Friday after Ash Wednesday
As I have gotten older, the preparation seasons (Advent & Lent) have become more and more attractive to me. My 13-year-old self would like to punch me for saying that. What was Lent to teenage Brandon? Fasting equals being hungry all the time and no meat on Fridays. I hated fasting; being hungry is hard and miserable. When we are hungry, we can become more irritable, prone to arguments, and generally grumpy. I’ll never get the old Snickers slogan and commercials out of my head, “You’re not you when you’re hungry”. In my experience, this holds true with our children as well. There is a noticeable tension that builds (and sometimes bursts) when they haven’t had a snack after school or dinner isn’t ready yet. But to return to my opening statement, in the last 10 years, I have come to recognize all of the clutter, distractions, and excess that gets in the way of my relationship with God, my spiritual life, my physical and mental health, and my connection to the world around me. The need for a season of preparation is a reset process to empty ourselves out so that we might be filled up with God’s grace at Easter.
In our first reading, Isaiah begs us to reconsider how we approach fasting. “Fighting and quarreling...do you call this a fast?” (Is 58:4a,5a) Why do we fast? Are we grumpy about it? Or do we recognize the need to make room in our hearts for the love of God to flow through? Instead, Isaiah implores us to radically shift our thinking:
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. Might we endeavor to fast from affluence, indifference, jealousy, 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.
May we focus less on the affliction from our hunger and 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.
Peace,
Brandon Meyer