Feasting and Fasting

There’s a reason that “Fat Tuesday” got exceptionally “fat.” People were on the eve of Lent – a season not marked for frivolity and feasting but for fasting as they geared up for the biggest feast of Easter. The (totally relatable) human being said, “40 days of fasting? Better gear up! Let’s binge.” And party feasting season began. You can chuckle. You know it’s true. When you’re going to start a new workout routine or diet, the night before is not going to be soft-pedaling it with a salad and a long walk, right?

How do we want to gear up for Easter? Might I suggest that, first, it’s a good thing to gear up for Easter. It’s a good thing to walk our bodies and souls through seasons of fasting that we might all the more be prepared to enter seasons of feasting.

Fasting – the refraining from (typically) food so that in the absence of feeding your physical appetite you become increasingly aware of your spiritual appetite.

Fasting reminds us that we want more. And more of the things that are ultimately good and that last forever. We want more peace, justice, love, unity, seeing God, seeing people…

There was an era when people had become accustomed to the practice of fasting but it had only stirred up in them an appetite for self-recognition rather than an appetite for the more that is the things of God. God spoke to his people then about the kind of fasting he was interested in.

Isaiah 58 is not a passage that you turn to if you want to feel warm, fuzzy comfort from God. But neither is the season of Lent – that 40 day onramp to Easter—meant to turn us inward. Could we consider a way of fasting this year that might actually make us less thoughtful toward ourselves and our chosen deprivations and more aware of other human beings and their unchosen deprivations?

It’s not humdrum around here, this season of fasting. It’s building to an eternal sense of feasting. I love the feasting traditions of Jesus, and Easter has to be absolutely the greatest reason to feast. Honestly, Jesus’ magnetic pull toward feasts is significantly under-sold. After Jesus rose from the dead, we get very few stories. But you better believe we got their fish count from morning fishing with Jesus (153 to be exact, see John 21:11).

So feasting is coming. And the way to get ready for that feast is to start engaging in the kinds of things that God intends to celebrate on the ultimate day of our resurrection: everyone fed, everyone housed, everyone just, everyone unified (see Revelation 20-22).

For now, please consider Lent as an opportunity to join in a fast that affects your appetites personally and in a way that draws your attention toward others.

Pastor Larry will be teaching more about fasting on Team Night – Tuesday, March 8th at 5:30pm. Come and join us.

We’ll be rolling out a couple of ideas this month about food boxes in our area that need filling and a way to come alongside an amazing community garden for the refugee community.

In the meantime, let yourself be uncomfortable with Isaiah 58. Draw close to God’s heart.