Friday after Ash Wednesday
We tend to hate fasting in our household. When we are hungry, we can become more irritable, prone to arguments, and generally grumpy. Snickers latched on to the idea several years ago with their slogan, “You’re not you when you’re hungry”. We have noticed this to be pretty accurate in our experience with our children as well. As dinner time rolls around each evening, if we haven’t fed them by a certain time, there is a noticeable tension that builds (and sometimes bursts). But how do we transcend this tension when we are called to fast?
Our first reading today is a nice splash of cold water to cause us to rethink our perspective on fasting. “Fighting and quarreling...do you call this a fast?” (Is 58:4a,5a) Why do we fast? Is it not to draw us closer to God? As in the case from Isaiah (and the gospel), we want God’s attention; we cry out in a desire to be noticed; we create a fake sense of sacrifice and affliction that is actually an egocentric act of self-serving righteousness. Rather than notice the presence of God in our very midst--the elderly neighbor across the street, teachers in our schools, colleagues on our zoom meetings, the person in the car behind us, the clerk at the grocery store, the delivery driver from door dash--we are too blindly focused inwardly. Instead, there is a radical call to discipleship today:
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own. (Is 58:6-7)
We are called to rethink the typical act of fasting from food and embrace a different kind of fasting from injustice that targets those who are oppressed. Fasting should not be a means of earning favor from God; it is about spiritual transformation. It is an attempt to align our priorities to the will of God. How can we fast from affluence, indifference, and privilege, hatred, violence, gossip, swearing, selfishness, deceit? Treat others in a way that values them as human beings. Justice and peace should be a reality for all, not just those with wealth, power, and social status.
Our fasting need not be an effort to make ourselves hungry and afflicted, but let us fast in an effort to make the poor less hungry and afflicted. If we want to fight sin by taking food away from our own stomachs, then let us put it in the stomachs of the poor. Fasting is not about me; it is an opportunity to draw closer to God. What better way to draw closer to God than to draw closer to our neighbors, to care for our community, to love one another. May God bless you.
- Brandon Meyer