‘When you fast’: entering into the season of fasting
Matthew 6.16
“And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting.” [1]
On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, it is difficult not to recognise that this day begins a season of fasting.
We heard it in the introduction to our liturgy: “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Lord to observe a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial …” [2]
We heard it in the first reading from the prophet Joel: “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting …” [3]
And we will hear it again in our final hymn, referring to our Lord’s time in the wilderness: “Forty days and forty nights, thou was fasting in the wild …” [4]
Lent is a time for fasting.
Depending on our age, health, and circumstances, this may mean abstaining from one of the day’s meals throughout Lent; or it may mean simplifying our diet in Lent; or abstaining from particular foods during Lent.
We can each determine how we are to observe the fast of Lent; but what is clear from the liturgy of Ash Wednesday, is that Lent is a time for fasting.
And then we hear our Lord’s words from the Gospel reading of this day: “whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting”.
This is not Jesus somehow challenging the practice of fasting. He Himself, after all, fasted forty days in the wilderness. He was faithful to the teaching of the prophets of the Old Testament, who called the people of God to fast.
What Jesus is challenging, however, is a view that fasting is somehow the practice of a spiritual elite. We see this in His parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector: as the Pharisee exalts himself before God and over the tax collector, he boasts “God, I thank you that I am not like other people … I fast twice a week”.
For the Pharisee, fasting marked him out as belonging the spiritual elite, set apart from the moral failings and compromises of the tax collector.
It is not to be so in the Church, commands Jesus. There is no spiritual elite in the Church of Jesus Christ. We all alike are baptised. We all alike partake of the Lord’s Supper. We all alike pray ‘Our Father’. We all alike hear and read the Scriptures. We all alike confess our sins. And we all alike hear the call to fast.
It is a call grounded in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, as we have heard this evening from the prophet Joel.
Fasting is a penitential act: a recognition that all is not well with us, individually and corporately. We all like sheep have gone astray. We all pray “forgive us our trespasses”. We are all to be like the tax collector in the parable, whose prayer was “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”.
Fasting, as an act of penitence, rejects the claims of a self-proclaimed spiritual elite: it is an acknowledgement that we, that I fall short of the commandments to love God and to love neighbour.
It challenges the delusion that all is fine with me, that I stand apart from ‘them’, others, with their failings. Fasting is the opposite of pointing a finger at others. It is an acknowledgement of what we say in almost every service of Holy Communion: “we [not they] have sinned in thought, word, and deed”.
The Lenten fast also prepares us all for the great festival of Easter, the pinnacle of the Christian year.
The forty days of Lent, marked by fasting, remind us that Easter approaches, that soon we will be celebrating at the Empty Tomb, rejoicing in the Lord’s Resurrection.
To fast in preparation for Easter, then, is to mark out Easter’s central significance and importance for Christians everywhere: as we approach the great festival, we spiritually prepare ourselves, that with joyful hearts and renewed faith we may celebrate the Resurrection.
Another important aspect of the fast of Lent is that it gives expression to a unity amongst Christians.
Across the globe, Christians are now entering into Lent, and hearing the call to fast. No spiritual elite with delusional claims about our spiritual health, but the common, ordinary people of God, walking the way of penitence, in preparation for Easter.
Our Muslim friends and neighbours have now entered into their season of fasting, Ramadan. Between dawn and dusk, faithful Muslims will abstain from food. It is a different practice from and has a different meaning to the Christian Lent, but we can see how Ramadan is an important expression of Muslim identity and solidarity.
Lent is, for us, a reminder, a renewal of our shared, common vocation and identity, of our solidarity, as Christians, as we begin the fast of Lent and look towards Easter.
As the 17th century Anglican priest and poet George Herbert puts it in his poem ‘Lent’, “The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church sayes, now” [5]: now is the time when Christians together, in our common life in the Church, hear and respond to the call given in the Scriptures to fast.
Lent is the season of fasting.
Whether our Lenten fast is abstaining from one of the day’s meals throughout Lent, or simplifying our diet, or abstaining from particular foods, let us enter into this season with penitent hearts, hearing our Lord’s words, 'when you fast', in communion with our fellow Christians across the globe, and looking towards the bright, new life of Easter.
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[1] The Gospel reading appointed for Ash Wednesday in BCP 2004 is Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21. The Gospel in BCP 1926, following 1662, is shorter but more effective. It opens with the Lord's words, "When ye fast".
[2] From the introduction to the Ash Wednesday liturgy, which "explains the meaning of Lent and invites the people to observe if faithfully": BCP 2004, p.338. The calendar of BCP 2004 lists Ash Wednesday and the other weekdays of Lent as "Days of Discipline and Self-Denial" (p.20).
[3] The appointed Old Testament reading is Joel 2.1-12, 12-17.
[4] Church Hymnal, no. 207.
[5] George Herbert, 'Lent'. As Herbert goes on to say, heeding the call to the Lenten fast is a recognition of the Church's common life: "Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow To ev'ry Corporation".
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