"Jesus said, 'Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So, whenever your give alms, do not sound the trumpet before you...But when you give alms do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret...And whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret...And when you fast put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret.'"
--Matthew 6: 1-6, 16
Several years ago, when I had just entered the ordination
process and was working as a youth minister, I learned that there are two days
in our Episcopal calendar in which we are encouraged to fast: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. So I decided I
would fast on Ash Wednesday, thinking it would bring me some kind of spiritual
clairvoyance. My rector asked me that day if I wanted to go to lunch, but I
said, 'No thanks, I'm fasting.' I
expected her reaction to be, 'Good for you,' or something to that effect. Instead she cocked her head and said, 'Why would
you do that?!' I didn't have an answer for her.
'All its gonna do, ' she said, 'is make you sick. 'God doesn't want you to make yourself sick.'
What a wonderfully prophetic voice she was! It had not occurred to me that fasting would
give me headaches, make me tired, and leave me unable to do the work God had
called me to do. So if I wasn't going to
fast from food all day, what WAS I going to do? It was
then that I realized I had this fasting thing--and by extension, Lent itself--all wrong.
The season of Lent is so very different from the rest of
our liturgical calendar. In the sanctuary of Good Shepherd we can actually see the difference: we wear the
solemn purple, our baptismal bowls are emptied and turned upside-down, while our Christus Rex is veiled for the season. We take up new postures during the liturgy and put ashes on our
foreheads. It is easy to see why Lent
can sometimes leave us feeling like we have to beat ourselves up. That was what I had thought Lent was about,
after all.
The Christus Rex is veiled and the baptismal bowl turned upside-down as we begin our Lenten journey.
In the years since I have found Lent to more than a somber, sad, and drawn-out season. Rather I've come
to see it as a wonderful, if not joyous, time.
You may be asking yourself how that is possible, given that we spend more time on our knees and speak with the voice of penitence with greater regularity during this season than any other. I think it's because Lent, as I have
experienced it, is meant to be a time in which we intentionally shift our focus. For a relatively short time--just 40 days--we are asked to turn from our own selfish ways and shift our focus toward God. And when we shift our focus, and we turn our attention toward God, we find that we are, in fact, beloved children of God, crafted by
a loving Creator, whose very life resides in each of us. We mark ourselves with ashes at the start of this holy season as a
reminder that these bodies, these temporal artifacts, are not all that there is. God created us from the dust of the earth, and while these bodies
of ours will one day return to that dust, the breath, spirit, and love that God
poured into us at our creation will endure forever and will one day return to the Creator.
As we intentionally turn our focus toward God we are
reminded of the things that really matter in our lives. And the things that really matter really
aren't things at all! This is where the
practice of fasting comes in. Fasting is
not about seeing how long we can go without food in some kind of mystical
attempt to pay better attention to God, as I had thought. Fasting is about realizing that God provides
for our every need. What we choose to give up is generally something that, quite frankly, we didn't need in the first place. We give something up
so as to remember that our dependence is on God alone. And God does not ask that we give something
up willy-nilly. Are you fasting from
chocolate? Why chocolate? Are you fasting from Facebook? Why?
In what way does giving a particular thing up bring you closer to God?
Still, I wonder if we really consider the things we're giving up? Most of us give something up--chocolate or
Facebook--that we know we'll pick back up at Easter. What if our fast was
something deeper? Gregory of Nyssa, one
of the guys who wrote the final version of the Nicene Creed in 381 AD said:
"there is a kind of fasting which is not bodily, a spiritual
self-discipline that affects the soul; this abstinence is from evil....for
Judas himself fasted with the 11, but since he did not curb his love of money,
his fasting availed him nothing."
Saint Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa and co-author of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Kind of a big deal!
This is why Jesus gives the instructions that he
gives. He does not just say to give
alms, pray, and fast, three great pillars of Jewish religious life. Instead, he says to be intentional when we do
them, to go deeper, to make what we do not about us but about God. When we give alms, don't brag about it. When we pray, do it in secret, behind closed
doors. When we fast, don't contort our
faces, but wash them and smile, so that nobody knows we are fasting. The point is not to just do these things but
to open ourselves up to an experience with God, a deeper, more intentional
experience in which we see how God's life is blooming in and around us during
this holy season, so that what blooms on Easter will enrich our lives from that
day onward. This is what Lent is about.
For centuries this
intentional period has been used for deep discernment, particularly those
seeking the sacrament of baptism. It is
during Lent when catechumens--those who desire to be baptize--pray, listen, and
study as they prepare to commit their lives to Christ. The 40 days of prayer and reciting of the
ancient Creeds come to its fulfillment at the Great Vigil of Easter. It will be the same for us at our Easter
Vigil this year when we baptize the newest members of Christ's Body. It is that very moment toward which we are all journeying this Lent--the moment of Easter's dawn. For some that journey will culminate in Holy Baptism, while others will find renewal in the resurrected Christ. But for all of us, we are journeying toward something new, something greater than
ourselves. We are invited, as we observe this holy Lent, to a time of
intentional refocusing, of listening, feeling, and looking for God.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.