Lent

“No, the kind of fast I want is that you stop oppressing those who work for you and treat them fairly and give them what they earn. I want you to share your food with the hungry and bring right into your own homes those who are helpless, poor, and destitute. Clothe those who are cold, and don’t hide from relatives who need your help.” Isaiah 58:6-7

Although not so evident today, fasting over the ages was part and parcel of observing Lent. What is clear from our text for today, is the fasting God desires is more than abstinence. It is more than show!

A brand new lawyer in his brand new office on his first day in practice sees a prospective client walk in the door. He decides he should look busy, so he picks up the phone and starts talking: “Look, Harry, about that amalgamation deal. I think I better run down to the factory and handle it personally. Yes. No. I don’t think 3 million will swing it. We better have Rogers from Seattle meet us there. OK. Call you back later.” He looks up at the visitor and says, “Good morning, how may I help you?” And the prospective client says, “You can’t help me at all. I’m just here to connect your phone.”

So, what is fasting in the sense of Christian living. Gary Rohrmayer suggest that “Fasting is more about replacing than it is about abstaining — replacing normal activities with focused times of prayer and feeding on the Word of God.” Elsewhere, Fyodor Dostoyevsky postulates that “Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God’s help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.”

Yes, Lenten practices are more that mere observances, more than a solitary spiritual exercise. Truly they are the task of making room in our lives “to share our food with the hungry and bring right into your own homes those who are helpless, poor, and destitute. Clothe those who are cold, and don’t hide from relatives who need your help.” 

God of compassion and justice,

the devotion you choose for us 

is to loose the bonds of injustice,

to let the oppressed go free,

to share bread with the hungry,

to shelter the homeless poor.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn

and your healing shall spring up quickly.

So in praise and wonder, we come to serve you

not just with our words

but with our hearts and our lives.

Glory and honour be to you, O God,

Creator of a new heaven and a new earth;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.