Fasting seems to be the one Means of Grace that most
of us are unsure about. We are uncomfortable with the idea of not eating
because we think it is unhealthy, impractical, outdated, or just too hard. Yet during Lent many of us do participate in
a type of fasting - giving up something we like or depend on too much. Or maybe
just something we needed to give up anyway.
In the passage from Matthew, Jesus is led by the
Spirit into the wilderness where he had to fast for forty days and forty
nights. During that fast he came face to face with temptation and in each case had
to decide if God was the source of his being or if he was the source.
Why We Fast? - We fast to come face to face with the
temptation to proclaim ourselves as our own source, power and salvation, and to
give that inclination to God so that we can with all boldness and conviction
proclaim that God alone is our strength, our rock, and our redeemer.
How do we Fast? - John Wesley gave three
classifications of fasting. (Henry H. Knight III. Eight Life Enriching
Practices of United Methodists. Nashville: Abingdon Press 2001, pg. 97)
The lowest form of fasting is to give something up
which we like or depend on too much.
The middle form of fasting is to abstain from eating
for one meal during the course of the day.
And the highest form of fasting is to go a whole day
with out eating - fridays if possible so that your fast corresponds to the day
of the week on which Jesus was crucified. (Kenneth L. Carder. Living Our
Beliefs. Nashville: Discipleship Resources 2009, pg. 112)
So what do we fast? - I want to be real clear here -
fasting is not always about not eating or about giving something up. One of the
best testimonies I ever heard was from someone who struggled with their body
image and with dieting and trying to achieve some standard for how they should
look, so they decided that their Lenten fast would be to eat chocolate chip
cookies everyday during Lent.
For most of us giving something up, skipping a meal,
or going a day without eating is exactly the type of fast we need, because that
growling stomach, that gnawing hunger is exactly what we need to feel to remind
ourselves to pray that we might have the true strength to rely on God in all
things. But for some of us we need to take something on in order to actually
give something up. A spiritual practice,
physical activity, indulging.
We have to fast because there are so many things that
we put before God, so many things we rely on more than we rely on God, so many
ways that we try to make ourselves into gods, providing for our own needs, and
being ,and salvation. If we don’t fast, we never come face to face with the illusions
that we have set up in our own lives. We never see all the ways we deceive
ourselves and are deceived. And we never see the true source and perfecter of
our faith.
But fasting is hard and it is impractical and we have
to have support in it. We need to
practice it and to be held accountable for it. We have to have people who can
help us see when our fasts are, or become, easy and we need to push forward, or
when our fast is too much and we need give ourselves a break. We have to have
support because we can’t
afford not to fast.
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