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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Thoughts on the Discipline of 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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Practical Tips to Biblical Fasts (Prepared by Pastor Barry Taylor)

Fasting is a spiritual discipline that Christians practice as a way of expressing how “hungry” they are for God’s grace in their lives.  It’s a way of focusing our hearts and minds on God in specific ways.  It usually involves refraining from eating for a specified period of time, though it can take a variety of forms (see below).  Fasting is usually pared with prayer, and most fasts include a specific plan to increase or intensify one’s focus on prayer during the fast.

There are many Biblical examples of fasting that we can consider:  the Ninevites fasted after hearing Jonah’s prophecy; David fasted when his son was close to death (2 Sam. 12:16); Jesus fasted when he was tempted by Satan (Matt. 4:2) and Paul fasted after meeting Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:9).

John Wesley (the founder of the Methodist Movement) identified regular fasting as one of the Christian “means of grace” – i.e. one of the spiritual disciplines that God uses in our lives to help us grow deeper in his grace. In the early Church, the first Christians fasted every Wednesday and Friday.

Some suggestions and help:

Fasting is always to be God centered.  Fasting is God-led, and should be the Holy Spirit’s prompting.  Jesus’ counsel to his followers in Matthew 6: 16 – 18 was to be more concerned about what God thinks than what other people think.  Only fast if and as you sense God’s Spirit directing you to do so.

CAUTION:  Though fasting is encouraged no one should risk their life to fast.  Certain groups of people are better to hold off from fasting; pregnant women, nursing mothers, anyone with a heart condition/ heart disease, diabetics. 

Do not binge before you fast or after.  Some people think because of going without food for a time, better to eat a huge meal.  It is better to begin eating lighter meals leading up to your fast and after, especially of fruits and vegetables.  This helps shrink your stomach and get your body used to less food.  After a fast for any period do not eat a big meal, start with juices and soups then move to add milk and yogurt, then fruits and vegetables. 

Drink plenty of water.  We always need to drink water; most of us do not drink enough.  This becomes even more important when fasting.  Be careful of how much caffeine intake you have.  If you drink a lot of coffee/pop, try to cut back before you fast, and while fasting avoid drinking coffee/pop.    

1. Begin with a fasting one meal. If you have never fasted before then start by fasting one meal. If your daily practice is to skip breakfast, then perhaps try fasting lunch or supper. Remember again the point is to sacrifice to learn from the experience.

2. 24 hour fast.  Most people find that starting lunch to lunch works best.  Eat lunch one day then fast through supper and breakfast the next day eating lunch again.  Try this type of fast for several weeks to get yourself used to fasting.  Then try a regular 24 hour period where you don’t eat all day.  Better to walk before you run.

3. 2 or 3 day fast.  Once you have experienced the 36 hour fast for a few weeks try to fast longer as the Lord leads.

4. Daniel Fast.  For some people who cannot go completely without food, Daniel abstained from any meat or wine or “choice” food and eating only things that “came from the ground.”  Much longer fasts can be done eating only fruit and vegetables for prolonged periods, 3 or 4 weeks.

5. Personal Fast.  For some people giving up something that is important, sometimes a food item other times a habit, help to repent draw closer to God and exercise self-discipline.  Giving up things like sweets (chocolate), television, video games (works well for children who want to try fasting). 

Other Notes:

• If you are following a liquid only fast, white grape juice and peach juice are good during fasts.  Citrus juices and apple and tomato juice are more acidic and can be harder for a stomach that has no food in it.
• Vegetable juices and broths are good.
• 1 cup of tea or coffee is fine, but avoid too much caffeine since it is a diuretic (causing you to lose water). 

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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The Girl-Queen, the Captive Conqueror: A Devotional Commentary on the Book of Esther (4:1-10)

Esther is notorious for being the only book in the Bible (or one of only two books, depending on how you translate Song of Solomon 8:6) that doesn't ever explicitly mention God. Anywhere. Like Godot in Samuel Beckett's play, God is a hidden character in this drama (although, unlike Godot, there is no hint of absurdity in his hiddenness).

Which is why Esther 4:3 really strikes me.

When the Jewish people hear about King Ahasuerus' decree, it says, "there was great mourning among them, with fasting, and weeping and wailing, and many lay in sackcloth and ashes." What's notably absent in this long list is any explicit reference to prayer. I used to see this critically, and moralistically, a sort of indictment against the people: when things were at their worst, they forgot to pray.

I suggested that reading to a friend a while back, and he said: "Well, what's fasting except praying with our whole body?" And that sort of re-framed things for me (Thanks, Oliver). True: nowhere in Esther does it ever say that the people knelt at their bedside and said some perfunctory "Now I lay me down to sleep." Rather, they threw themselves on God so completely, mind and body, heart and soul, flesh and blood, that the mere word "prayer" wasn't worthy of the heart-wrenching communion they were having with their Maker.

Could it be that there is a kind of prayer that "out-prays" prayer (so to speak)? That some encounters with God can be so raw, so naked, so visceral, even, that you'd hardly even think to call it "prayer"? Not because you're not praying, but because prayer (in the now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep sense) isn't necessary and couldn't express what's going on in you if it were.

I think so.

But I also think that North American Christians are barely Padawan Learners when it comes to this kind of sitting in God's presence: prayer that involves our whole being so completely that you wouldn't even think to call it prayer.

What if we took a cue from Esther's people, and exchanged a literal meal for the feast of spending an hour in God's presence, once in a while; or actually wore our prayers outwardly in the clothing we choose (or didn't choose), or simply poured out wordlessly to God the most tremulous things going on in our hearts?

We wouldn't be praying, then; because we wouldn’t need to.