This Fast

When you fast, brush your hair and wash your face.
Then you won’t look like you are fasting … Matthew 6:16-18

The other day, someone asked when Methodists got so into Lent. I've wondered that myself, and though I don't know the when, I shared something I'd read a few years ago: that in trying to distance themselves from all things Catholic, leaders of the Protestant Reformation rejected many traditions and understandings that may be worth reclaiming.

I don't fault them; they did what they had to do at the time. Yet, looking from a distance of some 500 years, churches have – thankfully – begun to see value in such things as honoring Jesus' mother, the theotokos (God bearer), who not only raised him but was there at both beginning and the end of his ministry. We’ve also gotten more serious about observing Lent.

Prayer and fasting are the two big Lenten practices. Yet while many of us “get” prayer we can be at a loss with fasting. Isn’t that what you do before a blood draw or, worse, a colonoscopy? Then there’s the research showing that intermittent fasting – timing your meals to allow for regular periods of fasting – benefits us by:

• Helping promote insulin sensitivity 
• Normalizing ghrelin levels (the “hunger hormone”)
• Lowering triglycerides
• Helping suppress inflammation and fight free radical damage.[1]

Wow! Who knew?

But the fasting I’m talking about is the spiritual practice of doing without something. By taking a break from food, media, shopping or whatever else draws our time and energy from God’s big picture, we can reorient ourselves, re-turning to God and God’s hope for the world.

This returning to God is something most of us probably do regularly anyway, but Lent is a special time when the Church has historically encouraged it.

The United Methodist Church doesn’t have official guidelines on how people should observe Lent, calling it “a very personal time of self-reflection.” I would agree that no one (except God) should tell anyone else what their fast should be. Yet, if the Isaiah writer was correct, God does this:

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?
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?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
   the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
    you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. Isaiah 58:6-9a

I admit I see God's call to justice as a bigger deal than most of the people around me. (When I discovered Liberation Theology, I felt I'd found my niche.) It seems that U.S. Christians are generally too comfortable with the gods we made in our own image. God’s call to care for the other, to treat the immigrant like they’re one of us, echoed in Jesus’ declarations in Matthew 25, fall on deaf ears.

I’m not saying we’re bad people, but we’ve been lulled into accepting that affluenza, excessive consumption, and destroying the earth and its other occupants in the process are all business as usual. It’s sad. It’s awful. And it’s truth.

Lent is a time to clear our hearts and minds, and to open ourselves to what we’ve forgotten:

• That the earth is God’s and all that is in it (Psalm 24)
• That everything we have comes from God (1 Chronicles 29:14), and 
• That we’re to share what we’ve been given (Luke 3:11). 

One blessed thing about God is that we can come as we are. We can come when we come. We are never beyond God's caring. It is never too late. So if you haven’t already begun a Lenten practice and you think you'd like to, jump in right where you are.

[1] Dr. Joseph Mercola, "Everything You Need to Know About Intermittent Fasting." mercola.com/infographics/intermittent-fasting.htm