Eating, Praying Loving (Part VII): On Fasting

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Next to reading your Bible and praying every day, one of the earliest spiritual disciplines that Christians practiced was the discipline of fasting. This was probably a carry-over from first-century Jewish practices, which the first Christians took up into their own spiritual practice, reinterpreted through the lens of Christ. Christ himself taught his followers that when they fasted, they should not “be somber like the hypocrites,” who put on a mopey face while they’re doing it so that everyone would know that they were fasting (Matt 6:16). This is probably a reference to fasting as it was practiced among the Pharisees (cf. Mark 2:18; Luke 18:12), and the saying is fascinating on two counts. First, it suggests that fasting was a regular discipline among the Jews in Jesus’s day, since he is asking his followers to distinguish themselves in the way they practice this act of piety; but more importantly, Christ assumes that his followers will fast. He does not say “if” you fast, but when.

In Mark 2:18-19, the people ask Jesus why his followers don’t fast like the Pharisees and John’s disciples do, and again his reply is telling. He explains that so long as he is with them in person, his followers cannot fast, any more than a wedding guest could fast at the bridegroom’s wedding feast; but, he goes on to say, “A time will come when the groom will be taken away; then they will fast.” Again we note that Jesus does not say “they may fast,” but that they “will fast,” once more underlining his assumption that whatever else they do, his followers will practice the discipline of fasting. This particular saying is doubly fascinating though, because it suggests that for the First Century Christian, fasting had taken on a distinctly eschatological dimension; that is, the first Christians fasted as a way of expressing their longing for Christ’s return. They fasted because Christ had been “taken away from them” and they wanted him back.

We see this happening concretely in the book of Acts, where the early church is shown fasting especially when there is a difficult decision to make and they need the guidance of Jesus through his Holy Spirit. In Acts 13:1-3, for instance, the church is “worshiping the Lord and fasting,” and as they are doing so, they receive a revelation from the Holy Spirit that they are to send Paul and Barnabas off on a mission trip. Again they fast and pray over this decision (v.3) and finally they send them off. Later in Acts 14:23 when Paul and Barnabas are appointing elders to serve in churches they are planting, they commit each one to the Lord through “prayer and fasting.” What stands out to me in these two references is that they are both instances where the Lord himself is speaking to church leaders about specific decisions they must make—he is speaking to them in a way he might have done in person if he had not been “taken from them” through the cross—and the discipline that allows the church to hear from Jesus in this way is the discipline of prayerful fasting. In other words, they are fasting just like he said they would back in Mark 2:19: because they need to hear from the bridegroom but the bridegroom’s not there.

The reason I’m thinking about all of this today, though, is because for some seven or eight weeks now I have been working slowly through what I’m calling a “biblical spirituality of food,” looking at the way in which our food and our spirits are connected, from a biblical perspective. We’ve talked about thanksgiving, and communion, and pleasure, and stewardship, among many other things, but we haven’t said anything yet about fasting—the spiritual discipline of choosing not to eat for a specific length of time and for a specific reason—so that we can sharpen our appetites for the Lord himself.

I would be remiss, however, if I made it all the way through this series on food, and I didn’t at least acknowledge fasting as something Christians sometimes do to grow as followers of Christ. Because as I’ve suggested above, Jesus seems to have assumed that his people would fast, and it’s clear from the New testament that the early church did. In light of this, we might say that from a biblical perspective, one of the purposes for food is to provide us a concrete opportunity to discipline ourselves as followers of Jesus, to “beat our bodies into submission” so to speak (to borrow an unusual metaphor from another place in Paul’s writing).

Ultimately, fasting teaches us that however good, necessary, and pleasurable food is—and as I’ve tried to show throughout this series, the Bible agrees wholeheartedly food is all these things—still it is not as good, not as necessary, and not as pleasurable as the Lord himself is. When we choose to forgo eating for a season so that we can focus more intently and more clearly on him, we create an opportunity not only to show that this is true, but to experience it.

This doesn’t happen magically, however, nor over night. They call fasting a “discipline” for a reason, because it takes focus, and effort, and intention to do it well, if at all. Especially when you are beginning at it, your body will tell you that you’re making all kinds of mistakes not feeding it on demand. If my experience is anything to go by, this is pretty normal. But if my experience is anything to go by, even a small fast for a very limited time—passing up a single meal, let’s say—can be a significant step in our discipleship. Because food is so immediate, such a primal and fundamental need, learning how to say no to this need for a moment so you can attend to more pressing spiritual matters, actually builds your resolve to say “no” to all kinds of other primal “needs”—the need to have your own way, the need to respond to conflict with aggression, the need to be the centre of your own attention. The discipline developed in fasting spills over, I’ve found, into other areas of my spiritual life where I find it “unnatural” to walk consistently in the way of Jesus.

From a biblical perspective, then, one of the reasons food is so spiritual, is because choosing not to eat it once in a while trains us in the art of saying “no” to ourselves—physically, concretely, and literally saying “no”—so that we can say “yes” to God. And saying “yes” to him, I think, is where all true spirituality begins.

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