Let's Do Lent - Properly! - The Journey Home - Fasting

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Over these three weeks at the beginning of Lent we are thinking about the three spiritual disciplines that we can use to make the most of Lent i.e. Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. And so today we come to think about Fasting.

Last week, one of our adult confirmees was telling the group about her attempt during Lent last year to fast from bread. Things went well except when it came to making toast for her daughters' breakfast in the morning. And then the delicious aroma of the warm and gradually browning bread became almost unbearably tempting.

And that sort of hits the nail on the head. What use is fasting? Mostly to help us develop self-discipline. And that in itself is something that seems to have become rather alien in our gluttonous, lustful western world.

We discovered too last week in our confirmation group, as we were talking about St. Paul's list of the fruits of the Spirit in his letter to the Galatians, the list that contains fruits such as love, joy, peace, patience etc, that the very last of the fruits is - self-control. And that rather puts a different layering on the words self-discipline and self-control. And it connects fasting, right away, with the Holy Spirit and the movement of God in us.

But why do we need self-control or self-discipline anyway? Well, I think we can make another connection here with what Jesus says in our reading from St. Mark's gospel this morning (Mark 8.31-38) Here Jesus is rebuking Peter for thinking on worldly things and not on divine things. He lets his thoughts and imagination run away with him when Jesus foretells his death. He says that theirs is an adulterous and sinful generation. And I guess you could say that of our present generation. In this case Jesus is using those words to emphasise what he's just said to St. Peter. We prefer to think about other things than about God. It's in that way that we are unfaithful and falling short. And so to keep our minds on divine things we have to be disciplined in mind and heart.

And then Jesus pushes home his whole point by saying that what he demands of you who would be his disciples, is giving up your life as you know it and understand it, and taking up life with God. He says it's denying yourself, taking up your cross and following him. And denying yourself demands self-discipline and self-control.

It's hard, it's like being crucified, Jesus says, but it's the only way to life in all its fullness. And that's what Jesus means when he says that strange thing that you have to lose your life to gain your life.

Every single one of us is a slave to our bodily wants, needs and desires. We crave stuff that's bad for us or crave so much of the good stuff that it becomes bad for us. And we show all those, what are known as passions - pride, avarice, lust, envy, hatred, bitterness, and so many other qualities of self-interest and self-centredness. All of which close us off to God and to one another. Isolated we become in our sin, completely cut off from God and totally self-absorbed. Quite the opposite of what God intended us to be. And therein lies our spiritual, psychological and our physical disease and ultimately, death.

But it needn't be like that and God doesn't want us like that. He created us to live in communion with him and to grow and flourish and become light and life and love and peace and joy. But that brings us back to where we started. It brings us back to being tempted by that slice of toast and finding the strength within us to make the right decision, to leave one way and take another; to find the strength to leave the world's way and to take God's way. And that simple giving up in Lent, that fasting from whatever it is has, amongst its foremost benefits the developing of that self-discipline that helps us say yes to God, yes to the Holy Spirit working in us and developing more of that fruit of the spirit which is self-control.

Fasting as a discipline, in the western Church has become only a shadow of what it was and what it really should be or could be again. The rules are there and I'll tell you what they are if you are interested. But suffice to say that to be meaningful, I believe that we should give up something that we normally find essential in our day to day life. We are only going without for 6 weeks. But even that short time is a real test if we give up something that makes a real difference for having given it up. The traditional foods to give up are meat and dairy products. For we who aren't used to fasting, we should just go a little way and then each Lent add to it if we can. It does make a difference and it certainly makes a difference when the fast is over.

Whatever you give up, if you do indeed fast during Lent, as is the Christian way, remember that the giving up is symbolic of giving up your life in the world and taking up the way of God, the way of Jesus, the way of the cross; of giving up your life, of losing your life to gain your life.