Rhythms: Fasting and Service

Prayer

O Lord God, grant your people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

(ACNA, BCP 2019. Proper 18)

Introduction

[SLIDE - SERIES]

This morning, I want to begin with a question:

How do you view your body?

I’m sure that the smart-alecs in the congregation would say, “Well, Jason, you just look in a mirror.”

I mean, yes, but no. That’s not what I mean.

I mean, how do you “perceive” your body? I’m asking about more than your self-image or how you look in the mirror.

What do you envision when you think about our bodies in relation to our souls?

Okay, is that too deep for early Sunday morning? Let me give you a framework that might be helpful.

Author Scot McKnight (Fasting: The Ancient Practices, ch. 1) offers four ways most of us tend to view see our bodies.

As a monster to be conquered

[SLIDE - MONSTER]

In this view, the body is out of control - a series of desires that must be tamed. You might think things like, “mind over matter” or “just push through the pain.” Any unwanted desires or feelings are things that our spirit must gain mastery over.

As a celebrity to be glorified

[SLIDE - CELEBRITY]

In this view, you are dedicated to happiness, individualism, and personal freedom. You might focus on a slender body, fashionable clothing, or trendy haircuts. You take the idea of the body as a Temple very seriously.

As a cornucopia to be filled

[SLIDE - CORNUCOPIA]

This view sees the body as a source of joyful experiences. You might be dedicated to physical pleasure, rich diets, expensive drinks, or special restaurants. You love food and tend toward overindulgence.

As a wallflower to be ignored

[SLIDE - WALLFLOWER]

Finally, in this view, the body just doesn’t really matter. The body is just a shell for the spirit - it’s really the spirit/soul/mind that really matter. These are often the people we think of being “so heavenly-minded they’re no earthly good.”

[SLIDE - ALL]

Now, take a moment, and think about it - where do you fit in these categories? And don’t worry, I’m not going to make you raise your hands and tell me which one.

(PAUSE)

Now, hold on to that for a little while. We’ll come back to it in just a moment. Let’s review where we are in our series.

[SLIDE - SERIES]

We began this series on rhythms by discussing the fact that we cannot think/reason ourselves into holiness and that God created the rhythms of the world to grant us the tools to pursue holiness. Last week, Elaine covered the rhythm of reading Scripture and how it empowers the rhythm of witnessing/sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world. This week, we will be talking about the rhythm of fasting and how it prepares us for the rhythm of service to the world.

So, what does “how we see our bodies” have to do with these rhythms?

Well, I’m so glad you asked!

Embodiment of the Christian Walk

[SLIDE - ALL]

As we look at all of these views, I’m sure you found one that most represents you. However, Scripture asserts something very different about our fleshly bodies than any of these.

If you look throughout Scripture, you don’t see a picture of a bunch of men and women holed up in isolation, taming their bodies and becoming holy by their own will and strength. That would, honestly, be a pretty boring story. Nor is the story a glorification of our bodies that they should be worshiped, nor a cornucopia to sate all our fleshly desires, nor something that can easily be discarded and neglected.

Scripture retells the story of humanity as an embodied history: hearts and souls, minds and strength, bodies and spirits.

[SLIDE - UNITY]

As Scot McKnight, author of Fasting: The Ancient Practices, writes, in the Bible,

Fasting: The Ancient Practices 2. Fasting as Body Talk

Each person ... is both an

This is why the rhythms of Creation are so fundamental to how we interact with God.

Jesus Christ came to us over 2,000 years ago, not as an ethereal spirit, but as flesh and blood, becoming the embodiment of God’s love to His people. He came not in the might and power and glory that He deserved, but unassuming as humble.

He ate like us, he laughed like us, he sang like us. Jesus, having put on flesh, he struggled like us, faced temptation like us, and suffered like us.

Christ did not despise our flesh nor did he glory in it. His flesh was the vessel by which He would proclaim the kingdom of God and seal that kingdom through His own death on the cross. He lived within the rhythms of His own creation to show us how to do likewise, because He made them - and they were good.

Why does it matter?

Understanding this dual nature we have - flesh and spirit - is crucial to understand the rhythms of creation - they encompass all of us - spirit and flesh.

Think back to last week’s message on reading Scripture. This rhythm is not just simply looking at the text and understanding it - the Holy Spirit speaks to us through those words. Witnessing the Good News of Jesus Christ to others requires our bodies and our mouths to proclaim the message, but if our spirit isn’t in tune with God’s will - if we do not do it in love - His love! - our words (as St. Paul reminds us) would be like a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor 13:1).

Likewise, Fasting and Service both require the full engagement of our dual nature - our spirit and our flesh - to work in harmony for the greater purposes of God.

Now that I’ve laid this groundwork, let’s dig into these two rhythms briefly.

Fasting

[SLIDE - FASTING]

First, let’s look at Fasting.

There is so much that can be said about the rhythm of fasting I could do an entire sermon series just on this one practice. Instead, I will direct your further study to the following:

Our upcoming small group practices coming early next year.

The Practicing the Way website and podcasts

And the book I’m using this morning, Fasting: The Ancient Practices by Scot McKnight.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of fasting, let’s look at why we might fast.

Why fast?

In our culture - especially in a country as food-rich as the United States - fasting has gone out of fashion. Why in the world, when we have so much abundance, would we knowingly give up the cornucopia that lay before us? If we do fast, we approach it as good for:

losing weight

getting answers from God

repenting of some heinous sin or habit that holds you back

But if we go into it with an eye toward the results, our reasoning is backwards. McKnight defines fasting this way:

[SLIDE - McKNIGHT QUOTE]

Fasting: The Ancient Practices 2. Fasting as Body Talk

[Fasting is] the natural, inevitable

Let me say that another way: Fasting is a proper response to:

Fasting: The Ancient Practices Conclusion

• sin

• death

• impending disaster or disaster itself

• [a personal] lack of holiness and love and compassion

• the impoverishment of others

• [encountering] the sacred presence of God

• [an] absence of justice, peace, and love [in our lives]

This is what the people in our passage from Isaiah this morning got wrong. They were not being rebuked because they fasted and had sought to know God’s ways - but because their fasting was not leading them to do something about what God really cared about.

Their fasting was self-focused and ritualistic.

[SLIDE - ISAIAH 58:5-7]

Isaiah 58:3–4 ESV

3 ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. 4 Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high.

They were fasting for their own desires and not to align themselves to God’s desires. They were using it as a tool to control God, not to allow God humble them so that they might see the plight of others.

Fasting is not a means to a goal, though that goal might very well be obtained, but, like all of the rhythms of creation, it is a means of aligning ourselves with God and trusting in Him to take care of what He wants to address.

Fasting is a natural outpouring of our distress; when God puts it upon our hearts to seek His face, He expects us to follow His direction.

Fasting is not a get-holy-quick strategy nor a means to change God’s mind, but it is to bring ourselves into alignment with God’s will in our lives. It supercharges our prayers and, with our whole person - spirit and body - communicates the intensity with which we desire to know and do God’s will.

So, if God places this burden upon your heart, how do you fast?

[SLIDE - FASTING]

How do we fast?

I have to confess here that, until I prepared this sermon, I had the idea of fasting all wrong. I had bought into the "modernized” version where fasting only happened once a year, during Lent. It just meant giving up something trivial like chocolate. Easy, right?

The primary error I fell into was in thinking fasting does not mean giving up food. I even told someone this very a couple of weeks ago, confident in my understanding.

However, the more I dug into this topic, the more I could not avoid the conclusion that the rhythm of fasting requires a radical departure from my normal habits. The purpose of fasting is to develop a real hunger inside of us - not just a yearning or desire of something nice we give up - but the sort of hunger that eats at you throughout the day, that reminds you constantly that something crucial is missing in your life. It is a hunger that forces you to rely upon God and His providence. The way this happens is to … not … eat … food.

As for fasting itself, there are various types:

Abstinence

I first want to address what is not fasting. What most people think of as fasting fits better into the category of Abstinence. This is sometimes called a partial food fast. Giving up something we like (chocolate, red meat, pasta, caffeine, Facebook, TikTok) for a period of time. Abstinence is a valuable tool in the Christian toolbelt, but it is not fasting. It does not produce the same hunger that fasting truly requires.

Water Fasting

The most basic fast you can undertake is the water fast or liquid fast. This means that for a specified period drinking only water or fruit/vegetable juices. Often this is for a single day - 24 contiguous hours, sunup to sundown - or even skipping a single meal like lunch. Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness was likely a water fast.

Absolute Fasting

The absolute fast is the most extreme of the two. It means fasting from all food and water. This is a very dangerous fast. The human body cannot survive without water for more than three days. Israel was commanded to an absolute fast only once per year, on the Day of Atonement. The Apostle Paul held an absolute fast after his experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus, but only for three days.

Communal Fasting

The last variant I want to talk about is the communal fast, often called a stationary fast. It is a time when we, as a Church, say we are going to fast in response to something going on in our Church calendar or the world. Some examples would be Lent, Advent, or Ember Days. Sometimes the Church calls for a fast for other important world events as well. These are usually one day water or liquid fasts where the community joins together to seek God.

Final Word about Fasting

Because I have so little time, I only have a few final words about fasting:

Fasting is all about naturally responding to God’s call to seek him in some sort of crisis situation. Fasting is not a means to get-holy-quick or bending God’s will to ours tool. Fasting brings our whole bodies into submission to God in response to His prompting.

For some of us, myself included, fasting might have to look something different than a water or absolute fast. As an insulin-dependent diabetic, I have to use liquid fasts to maintain my blood sugars while also attaining that sense of hunger so necessary for the fast. Regardless of your condition, check with a medical professional and do some research before starting fasting.

Like any spiritual rhythm we talk about - start out small. Try skipping one meal before deciding to jump into a three day absolute fast. Many people find it especially helpful to start by fasting before church on Sundays and breaking their fast with Holy Communion. Then, as God calls them, they can try lengthier fasts.

[SLIDE - SERVICE]

Service

Now I want to turn our attention to other side of our passage this morning. God’s rebuke to Israel was not telling his people not to fast - but he was saying that the fast He called for had very practical implications to the community around them.

Isaiah’s audience was so fixated upon their own attainment of holiness and “seeking out” God that they weren’t listening to God cry out about the poverty and bondage that they helped bring about every day.

Isaiah 58:6–7 ESV

6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Service to others - addressing injustice and poverty - is a natural response to hearing God’s will in our lives. God desires to pour His heart into ours - to make us fully embodied vessels by which His will might be done in the world.

Just as Fasting is the embodiment of our response to the wrongs in the world, so is Service.

[SLIDE - SERVICE]

Because I spent so much time on fasting, I don’t have time to delve too much into Service. Each of these rhythms could take up an entire sermon or sermon series.

But, like the people God chastised in our passage,

if your engagement with God does not lead you out into Service - helping the hungry, freeing the captives, serving others within the communities you live or the community gathered here together

if you are not compelled to interact with others and better their lives

then you might ask yourself if you are actually listening to God.

You might want to reevaluate your rhythms and reset them to focus on listening to God, not just telling Him what you want or need. He knows that already. We don’t have to tell Him. What God wants through these rhythms is to bring us closer to Him - to hear His desires, to make our hearts love what He loves and detest what He detests - and then go do something about it.

[SLIDE - SERIES]

Conclusion

We, as Christians, can no longer be trapped by “reasoning/thinking ourselves into holiness.” Rhythms like Fasting and Service are part of God’s created order - they are a part of who God made us to be as His image bearers. Fasting is the rhythm that comes as a response to what is happening in the world around us, to hear what God would have us understand. Service is the rhythm that comes from abiding in God’s will and, by His guidance, doing something about it. They go hand-in-hand, both fully embodied expressions of God’s love pouring itself out into the world through us.

As we continue our series on the rhythms of creation, my continued prayer is that we all may be convicted to see and engage in these rhythms. Not so we might know more about God, but be convicted and compelled by God to embody that knowledge into action.

Concluding Prayer

O Lord our God, grant us grace to desire you with our whole heart:

that desiring you, we may seek you;

and that seeking you, we may find you;

and that finding you, we may love you;

and that loving you, we may hate those sins from which you

have delivered us;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Ash Wednesday Concluding Prayer, BCP, ACNA 2019, 551)