Scripture: Joel 2:12-17 and Matthew 6:16-18
I got it into my head that I was going to preach a sermon today on fasting. Don’t ask me why, because I’m not sure…Well, it is a Lenten theme and all. The two scriptures we heard today, both talking about fasting, are traditionally read on Ash Wednesday. And in various times, in various places, among various people I guess fasting is something that people have done during Lent as a kind of spiritual discipline. So it’s not completely off the wall to be talking about fasting. It’s just that fasting is not something that is done very much by people I know, unless they have been very good at following Jesus’s instructions and have fasted in a manner that is undetectable by others. If that were the case, I wouldn’t know about it. But I feel pretty safe in saying that in the circles I run in fasting is not done very much or even talked about very much.
Furthermore, it is not something I am personally familiar with. I think maybe I have done it once in my life, in the sense of actually setting out to go without food for some meaningful length of time—not just trying to eat simply for a time, or trying to live on a welfare budget for a week or skipping a meal and donating the money I would have spent to some good cause, but actually doing what I would think of as fasting. It was so long ago now that I don’t remember the details of it, how long it was, or why I did it, or what I felt or thought about it as a result, but I’m pretty sure that I did fast sometime long ago—once. That hardly qualifies me to act as an expert, and so I’m not gonna. And in fact I can start off by telling you some things I’m not going to say in this sermon about fasting.
I am not going to tell you you ought to do it. I’m not going to prescribe it, recommend it, or even mildly suggest it as something that is a good spiritual practice or that it is something that would be good for the soul. I’m in no position to do any of that. I’m also in no position to be describing or defining what fasting really is or what it’s all about. I can’t tell you how it should be done, what you need to do if you’re really going to be serious about fasting, what you should expect in the process, how you know when you’ve really fasted as opposed to just sort of tinkering with the idea, none of that. I’m not going to try to explain to you why other people might do it. As I say, I am no authority, so I will try to refrain from those kinds of pronouncements.
Well, maybe one. Fasting is not, even the idea of fasting is not helpful, at least to me, if I think of it as a kind of penance, a punishment of the body for the sins of the soul. Jesus talks about washing the face and putting oil on the head so that no one will know you’re fasting. Explicitly, he says that people shouldn’t make a display of their piety and he warns against hypocrisy. Implicitly, I hear him saying, and I realize I may be reading into his words, but I hear him saying that fasting should not be thought of as something negative like a punishment, but as something positive, a reminder and a calling to return to our better selves. In that spirit, I have found myself thinking about fasting, maybe because it is a traditional Lenten theme and some things I have been reading mention it in connection with some ways we might approach the season from a spiritual perspective. Fasting can be a kind of a symbol for the directions our spirits might be led during the Lenten season, so that for me it’s not so much that I’m seriously considering fasting as something I intend to do in a literal way, but just thinking about it puts me in a kind of Lenten frame of mind and suggests some thoughts that become part of my Lenten reminders. Those are the things I want to talk about, not so much fasting itself.
I remember reading several years ago a comment on the season of Lent that said essentially that Lent is the time of the church year that is most out-of-step with our culture. It is, the author said, the least marketable of Christian observances, a time when there is nothing to buy, no presents or decorations and no one even sends a Lent card, and the spirit of it is all in what you don’t do and what you don’t consume. In a culture that values “doing” so highly, and that values consumption so highly, Lent is the one Christian season that is truly counter-cultural. And for those of us (I am one) who see the Christian movement as being at its best when it is being counter cultural, Lent becomes a welcome time, a time that calls us back to our own best selves. And the notion of fasting is very much a part of that.
One thing the notion of fasting makes me think about is discipline. Frankly, I’ve always been a bit confused by what Isaiah says about fasting, although it sounds nice. “Is not this the fast that I choose,” says Isaiah, “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry…” and so forth. If Isaiah were saying just that if we want to “be spiritual” we should be worrying not about fasting but about loosing the bonds of injustice, if he were saying that, no problem. But he compares loosing the bonds of injustice to a fast, and I’ve always wondered what fasting had to do with feeding the hungry and letting the oppressed free and so forth. It occurred to me that what Isaiah might be saying is that loosing the bonds of injustice requires the same kind of focus, the same kind of determination, the same kind of discipline that fasting does. Otherwise, it is just a nice sentiment and a warm thought. In this sense, thinking about fasting the way Isaiah talks about it, just thinking about it, not actually doing it, calls me back to my best self, one who is disciplined and focused in pursuit of the values I claim to hold. I am not one who is very much disciplined in any area of my life, and the notion of fasting asks me to consider the place discipline has, the place I want it to have, in my spiritual life.
Here is another for instance. The notion of fasting suggests the idea of consuming less, which is a good thing to think about any time, but is certainly appropriate to think about during Lent as a reminder that there are spiritual matters involved here. If the spirit of Lent is indeed an anti-consumer spirit, as I was suggesting before, that’s a good thing from a number of angles. It would be a good thing from a global perspective if we consumed less, we human beings, if we consumed less of the planet’s resources. This is not a new thought, but there is little about Lent that is new, or needs to be. (I also remember reading something about sin once where the author said that he didn’t believe in original sin, that there was never anything original about sin; it was always just the same old stuff.) Likewise there is probably nothing new about Lent, neither the sin we are called away from nor the best selves that we are called to return to. In this case our best selves would be much more aware than we currently are of the preciousness of the gift of creation. We would see the life that exists on this little speck in the universe and all the resources that sustain this life as sacred gifts, and we would be reluctant to use up even a tiny portion of those resources and we would savor every ounce of any resource we used.
As an aside, another aside, I’ve often wondered why the Christian creationists are so hung up on Darwin and the theory of evolution. If there could be a creationist movement that let go of Darwin and evolution and biblical literalism and embraced and invited a view of creation as a sacred gift, we would all be better off. Fasting, consuming less of the planet’s resources calls us to that kind of creationism.
And what goes along with that is an awareness not only that we human beings as a whole may consume too much but that some of us consume way more than our fair share. I’m not wanting to be preachy about this—although since I am preaching I guess I can’t avoid being preachy in a certain sense—but I am not wanting to speak in a tone of heaping guilt on anyone because we happen to live in this society of excessive abundance. On the other hand, a Christian spirituality that does not include an awareness of the fact that the resources of the planet are shared dramatically unevenly is not worthy of the name. Christian spirituality ought to prevent us from turning our heads, shutting our eyes, closing our hearts to this reality. Fasting, consuming less, also implies consuming more fairly, and although that is not going to happen all at once, our best selves that Lent reminds us of and calls us toward, know the need, the desperate need to move in that direction.
Which brings me to another thought. Even thinking about fasting brings to mind the reality of hunger, hunger that is not voluntary and is not for a short period of time but that is the daily reality of millions of my fellow human beings. In this case, of course, actually fasting would bring that reality home to me much more vividly. It would make me feel my concern and my prayer in my body and would make it tangible and real, and it is one good reason I can think of why I might sometime engage in the practice of fasting. But even thinking about fasting calls that reality to mind in a way I can all too easily ignore in the normal course of my daily life. Again, it’s a spiritual matter. It’s not only whether we bring in some food for the food bank. It’s what occupies our minds and fills our prayers. Lent’s theme of fasting calls me back to a self where I am more consciously, constantly, persistently, intentionally, in a disciplined way, aware of the reality of hunger in the world around me. Not to be aware puts a barrier between me and God.
Which brings me to the last thing for today. Spiritually speaking, I know hunger to be a good thing, and thinking about fasting reminds me of that as well. Spiritually speaking hunger is a good thing, not only because it puts us in a mind to recognize our sisterliness and brotherliness with other people whose physical hunger is not the intention of God, but also because hunger is the spiritual place where I believe I belong in this world. It is where my best self will be found. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” The Psalmist said, “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”
We come to the communion table today, but paradoxically perhaps we come not to be satisfied, but to be filled with hunger, hunger for God’s dreams to come true among us, hunger to know God, to be in God’s presence, to make contact with God who is not an idea or a belief, but who is the living God, the holy presence at the center of my life and all life. We come to worship, we come to the communion table to be filled with this hunger, but also to receive the promise that in our journeying we are already sustained by this same God for whom we hunger. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are those whose soul thirsts for the living God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
March 4, 2007