Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
In the very first Book of
Common Prayer, as well as in many subsequent editions including our own 1928,
the Eucharist lectionary ran on a cycle of one year; and the gospel reading
appointed for today, the fourth Sunday in Lent, was always John’s narrative of
the feeding of the multitude. For this
reason, today was commonly called Refreshment Sunday. While our more recent lectionaries now run on a three year cycle and the reading from John never
appears on this day, the resonances of Refreshment Sunday remain in the collect
as we pray that God may evermore give us and refresh us with Christ, “the true
bread which gives life to the world…that he may live in us and we in him.” The readings, too, still carry some resonance
of a rest and refreshment from our Lenten disciplines: the children of Israel
stop their seemingly eternal diet of manna – heavenly as it may be – and for
the first time are refreshed with the produce of Canaan, the fruit of the
promised land; the prodigal son, after wandering for years in a distant country,
hungry and dis-connected, is refreshed in heart by his father’s love and
acceptance, as well as in body by the fatted calf and, I am sure, all the
“sides” that would have accompanied it in the ancient near east. In the light of all this, it seems hardly
appropriate to reflect on the ancient practice of fasting, the theme of today’s
sermon. However, as Scot McKnight observes
in his book entitled simply Fasting,
“all [sic] people think about eating
while they are fasting because hunger pains are present. But…fewer people think about fasting while
eating”, or while feasting I might add. So
maybe we are doing a little of that today.
Fasting is perhaps the least understood and
most mis-understood of the spiritual
disciplines. The bulk of Christians know
it only as something they read about in passing in the Scriptures, the vestige of
a distant culture and mind-set.
Alternatively, they see it as something rather medieval, an unhealthy
practice engaged in by the less stable of our spiritual ancestor. Or still yet, it may be seen as a
particularly Roman Catholic practice, which now even the Roman Church herself in
large part has abandoned. Few
Episcopalians know that regularly abstaining from food and/or drink in some way
is enjoined clearly in the Book of Common Prayer. If we look near the beginning of the BCP, on
page 17 we see that both Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are Fast Days, and
further down the page under the heading Days
of Special Devotion we read:
The following days are observed by
special acts of discipline and self-denial:
Ash
Wednesday and the other weekdays of Lent and of Holy Week, except the feast of
the Annunciation.
Good
Friday and all other Fridays of the year, in commemoration of the Lord’s
crucifixion, except for Fridays in the Christmas and Easter seasons, and any
Feasts of our Lord which occur on a Friday.
This
practice enjoined and commended in the Prayer Book, is the same which the
Church has always taught at the times the Church has always taught.
But what is fasting? What is its purpose? Why is it commended by so many of the world’s
most ancient religions and why do people do it?
A facile reading of fasting in the Hebrew Scriptures, for example, can convey
the sense that it is a sort of super-prayer in which people engage when things
are tough in order get a desired result from God: if we debase and make
ourselves suffer enough, maybe God will give us what we want. As if our hunger or prostration were ego
boosts so as to make God unleash divine power in our favor. But this is fundamentally a pagan perspective
in which by offering the gods enough stuff, I can get them to do what I
want. The authentic Judeao-Christian
approach to fasting is far more nuanced and significantly more wholistic. Scot McKnight suggests that our mis-understanding
of fasting has to do with our dualistic view of body and spirit, with the
things of the spirit always trumping in importance the things of the body. And so we have only two categories in which
to place the practice of fasting. The
first sees fasting as primarily concerned with issues of the body and the
material world, and hence not as important or valuable as the other more spiritual practices. The second sees fasting as a physical means
to a spiritual end. It is not unlike
what I mentioned earlier. We fast to get something, even if that something is
“spiritual.” However, this duality of
body and spirit is not real. It is not
biblical, and it is not Christian. As
human beings we are not a duality of body and spirit, but an organic unity of
body and spirit. Fasting is a way of coming
into awareness of and living out that truth.
Again, Scot McKnight has a very succinct and helpful definition of
fasting: “Fasting is the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous
sacred moment.” Think about that for a
moment. “Fasting is the natural,
inevitable response of a person to a [serious, or] grievous sacred
moment.” Does this resonate with
you? Grievous experiences, sacred
experiences, hit us at the heart and spirit level, but we feel them in our body
too, and thus is affirmed our organic unity.
Ever had your heart broken, been betrayed by a friend, lost a loved
one? You feel it in the pit of your
stomach; it is usually accompanied by a loss of appetite. “Fasting is the natural, inevitable response
of a person to a grievous sacred moment.”
In her book, Fasting: Spiritual
Freedom Beyond the Appetite, Lyn Baab describes this beautifully when she
writes:
When
we are deeply absorbed in grief, habitual activities and normal pleasures feel
inappropriate and out of place. We want
to shout, “Stop the world! The one I
love is no longer alive and I can’t bear it!”
That desire to stop everything normal, to let ourselves be absorbed by
our loss and pain, is manifested by stopping our consumption of food.
So, we see that fasting is not an
“instrument designed to get results.
The focus in the Christian
tradition is not ‘if you fast you get,’
but when this happens, God’s people
fast….People fasted in the Bible in
response to some grievous event in life – like death or the realization of
sin or when the nation was threatened.”
The whole point of fasting is to bring our outer habits in line with the
emotional state into which serious or grievous events take us, and thus be able
to stand before God affirming our organic unity. The Church’s call to fast on particular days
or seasons is the invitation to affirm that organic unity. Grief over our sins, concern for the perilous
state of our world, heart-breaking solidarity with the poor and disadvantaged,
sadness over a broken relationship should all bring us to fasting as response to
these serious, grievous moments or conditions.
By doing so, by experiencing the physical discomfort and anxiety
attendant on hunger we bring our body in line with our spirit. This is what the Church and our Jewish
ancestors in faith before us have always taught. Ironically enough, our modern world promotes
the absolute opposite: Are you sad,
lonely, depressed, grieving? Give
yourself a “treat”. Stuff yourself with cheesecake,
chocolate, ice cream to fill the sadness.
Your heart and body may be emptied by grief, but you body will be
filled. So much for the organic unity in
which we were created and to which we are called, indeed such behavior promotes
an unhealthy sort of dis-connect. No, fasting calls us to something far deeper,
more authentic, and affirms the fundamental unity between body and spirit.
The Church’s calendar is a round of
feast and fast. For the most part, we do
the feasts well. The lavish foods,
beautiful decorations and joyful fellowship attendant on Christmas, Easter and
other Church holy days, are physical, bodily manifestations of the joy and
happiness we feel. In terms of more
secular “feasts” we do the same: weddings, births, anniversaries, graduations
and birthdays are observed with equal celebration. We are not so good at doing the same with the
Church’s fasts, or with the grievous sacred events of our lives. For example, we rarely hear of funerals
anymore. They are “celebrations of life”,
followed by a feast that would make some Christmas tables appear paltry. Where is the place for organic unity between that
which our hearts may feel, and our bodies and actions? When it comes to the Church’s fasts they go
almost altogether ignored, save for the occasional mention – usually with an
accompanying joke – of “giving something up for Lent” without any real clue as
to why one might actually be doing it.
The Church’s fasts call us to bring our bodies in synch with the grievous
sacred moments of life, the grievous conditions of our world.
Have you never fasted? You might consider it. Biblical fasting usually entailed not eating
anything “from sunup to sundown (twelve hours) or perhaps from sundown to
sundown (24 hours)”. Is fasting too much
for you? Try simply abstaining from a
particular food for a period of time, say red meat and poultry as has been the
long-standing tradition of the Church.
But always remember, it is about coming into better awareness of our
organic unity. The Church’s feasts and
the Church’s fasts call us to affirm that the joys and griefs of our lives are
not simply emotional or spiritual phenomena, because human beings are not only
emotion or spirit. We are an organic
unity of spirit and body. Give yourself
this Lent the opportunity to come into that reality as you examine your
conscience and repent, as you observe and lament the passion and death of our
Lord, as you grieve and pray for our broken world, as you prepare for the
greatest feast of all, Easter.
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