Fourth Sunday in Lent (B), March 30, 2003

Text: Numbers 21:4-9; Matthew 6:16-18.

Fasting - An Important Spiritual Discipline

The text for today's meditation is our Old Testament lesson with the Bronze snake incident we just heard about. The Israelites became impatient on the journey and complained against God and against his agent Moses. They craved the food they enjoyed back in Egypt, the land of slavery. Can you imagine? They were willing to trade their freedom for a garden of vegetables! Perhaps this is understandable for a people who have never known anything, but slavery. Their folly is only ended when God intervenes: Poisonous snakes quickly end their rebellion and return them to sanity. They return to the Lord who heals them, to the only One who can sustain them.

Toronto Star columnist Jim Coyle, writing about the outbreak of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), compares the fear with which Canadians have reacted with the fear of God that often accompanied the outbreak of the plague in Medieval times. Is this a punishment from God? Or is God responsible for SARS as with the poisonous snakes we heard about?

It would be wrong and unfair to say that God wanted this to happen. In the case of the Israelites, if their rebellion against God and Moses had gone unchecked, it would most certainly have meant the death of their whole community of over five million people out there in the wilderness. In this light, the snake incident was perhaps the most effective way God could have chosen to scare them into regaining a healthy perspective of the situation and avert a far worse outcome.

The SARS outbreak is perhaps no different. While potentially quite dangerous, so far the fatalities worldwide are no more than those that resulted from the stray missile that hit a market in Baghdad. So far, the greatest thing SARS has achieved is to scare a whole lot of people. For example, some in my household have chosen not to go shopping in Chinatown until this SARS thing has settled down.

Jim Coyle goes on to say that SARS has "shaken our faith in science." Our culture has made a virtual idol out of science. We see it as the solution to all our fears about sickness and disease. We have grown complacent with our trust in science and the mistaken belief that the threat of infectious disease has been wiped out. Perhaps SARS will help to move some of us from our misplaced faith in science to a more vital relationship with God. Not that God promises to cure our every sickness and serve our every want. But God does promise to be with us, to love us, and to prepare us for a new life that knows no sickness or death.

God really has so much more to offer us than science. Science can only serve to prolong our presence on this sick and dying planet. God offers a new life that never ends. You see, every now and then we all need a wake-up call. Like the Israelites, the idols of our day have dulled our senses to what is real and so we need God to scare us off of the path that leads towards self-destruction.

What I want to talk to you about today is an ancient spiritual discipline to help you maintain a healthy spiritual perspective on life. A perspective that can keep you from falling for the cultural idols of the day -- and not just when calamity strikes. The discipline I want to talk about is fasting. Fasting: In order to have any credibility at all in preaching this message, I must confess to you at the outset that I do not fast. It is not a part of my spiritual discipline. But in the weeks that I’ve been thinking about this message and preparing to preach on it, it seems that God has impressed upon me the value of this discipline. There is a gift here for me, and for you that we dare not resist. There is a key here to unlock some of the deepest spiritual lessons that we can learn in this life. God has been saying to me, and I think he wants to say to all of us today, “You need this!”

Now I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that in a culture where the landscape is dotted with shrines to the golden arches and an assortment of pizza temples, fasting seems kind of out of place. At the heart of our culture is the belief that there is nothing that we should be denied of. It is our right to get just about anything anywhere at any time. Convenience stores, fast-food outlets and now Internet banking and shopping. We have quick and easy access to virtually every comfort, any pleasure, any entertainment that we want. But Christian fasting is about denying ourselves.

Back, 140 years ago, President Lincoln designated April 30th as a day of national fasting and prayer. For those of us with ties across the border, we remember his declaration of thanksgiving very well, but not the fasting one. In his proclamation he said, “We have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has grown, but we have forgotten God.” Sounds very contemporary, doesn't it?

Jesus knew that in the kind of world you and I live in, we are seduced and distracted every day by that which this world would offer us for happiness, pleasure, and comfort. In a world like that you don’t need God much. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer in a few minutes, we will say in the fourth petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Seems like a useless prayer in a world where all you have to do is go down to the grocery store and get what you want. That’s why in a world of plenty, and in a culture of excess we desperately need to learn the spiritual discipline of self-denial. It's a way of remembering that we depend on God alone and draw all our strength and resources from him.

Someone once said, “Christian fasting, at its root, is the hunger of a homesickness for God.” That’s why Jesus makes the point that if folks do this act of fasting in order to get some kind of public recognition, it’s so distorted and wrong. Because the whole point is a hunger to know him more deeply than ever before. And that happens in the quiet and isolated places of our Christian journey.

The way of Jesus on this earth was the way of self-denial. Paul reminds us in Philippians 2 that Christ, “Though being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of servant.” Jesus said, “My whole purpose in coming was not to be served but to serve and to give my life.” Self-denial. Self-sacrifice. It’s one of the key marks of a true disciple. And one of the most important ways to learn it is through fasting.

Now, we tend to think of fasting as going without food. But we can fast from anything. For example, some of us ought to fast for a time from people. Have you ever thought about fasting in that way? Some of us are so dependent on the interaction and feedback of others that it becomes impossible for us to hear God. Perhaps in that case, we could see a lot of spiritual growth if at times we would fast from people. We can fast from entertainment. Some in our congregation have embraced the discipline of fasting from television for a time. Some could fast from the telephone. Perhaps God would call you to fast from your computer so you can focus on him.

St. John Chrysostom said it well, “Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye and the ear and the feet and the hands and all the members of our bodies. Let the hands fast, by being free of greed. Let the feet fast, by ceasing to run after sin. Let the eyes fast, by disciplining them not to glare at that which is sinful. Let the ear fast, by not listening to evil talk and gossip. Let the mouth fast from foul words and unjust criticism. For what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes, but bite and devour our brothers?”

As the prophet Joel said, “When you declare a holy fast, make sure you rend your hearts and not just your garments.” That’s the sense of Jesus’ words here. Don’t fast if it’s to prove to someone your spiritual depth. Fast to listen to God. Fast to remember your dependency on him. Fast to be sustained only by him. And the promise of Jesus is, “Your Father, who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” I guess what is remarkable to me about this teaching is the fact that Jesus doesn’t make a big deal out of it. He just quietly assumes that fasting will be a part of anyone’s life who seeks to follow him. I believe that in this simple word, God has spoken to me and called me to embrace this discipline in my life in a way that I really have not in the past.

And because I’m your pastor, I need to help you embrace this discipline. I know some in this congregation have known the disciplines self-denial. They have much to teach us all. But I’d like to issue an invitation to us all. It is, of course, the season of Lent. It’s a time set aside for serious reflection and spiritual discipline as we prepare for Easter by following closely the way of the cross.

I want to encourage each of us to find intentional and purposeful ways to practice self-denial. But on this coming good Friday I want to declare in this congregation a holy fast to the Lord. We meet together that morning for a Good Friday service at 10:30 AM. So how would it be if we agreed together to fast at least our morning meal and instead come here to pray? The church doors will be open from 8:30 AM and you are welcome to come and pray quietly. Some of you might fast two meals on Friday or others might fast the entire day. I won’t prescribe how to do it, but let us approach that holy day with a collective intention to deny our usual appetites and give ourselves, as Christ did, to the presence of God in us and among us? I am sure that there is much God would like to say to us if only we would stop and listen.

We, who have "grown up in the Faith," need to turn our thoughts and eyes inward, examine ourselves, and prepare ourselves for the glorious news that "He is Risen!" Lent is a serious time -- a time to make ourselves ready and open to the experience of transformation and salvation that the Paschal Mystery promises. Amen.