Although I’ve spent most of my adult life in a nondenominational church, I grew up in a liturgical one. I was a high-church Episcopalian, and the church calendar was a key part of my life in all its rhythms and practices. When I grew older and deeply embraced and internalized the gospel, I saw the liturgical trappings of the high church, complete with the church calendar itself, as a kind of legalism that I wanted nothing to do with.
As time progressed and God started transforming my heart, I realized I had uncritically disregarded the beauty and anchoring power of over 2,000 years of Scripture-rooted church tradition. I had forgotten that I was a part of something ancient and profound, something that transcended the chaotic freneticism of modern culture and gave my life structure and meaning. Since then, I have seen the glory of not creating but grafting my life onto the daily, weekly, and yearly rhythms and practices God has ordained for his people.
One of these practices is commemorating Lent, a season of fasting. Although Lent is much more than fasting, I’ll focus on it here because it’s a practice critical to our spiritual health and often neglected.
Self-denial is not really our thing. We are an over-consuming people. Our entire culture and economic system is based upon consumption. Wherever you find yourself in the great tariff debate so prominent in the news right now, the debate is premised on the idea of consumption: what drives our economy is consuming, and having tariffs causes us to consume our goods rather than other people’s goods, therefore (in theory, at least) helping our economy and (in theory, at least) making us more prosperous and better. Our whole way is to make life easier to consume: pop-up ads telling us we need things, “buy it now” buttons linked to our payment information, shortcutting the link between our impulses and will, and bypassing our discernment, creating opportunities to have things, and pay later thanks to creative financing.
Whether buying, working, or eating, we’re not generally known for moderation. In a Lenten devotional I was reading the other day, author Barbara Cawthorne Crafton (also an Episcopal priest) notes about this culture in which we live:
We didn’t even know what moderation was. What it felt like. We didn’t just work: we inhaled our jobs, sucked them in, became them. Stayed late, brought work home… we ordered things we didn’t need from the shiny catalogs (now Internet): we ordered three times as much as we could use, and then we ordered three times as much as our children could use… we didn’t just eat; we stuffed ourselves. We had gained only three pounds since the previous year, we told ourselves. Not a lot. We had gained about that much in each of the twenty-five years since high school. We did not do the math.
Even when we worship the Lord, we don’t worship only him. At last week’s Gather25 event, Jennie Allen talked about the wandering Israelites and how, while Moses was meeting God on Mount Sinai, they stayed at the foot of the mountain and crafted a golden calf. God had commanded them to ask the Egyptians for gold and precious jewels and gave them favor with the Egyptians so they would willingly give. After plundering the Egyptians, they intended to use those riches to construct a Tabernacle, a place of worship for the Lord. Instead, they built an idol.
Allen notes that when Aaron created the calf, he also commanded, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord!” In so doing, the Israelites worshipped God and the idol. Allen challenged us to consider how we worship both God and idols simultaneously. Her challenge rang in my ears as I read Crafton’s words: “Suddenly we saw it all clearly: I am driven by my creatures–my schedule, my work, my possessions, my hungers. I do not drive them; they drive me. Probably yes. Certainly yes. This is how it is.” In what ways are we syncretistic people, blending God-worship with the worship of other idols? What does the golden calf represent in our lives?
This is why fasting is a vital part of our life in Jesus. Jesus commanded his disciples, “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that others may see their fasting.” (Matt. 6). Fasting wasn’t optional in the Savior’s economy, not a really helpful add-on for the very spiritual people, but not necessary for us ordinary Christians. Fasting is part of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
Fasting is more than just not eating. It certainly includes food, and scripturally, that’s what it means. However, I can abstain from a wide range of activities, such as overusing technology, too much work, unruly hobbies, excessive smoking and drinking, shopping, and anything else that could potentially lead us astray, consume us, or ruin our lives.
Sure, fasting helps with our prayer lives. Any time I’m reminded of what I’ve given up, it prompts me to pray, be grateful for God’s gifts, and press into my reliance on Christ alone for all I need. But fasting is so much more than a reminder. It is a way of creating an internal spiritual wilderness inside my heart.
Throughout Scripture, whether it’s Moses, David, Elijah, Jesus, or many, many others, entering into the wilderness represents a season of being stripped down, of removing those things that encumber us and tie us to this world so that we can be intimately connected with God. Removing whatever we’re fasting from, over time, breaks its hold on us and reminds us that we don’t really need it. It reinforces that the only needful thing is our relationship with Jesus, in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17). It gives us the space necessary away from that thing, that creature we’ve been worshipping, or at least overly connected with—to break its spell over our lives.
Fasting removes the fuzzy thinking and lack of clarity that come with over-attachment to the world and its enticements and creates the context for repentance. Crafton asserts that fasting allows us to cultivate the courage to confront the truth head-on and, for once, refrain from blinking. “How did we come to know we were dying a slow and unacknowledged death? And that the only way back to life was to set all our packages down and begin again, carrying with us only what we really needed?”
Finally, fasting removes the veil of entitlement that overconsumption brings. When we see that our food, our needs, and even salvation are good gifts from a gracious God, it turns away the ingratitude at the root of our sinful, fallen nature. Salvation and the capacity for love it brings are only possible for grateful hearts (Luke 17:17-19), and denial cultivates gratitude in hearts filled by the Spirit. Another word for “turns away” is repentance: in this way, fasting leads to repentance.
I love Jesus’ words to his disciples in Matthew 11:28, and I love how Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in the Message:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Lent is about so much more than fasting. Still, it is undoubtedly about that critical practice for our lives in Jesus—the chance to get away, to escape (even for a season) whatever entangles us in the world around us, and to rest in Jesus and the freedom of his grace.
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