"A fast is at hand": Andrewes on the Lenten fast
He returns to the theme in in 1621 Ash Wednesday sermon before the King. Again, Andrewes emphasises the significance of the epistle and Gospel readings appointed for the first day of Lent in the Book of Common Prayer:
The lessons which this day have been all speak to us of fasting. The lesson of the Old Testament, 'Turn to Me with fasting.' The lesson of the New, as you have heard, 'When you fast,' &c. All, either as the Epistle, telling us what we should do, 'fast;' or, as the Gospel, taking it for granted that we shall fast, and teaching us how to fast so as we may receive a reward for it at God's hands.
These being the lessons, this the tenor of them, by them there is intimation give us that the matter of these lessons, that a fast is at hand, that this 'when' is 'now.' How in our practice it will fall out I know not, but certainly in the Churches meaning, 'now.' Who would not, we may be sure, look out an Epistle for us beginning with 'Turn to Me' cum jejunio, 'with fasting,' and a Gospel beginning with cum jejunatis, 'When ye fast, &c;' but when she presumeth we mean to fast, to dispose ourselves that way. It were all out of season to seek and select Scriptures, what to avoid, how to behave ourselves, in our fasting, if we mean no such matter, if it shall be with us as yesterday and the day before it was, and no otherwise.
This being the Church's intent, this is her time, and this her text, what she commends to us we commend to you, that you would take notice of it, and prepare yourselves for it accordingly; that the Epistle be not sent, and the Gospel brought you, and both in vain.
This, he says, refutes the Papalist attack that the reformed ecclesia Anglicana has abandoned the discipline of fasting:
The Church thus reaching it forth, I took this text, and I took it the rather, if it might be, to stop the mouths of them that malign it, at least to remove from it the slander of an untrue imputation. They preach it, they print it, and no remedy, so they will have it, that the 'locusts' must needs mean us here. Why? The locusts is all belly, and we all for the belly ... 'the professed enemies of fasting and of all abstinence.' That we, the Preachers, entertain you with nothing but with discourse about 'the mystery of godliness,' but never with exhortation to the exercise of it ...
Sure for fasting, how we practise it every one is to answer for himself; but that we preach it, I take this day you all to witness.
Andrewes goes on to critique a Puritan understanding of 'Christian liberty' - "But as our times are inclined to leave sensuality to our own which we would fain have called Christian liberty" - which would deny the Church's authority to institute a time of fasting:
But all this while we have been speaking of when we are to fast at large, or when upon some occasion; in the mean time, we say nothing of this time now at hand. This is not upon any occasion, it is a yearly recurrent fast ... For shall our fasting be altogether when we will ourselves? shall it not also be some time when the Church will? May we bind ourselves, and may not she also bind us? Hath she no interest in us, no power over us? The Synagogue of the Jews, we see, had power to prescribe fasts and did; hath the Church of Christ none? Is she in worse case than the Synagogue? No indeed. If Rechab might enjoin his sons, she may hers. She is our mother, she hath the power of a mother over us, and a mother hath power to give laws to her children.
He is also mindful of the great pastoral wisdom in the Lenten fast, that in its absence the practice and discipline is too easily lost:
and so for fasting; fast privately in God's name, but, hear, hear you, let not the Church trust to that. Nor she hath not held it wisdom so to do; but as in both them, prayer and the Sacrament, so in this holds us to our order of days and times established. Them if we keep, so it is: otherwise, were it not for the Church's times, I doubt there would be taken scarce any time at all. Now yet somewhat is done; but leave us once at liberty, liberty hath lost us some already, and will lose us the rest if it be not looked to in time.
He continues by articulating the particular penitential purpose of the Lenten fast:
Why forty days? Why before Easter? Why this fast? It is of all hands confessed, that ordained it was as a part of the discipline of repentance; and much was done in it about public penitents. Yet not for them only; but even with them out of the bowels of a mother the Church herself would become a penitent, and have all her children do the like. Herself become one; for the whole body of the Church has her faults beside the private offences of every particular member, for which there was a several set sacrifice in the Law. For us to become penitents likewise; for who knows whether we be not as faulty in private as they, the open penitents in public? as great sinners as they, though not known for such?
So the cause is general that she with them, and we with her and with them and for them, for them and for ourselves, in whole and in part, all in one, uniformly might perform a solemn annual repentance to God.
It is a robust, explicit defence of the Lenten fast, and the practice of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana in retaining it, refuting both Papalist allegations that such discipline was abandoned and Puritan invocations of 'Christian liberty'. What is more, it is a striking contrast with the abolition of the Lenten fast across Lutheran and Reformed Europe, reminding us of how the reformed ecclesia Anglicana - while judiciously pruning the liturgical year, and removing "the great excess and multitude" of ceremonies - retained the cycle of feast and fast in the Christian year, including both the Lenten and Fridays fasts, what Hooker had already defended as the "yearly or weekly fasts such as ours in the Church of England" (LEP V.72.1).
Above all, however, Andrewes here offers a teaching model for contemporary Anglicanism to take seriously, in an era in which the basic practices which embody Christian life and Faith are at risk of being forgotten, significantly contributing to secularization and undermining the handing on of the Faith (relying as this does on embodied practices). Rooted in Scripture and lectionary, refuting misconceptions about (what we now term) Anglican identity, displaying pastoral wisdom, Andrewes offers clear, challenging teaching on the Lenten fast, its purpose and meaning. Or, as he had stated in the 1619 Ash Wednesday sermon, "And thus preach we fasting ... yea an evangelical fast".
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