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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text that serves as the foundation for our sermon for tonight are these words of Jesus from Matthew 6, “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:16-21).
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,
Death and life: two things that are at opposite ends of the spectrum and something which you can only experience one of at a time. You are either alive or you are dead. And yet, as a Christian, we do experience both of them at the same time. In Luther's Small Catechism, we learn by heart the following words regarding what baptizing with water indicates, “It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” Luther here is summarizing what Saint Paul teaches in Romans 6:5-10, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” In our baptisms, we become partakers of Christ's death and resurrection, dying to sin and rising to walk in newness of life. But what does this theme of death and new life look like in the Christian? Too often in our world today we think that Christ is a hope only for eternal life. This leads us to falsely believe that we can live as we want in the present day. And then when we get to be 70, 80, when hospice gets called in, well then, at the last, we can repent and all will be good. But that's not the life that we are called to lead. We are called to count ourselves as “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus”. In this Lenten Midweek series, as we focus on the life of repentance, we will be examining how the entirety of the Christian life is to be one of death and life.
Tonight as we begin the sermon series, we'll be looking in depth at the topic of fasting. As Lutherans, we tend to think fasting is antiquated or “too Roman Catholic”. After all, what most people think of as a fast is little more than a façade. Giving up something pointless for lent or eating no meat on Fridays is not what God means when He commands us to fast. If it was, then everyone could do it and there would be little significance to it. Plenty of people, claiming to fast, abstain from meat, yet gorge themselves on fried fish and French fries Friday after Friday, farcically fasting. No, fasting is deeper. It is more spiritual than that. Fasting is an inward practice, the body training the heart and the soul. And it is intentional. Without a plan and without a purpose, it isn't fasting, it's just going hungry. But God wants us to fast. Why? Because in fasting, we die to the desires of the flesh and live our lives focused on God.
Let us pray: Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, as we begin this season of Lent, wherein we focus once again on putting to death the desires of the flesh and living our lives dedicated to You, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer, that we may, throughout this season keep the fast, not desiring from it the praise of man, but focused always on returning to You in both body and soul, that no matter what afflictions we may face on earth, we may always be prepared with the aid of Your Holy Spirit to stand firm until the end; through Jesus Christ Your Son, our Lord, we pray. Amen.
To be certain, the modern-day abuses of what people call a fast are not really anything new. Look at our Old Testament reading for today at Joel. Joel is an interesting prophet. He was a prophet who was called in the time of the kings to proclaim God's word to the kingdom of Judah, the southern kingdom. But what's fascinating is that whereas most of the prophets in the Old Testament, especially when we get into the minor prophets, most of them focus on fire and brimstone condemnations of people's sins with maybe a little bit of gospel thrown in, Joel was not sent to preach these fiery words of condemnation. Instead, he was sent with a message of a loving Father longing for His children to return to Him. But they had to return to them the right way because what they were doing was not what was pleasing to God. We see that in the first words of our Old Testament reading, “’Yet even now,’ declares the LORD, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments’” (Joel 2:12-13). The Israelites thought that if they physically went through the actions, if they tore their clothes in mourning, if they wept bitterly and publicly, if they fasted abstaining from food, then God would be happy with them. But their hearts weren't set on the right thing. Their hearts weren't set to observe the fast in a way that was pleasing to God. They were not returning with their hearts but merely going through the outward actions. In Jesus' day, people abused the fast by making it more about looking like they were fasting than actually fasting. If someone was fasting, you would have known it. They would have looked like the most disheveled of people, sad faces covered in ashes. And so Jesus says, “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matthew 6:16). Today, people still fast only physically instead of getting to the actual heart of it. Feasting on fish is not just a modern-day occurrence, though it's something that was even written against in the 1500s by Lutherans. But so often we see online, on social media, posts that ask, “What are you giving up for left?” Chocolate? Coffee? Whatever it is, people focus on what they're giving up, as if that were the most important thing of the fast. They focus on the physical outward actions. They are no better than the Israelites in the book of Joel. In all of these abuses, the people are glorifying the sinful flesh instead of putting it to death. Fasting only outwardly, only in the flesh, does nothing except make one hungry.
Instead, God wants us to keep a true fast. And to do that, he gives us the example in Christ Himself. Christ, as soon as He was baptized, was driven out into the wilderness and fasted forty days and forty nights. There He was tempted by Satan. He faced the attacks of Satan. And yet through fasting and through prayer, He remained faithful and Satan withdrew until the opportune time. But that was not the only time that Satan would come and attack Him. It's not the only time Christ would fast. No, Christ fasted again, starting on Maundy Thursday, as there, as they leave the upper room, Christ enters a fast. As there, He is attacked by Satan with the betrayal of one of His friends, turning Him over to the Jewish officers. As there, He is slandered. As there, He is beaten. As there He is falsely tried. As there He is hung on the cross, hungering and thirsting. Even one of the seven words from the cross is “I thirst”. And yet even in this time of fasting, Christ remains faithful to God. Satan would have loved nothing more than to get Christ to go, “I can't do it. I'm going to get myself off the cross”. Yet Christ willingly suffered and died for the sins of the entire world, so that you and I could have the complete and absolute forgiveness of sins. He remained faithful unto death. And thus, God granted Him resurrection from the dead on the third day. Christ has been raised never to die again. And it is through Christ's death and resurrection that God creates new hearts in us, that God creates new hearts which desire to do as God commands. It is through that new life that is worked in us that we are able to say, as David says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). And God does it. God does that for us.
And now as Christians, as baptized children of God, we are called to follow in Christ's footsteps and to fast as well. Why? Because fasting prepares us for the temptations that Satan would throw at us. Satan would love nothing more than to get us to fall into sin. Satan loves nothing more than when he drives a faithful Christian to sin and to despair. And so fasting serves as a means by which Christians can prepare their spirit through physical training. Because fasting is not just about giving up something. Fasting is about giving up something good and replacing it with something better. Fasting is about giving up one of the good gifts that God has given us and replacing it with something better. What's better than food? Our spiritual food, God's Holy Word. It's not just about what you give up, but the practice of replacing that with time in God's Word and in prayer. A fast is a physical reminder of what Joel says, “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster” (Joel 2:13).
To be certain, just in case you're wondering, there is no command to fast. If you don't fast, you are not sinning. But Jesus does assume that you are going to fast. He says in Matthew 6:17, “When you fast”. Not “If you fast”, but “When you fast”. So what does fasting look like? Well, traditionally, the fast was giving up food and replacing it with scripture and prayer. Now, it was not giving up food like Jesus fasted for 40 days and He ate no food during that time. No, the traditional fast was eating usually supper, but could also be lunch, eating just one smaller meal each day, and the rest of the day abstaining from food in order to spend that time that you would be eating focused on reading God's Word and praying. And also spending that money that you would have spent on food and giving it to the poor, helping those in need. But, even one keeping a traditional food fast, should understand that the fast is not supposed to do harm. Discomfort? Hunger? Sure. But if one is feeling sick or ill from not eating, then of course they should have a small snack or even a meal, because God doesn't want you to physically harm yourself. Discomfort, but not harm.
However, there are those who, for medical or job requirements, cannot fast from food. Does that mean that they cannot fast at all? Absolutely not! For there are many other good gifts of God that we can abstain from and replace with the better, with God's Holy Word. Maybe that's television. Maybe that's books that you enjoy reading. It's always something good as a note. You can't, for example, fast from pornography. No, you just give up pornography because that's something sinful and God doesn't want you to do that anyway. No, fasting is abstaining from something good to focus on the better. Whether it is food, whether it is television, whether it's books, whatever it may be, Christ certainly encourages us to fast, to prepare ourselves bodily for whatever temptations may come. And whether you do so fasting from food or fasting from something else (or both) do not be like the hypocrites. Don’t go posting your fast all over social media looking for your posts to get tons of likes. Instead, “Anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:17-18). For as you fast and die to your own fleshly desires, God promises that He will reward you with a rich and abundant life filled with His grace both here in time and there in eternity.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, this Lenten season, as we focus on death and life, the place that we rightly begin is with fasting. Just as Christ fasted in preparation for the spiritual attacks that he would face from Satan, so likewise we fast, preparing to be attacked by Satan throughout our life. In so doing, we die to our own fleshly desires and walk in the newness of life that God has promised us. This Lenten season, may you keep the fast not as an outward sign of your piety, but rending your hearts to God, replacing whatever good thing you give up with something better, that is God's Holy Word, which is life for you. Amen.
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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