fair-trade products instead
- Try fasting from wasting energy or water or other precious resources.
- Try fasting from harsh words and thoughts– altogether
