Isaiah 58: 1-12; Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21
Now is the healing time decreed, as the great Lent hymn puts it. Today begins our forty-day pilgrimage to the cross and the empty tomb. In this holy season, we journey deeper into the fathomless depths of God’s mercy and grace, as we bring the fragile earth of our mortal human lives to the death-conquering love of Christ, that we might more fully receive his light and his life.
And in this great pilgrimage of faith, what is our mode of transport?
It is, of course, a renewed commitment to the life of prayer and the reading of the holy scriptures. It is, of course, our heeding of the call to repentance, that we might turn away from the folly of our pride and self-importance – which can only lead to the dust and ashes of death – and our returning to Christ, who shows us that it is the way of humility and service that leads to life.
But in addition to these things, it is also about our willingness to embrace a discipline of fasting – that is, the deliberate practice of depriving ourselves, in particular ways, of food, drink, and other similar comforts. For, after all, Ash Wednesday is a day of proclaiming the beginning of the great Christian fast. This is a highly unattractive and unfashionable dimension of our faith. Especially in a society such as ours, which is religiously wedded to the idea of instant gratification and the unquestionable autonomy of our will to choose and take what we want.
But the briefest examination of the lives of the great saints, like St Cuthbert, reveals that the spiritual discipline of fasting is an essential and irreducible aspect in walking the way of Our Lord.
However, as our readings make clear, fasting is a dangerous business. It is so, because it is all too easy for us to be seriously mistaken about this spiritual discipline in at least one of two ways.
On the one hand, we can treat fasting as a kind of spiritual bargaining tool. This is what the prophet Isaiah rebukes in God’s people. They draw near to God only to say, ‘we fast, but you do not see.’ In other words, they think that their fasting is something that will change God, something by which to manipulate him, or win his favour. They make a great show of their humility and self-deprivation, but, in reality, it is only self-serving.
Isaiah is speaking to those who had returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon, the wealthier and more educated from among the people, who were now engaged in the project of re-building the temple. But their fasting was revealed merely to be a form of self-interested bargaining with God, so long as they continued to oppress their workers.
As Canon Michael told us two Sundays ago, ‘There is no authentic search for the kingdom that is not also a search for justice.’ And so, to those who seek God’s blessing as if it were a commodity to be possessed at the expense of others, the prophet Isaiah only has this to say: the fast which is acceptable to God is to loose the bonds of injustice, to lift the weight of oppression from off the shoulders of the afflicted, and to provide for the hungry, the homeless, the poor, and the destitute. Only upon the foundation of such justice is the dwelling place of God – the Temple, and all its glory – to be built.
On the other hand, our fasting can become a thing of self-importance and spiritual pride. This is the piety that is practised before other people, so that we might be praised and honoured for being spiritually very impressive. But to fast, and pray, and give alms, with this intention is only to seek after an earthly treasure that will eventually consume to dust and ashes.
It is precisely from this proudness of heart that all true prayer and fasting is meant to deliver us. It is only by taking the humble and hidden way of going into the secret room of prayer and fasting, where only the Father sees us, that we gradually wean ourselves from the need for constant attention, recognition, and the satisfaction of our every whim or desire. For true prayer and fasting is designed to make us more humble, and less proud, more concerned with justice for all, and less obsessed with our own special blessing at the expense of others.
This is why Lent is the great healing time, for it is the time for the re-training and re-programming of the human heart, so that it might be softer and more open to receiving Christ, and his way of love – a love which is possessed only in being given away to others as a gift.
Now, that might all sound very well and good, but we might still be thinking, why does this healing of the human heart have to happen by means of fasting?
Well, the simple fact is that we are material beings, and what often lies at the basis of our dysfunctional and habitual ways of relating to others are the passions such as gluttony, lust, vainglory, and pride. By embracing a discipline of prayer and fasting, we learn to master these material passions so that we become less self-absorbed, less self-important, and less concerned with what we want and what others think of us, and more concerned with how we might use the good things that God has given us as a way of blessing others.
This is not a form of bargaining with God, that is ultimately self-serving. Instead, it is a form of self-renunciation, so that are lives are more deeply patterned upon Christ, and his kingdom of justice for all.
And it is not a public practising of piety, which puffs us up with pride, as we restlessly seek the approval and recognition of others. Instead, it is a pursuit of self-forgetfulness, so that Jesus’s way of humility becomes the hallmark of our humanity, re-creating us as more and more transparent to the life of God within.
So, as we begin our Lenten journey, and receive upon our foreheads the sign of Our Lord’s cross, let us join him in the wilderness of prayer, fasting, and repentance, that our hearts may be delivered from pride and self-interest, and opened up to his way of humility and justice. For only then will we see that divine glory truly is only revealed in the one who gave himself entirely, that the world may have life.