An Ancient Path for a Modern World (II): Fasting

Sometime in the second century AD, the Roman Governor of Asia, a guy named Arrius Antonius, encountered one of the strangest cases of his political career.

A group of Christians asked him to execute them.

Now, at this point in history, early in the second century AD, Christianity was still an illegal religion. The Christians refused to worship Caesar, so officially being a Christian was a capital offense, punishable by death.  But many of the Roman governors didn’t enforce this law too strictly.  Don’t get me wrong, they found Christianity to be a strange, distasteful movement that they didn’t know much about and didn’t think much of, but still, they didn’t want to shed innocent blood for no good reason.

Antonius was one such governor.  He was pretty lax, it seems, when it came to enforcing the anti-Christian laws.  He must have been, because one of the things history remembers him for is that time, like I say, when a bunch of Christians came to him asking him to execute them.

But, you gotta understand:  the early church considered martyrdom—the honor of actually dying for the Lord Jesus Christ—to be the highest privilege of the Christian life.  They called it “the crown of martyrdom,” and as far as they were concerned, there was no crown more glorious.  So you can imagine if, let’s say, if a governor like Antonius was denying Christians this highest honour, it’s no surprise, maybe, that a handful of Christians came to him and demanded that he do his civic duty and have them executed.

Antonius, the history books tell us, was flummoxed.  He actually did have a few of them executed—I think he was hoping this would maybe cool their jets a bit—but it didn’t so he turned to the rest and said the one line that even Wikipedia remembers him for, 2000 years later:  “You wretches,” he said, “If you want to die, don’t you have cliffs or ropes you can use?”

This would actually become a growing problem for the early church—Christians who were so on fire for Jesus that they went around actively seeking martyrdom.  Eventually the church would make a pretty sharp distinction between Christians who died as a result of genuine persecution, and those who went out looking for death.  Only the first kind counted, they said.

But the problem (if you want to call it a problem) was that, as Christianity became more and more mainstream—I mean, by 313 AD it had become the offical religion of Rome—as it became mainstream, real genuine martyrdoms were harder and harder to come by.

It became such a problem, that sometime around 400 AD, a guy named Saint Jerome suggested that there could be two kinds of martyrdom—a “red martyrdom” where you actually literally died for Christ—but in place of that a Christian could have a “white martyrdom.”  In a White Martyrdom, you didn’t literally die, but you took on some special vow that amounted to a spiritual “death-to-self.” White martyrdoms might include things like joining a monastery, becoming a hermit, stuff like that.

This idea caught on.  One of the earliest recorded sermons we have from Medieval Ireland comes from around the 7th Century.  It’s called the Cambrai Sermon, and it adds a third color to the colors of martyrdom: you could have a red martyrdom, where you actually, literally bled for Christ; you could have a white martyrdom, where you took on some life-long vow of piety.  But, for everyday folk like you and me, who still want to die for Christ but don’t have these options available, you could have a Green Martyrdom.

A Green martyrdom was a particular act of self-denial, where you died, spiritually, in the moment, you died to the desires of the self, so that you could live more fully and freely for Christ.

And this brings me, at last, to the point of this post, because one of the main forms of Green Martyrdom (there were others, to be sure, but this was one of the main ones), was fasting. Intentionally going without food—or in some cases, certain kinds of food—intentionally going without for a limited, specified period of time, so that the body’s hunger teaches us to hunger for Jesus.

This may seem strange to some—that the early Christians would have associated fasting with the highest honor of the Christian life—the honor of dying for Jesus.  It doesn’t to me.  There is, after all, something profoundly spiritual about food.  Practically, it’s the stuff of life.  You can’t live without it; and the body—physically—our bodies are wired naturally to respond to it, to long for it, to need it.  (I mean, all I’d have to do is spray some “fresh-baked-bread” room odorizer into the air, and your body would tell you, wouldn’t it?)  We need it; our mouths water for it; we can’t do without it.

And what if our spirits watered for Christ, like that?

Really: what depths, what heights what lengths of life with God would be discovered if we learned to hunger for him the way our bodies hunger for food?  I mean: that’s what fasting was about for the early Christians—learning to hunger for Christ by dying to self.  And biblically, I think that’s what fasting’s about, too: the life with God we will discover as we learn to die to self.

That has been my experience, anyways.  This month at terra incognita, we've been looking at some of the spiritual disciplines of the Christian Life that don't often get a lot of attention in the practical, results oriented culture of the modern (and somewhat cushy) North American Church.  Last week we talked about silence; today we're considering Fasting.  There are lots of places to look for practical tips on fasting, so I won't share any here (for concrete tips, I'll refer you to this very succinct and helpful guide prepared by my friend, Pastor Derek Spink).  What I'd like to do instead is challenge you to, quite literally, to put your money where your mouth is, when it comes to your witness to Jesus, and consider exploring, if you've never done so before, the practice of fasting as part of your martyrdom for him.

To get you thinking more creatively about how this spiritual discipline might be part of your Christian practice, let me also share a few reasons why I fast (I shared these with my daughter the other night when she asked me about fasting).

1.  To sharpen my spiritual hunger for God. (When I'm fasting for this reason, I let the hunger I feel through the fast point me to God, and, whenever I do feel it, I ask myself if I'm as hungry for him as I am, in this moment, for food).

2.  To strengthen my solidarity with the suffering or the hurting.  (There are times when I've fasted for people, or for specific issues, and during those fasts, whenever I feel hungry, I use it as a prompter to pray, in the moment, for the person or issue I'm fasting for).

3.  To deepen my dependence on God.  (During this kind of fast, whenever I feel weak, hungry or tired during the fast, I use that as a reminder that I am as dependent on God for sustenance as I feel in this moment, for food; like it does on bread and water, my life literally depends on him.)

4. To ignite my passion for evangelism.  (During this kind of fast, whenever I feel hungry for food, I sort of think-- God is as hungry for people to come into relationship with him through Jesus Christ, as I am for a snack right now-- and that thought deepens my own heart for evangelism).

There are other reasons, too, but those have been the most meaningful in my practice of fasting.  I'd encourage you to consider areas of your own spiritual formation that the intentional practice of fasting may sharpen, strengthen, deepen or ignite.

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