On Lent: Fasting (Week 29, Mar 12)
Reading
Matthew 6:16–18
Silent Reflection
Remarks
“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Matthew 6:16–18 (NIV)
I am so stuffed I can barely make it past the first three words.
When you fast…
Do I fast?
My life is almost entirely a life of feasting. I eat whenever I want. I sit down and put my feet up when I feel like it. I watch movies or stream something on a whim. The word that fasting is meant to inject in my vocabulary—enough—remains largely foreign to me, if I’m being honest.
So I read these first three words and I feel like I have to interrupt and say, “Wait, Jesus, I think you’re assuming something of me that’s not true. I spend most of my time indulging—what I want, when I want it.”
Fasting is a discipline God wants to use to lead me to a life of self-control (saying no to things I want but that aren’t good for me) and self-discipline (saying yes to things I don’t want but that are good for me). But I often just say yes to what I want and no to what I don’t want.
The result: I am very full. And yet somehow it’s not enough.
Henri Nouwen made the incredibly incisive observation that as people inhabiting a technological and noisy and competitive world, we are filled and yet also very unfulfilled. We’re occupied with something all the time; we’re even preoccupied, he said—“we fill our time and place long before we are there.” Stuffed to the gills, never really satisfied. We have packed-full planners of things to do and pantries full of food to eat and a long friends list of people to connect with and Netflix/Spotify/podcast queues beyond what we could ever take in, and yet we are also bored, anxious, depressed, aimless.
Nouwen wrote, “While our minds and hearts are filled with many things, and we wonder how we can live up to the expectations imposed upon us by ourselves and others, we have a deep sense of unfulfillment. While busy with and worried about many things, we seldom feel truly satisfied, at peace, or at home. A gnawing sense of being unfulfilled underlies our filled lives.”
I’m guessing the relationship between filled and unfulfilled is not correlation, but causation. Paradoxically, we are unfulfilled precisely because we are so filled. It seems we are gorging on what is not sustaining. It’s diminishing us, in fact.
To some it seems like a hollow religious ritual to “give up” something during these Lenten days in the road up to Easter. Their relationship to God is entirely a “spiritual” matter, and they can get along with Him just fine without silly rituals. They know God doesn’t need them to give up alcohol or YouTube or donuts in order to be close to them.
It’s too true that God doesn’t need us to give up anything for Him nor for His sake. As Frederick Buechner pointed out about worship, there are some acts of worship that God does need us to do for Him (acts of justice or mercy, say), but fasting is not one of them. Fasting is one of those acts of worship that we need to do for our own sake (like singing or meditating or crying out). It puts us in touch not only with the truth about God, but with the deeper truths about ourselves, like the truth that all the stuff we’ve been stuffing ourselves with isn’t really filling us up, so there must be some other food we’re meant to live by. And that this food is always there if we would only slow down and abstain from our normal diet long enough to recognize it.
Silent Reflection
Response
Does Nouwen’s observation about being filled yet unfulfilled resonate with you?
If you are fasting this Lent, what have you noticed about yourself or your habits or your appetites this year?
Fasting isn’t just about giving something up, but about what you fill the now-empty time and space with. Are there other good habits, disciplines, or acts of worship that you can engage in to prepare yourself for Easter?