UCC Church of Charlotte

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Fasting Instructions
Isaiah 58:1-12
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Grace and Peace to you this evening.  Grace and Peace.
    
Giving anything up for Lent?  If so, you are participating in one of
the oldest religious practices known: fasting.
    
Taking up a discipline for Lent?  If so, you are also following our
earliest and oldest religious impulses – to set a time aside for
dedication to God.
    
If you are doing neither, and are just here for the prayers and
communion, that is good enough for this evening and for this season.
    
I have a cousin, who happens to be a lawyer and a judge, who explained
to me the “perfect logic” of giving up self denial during Lent.  He
said it something like this:
    
During Lent, we are supposed to give up something we like so that we
can draw closer to God.
We like those things that help us.
Giving up stuff helps us.
So we like giving stuff up because it helps us, and we are supposed to
give up something we like, so for Lent we should give up giving things
up for Lent.
    
Like I said, lawyer.
    
In fact, there is much in the Bible to commend fasting, and there is
much in the Bible to commend not fasting – at least not in the way it
is commonly seen.
    
When Jesus heals a man that the disciples cannot, they ask him how.
He answers, “Some things require prayer and fasting.”  Some things are
too much for prayer alone.
    
But in Matthew, we hear Jesus warning against certain kinds of fasting.
    
Do not do it to be seen by others.  Do not do it to have a pity party.
Do not do it to out-fast your neighbor: “Oh, you gave up
candy….that’s nothing, I gave up donuts!”  (You can fill in your
particular fast here.)
    
Isaiah similarly warns about fasting as a way of being seen as
righteous, as worthy, as holy.  Only in Isaiah it is not being seen by
one another that is the problem.  Isaiah warns against fasting, or any
other discipline, as a way to coerce God into bending to our wills,
rather than fasting as a way of tempering our wills to God’s.
    
Isaiah quotes the complaint of the people:

    “Why do we fast and you take no notice of it?
    Why have we humbled ourselves and you don’t seem to care?”
    
The question is for God who seems far from the pleadings and prayers
of the people.
    
The answer comes not with God rushing forward with a pad and pen to
take down the complaints of the people.  It comes with a chiding of
the religious types who, like the Gentiles with their gods, want to
entice God and move God and control God by their religious actions.
    
Isaiah reminds the people, as Jesus does, that fasting is not a means
of controlling God.  Our religious actions, whether public or private,
whether prayer and fasting, or baptism and communion, whether in the
sanctuary or in our prayer closets, are all meant for a pair of
purposes: to remind us who we are and to remind us to whom we belong.
    
To let ashes touch our forehead or our hand is not to buy God’s
forgiveness, but to mark our own mortality.  To taste of bread and cup
is not to compel God, but to humbly receive from God that which
nourishes and sustains our whole being (our Nephesh), our body, mind
and spirit.  To read from scripture is not to perform a onerous task
or confirmation chore, but to listen again to God calling us to be who
we are – children of God – calling us to do what God would have us do
– to love our neighbor as our self.  To fast is not to look dismal for
the sake of looking religious, but to remind ourselves that we are
more than our needs, wants and desires.

Is such the fast that I choose,
a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it to bow down his head like a rush,
and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Will you call this a fast,
and a day acceptable to the LORD?
"Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
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 him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry, and he will say, Here I am.

The fast to which we are called is not simply giving up coffee (which,
by vote of the church staff, I am no longer allowed to do), or adding
prayer or exercise to our daily routines.  The fast of Lent is to
become, with the help of God, who God calls us to be.  The fast of
Lent is to do what God has told us all along we ought to do:  feed the
hungry, clothe the naked, care for the poor, live in justice with each
other, act with love toward our neighbor, and be the body of Christ on
earth, as best we are able, with the help of God.

Which means maybe my cousin was right all along – we ought not let our
religiosity get in the way of what we are truly called to be and to
do.

For there are homeless in need of shelter, and there are naked in need
of clothing, and there are those who thirst in need of clean drinking
water.  There are relationships in need of healing, there are lives in
need of community, and there are people in need of the love we know.

To this we are called as the body of Christ.
For this we are equipped by the Holy Spirit.

"If you take away from the midst of you the yoke,
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday.
And the LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your desire with good things,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters fail not.
And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to dwell in.”

Thanks be to God.
Amen.