Fasting

Matthew 6: 1-18

Fasting: giving up something we love; who’s into that? God made us to enjoy many things especially food; that’s why He gave us a need for food, taste buds and a sense of smell. God gives us the gift of hunger (only a problem when there is no food or we cannot eat), food, taste and fellowship. We love to share food. Jesus provides us with a meal to remember Him. Jesus promises that we will eat with Him in the consummation of His Kingdom that He has inaugurated and invited us to participate in. Eating is not meeting our needs our own way it’s how we have been made by God. Let’s face it though, it’s possible to get hooked on things that in themselves are not wrong but we get obsessed with them and use them as a form of avoidance of meeting the other needs that we should address in God’s way.  Eating to reduce anxiety is a good example. However NOT eating to reduce anxiety is equally as damaging and self-destructive.   

In the bible there is only one compulsory fast recorded in Leviticus 16:29-31: ‘²⁹This shall be a statute to you for ever: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall deny yourselves, and shall do no work, neither the citizen nor the alien who resides among you.’ By Jesus time the religious had turned this one command into a two day per week public event and a show to the community of how holy the ‘religious’ were. We have been noting how Jesus is teaching that He is the fulfilment of the promise of God that He would establish a Kingdom where He reigns and we are free. We have noted how Jesus is presented as the inauguration of the Kingdom of God and we are invited to participate and be transformed by the participation.  In our passage Jesus presumes that we will fast and this is linked with the experience of some deep rooted need.  For example in Matthew 9 14-18 the fasting of disciples is linked to the deep rooted need within the disciples to experience the transforming power and presence of Jesus in their lives. When the disciple is consumed with need for the transforming power of Jesus they may well fast as they seek Him. But Jesus teaches that His disciples will not turn this need into a public theatrical event? What will we fast; our food? How will we seek Jesus day by day?  How about fasting as recorded in Isaiah 58?  Let’s remember Jesus of the Nazareth sermon is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah. We could fast: injustice, anger, avarice, non-forgiveness all the stuff we love to feed our needs our own way with. Yes, we are expected to fast but as Isaiah 58 records

⁶ Is not this the fast that I choose:
   to loose the bonds of injustice,
   to undo the thongs 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 them,
   and not to hide yourself from your own kin? 

Just like the disciples prayer we can fast like this all day and every day.