Sermon (March 13) - "An App for That: Fasting"

During this season of Lent, we’re taking a look at six different disciplines or means of grace that have been used by the church for the past several centuries to help people grow in what it means to be fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

We’re calling this sermon series, “An App for That” to help us realize that these disciplines are available and that they are meant to help us in our day to day living.

This past summer, our staff car pooled to a local restaurant for a staff birthday lunch celebration. I went in Peg Parker’s van which included Peg, Pam George, Pastor Cheryl, and me. While we were driving to the restaurant, Pastor Cheryl, who knew that Pam George had an iphone, asked her, “Well, what can your iphone do?”

Now, if you know Pam George and her iphone, you know that she is always attached to it. It never leaves her side. She even has several iphone covers that color coordinate with what she is wearing for the day. The color of her cover always matches her shoes and earrings.

So when Pastor Cheryl asked Pam that question, Pastor Cheryl might have well asked me why I like Penn State football. I mean, you’re going to get a full report. That’s just the way it is!

And sure enough, Pam talked about what every single app on her phone can do, with great enthusiasm. Everything from the app that kept track of her daughter’s pregnancy. To the app that does price comparisons in various stores. To the app that allows her to read books on her phone. To the app that brushes her teeth. I mean, Pam just went on and on about all of these apps.

My favorite app on my smart-phone is the grocery app where our family can send the grocery items we need for that week and it goes into this one central list. No more forgetting grocery lists or writing them on little pieces of scrap paper. It’s all networked right into our phones. And if Penny is at the grocery store and I’m at home and I just remember that I need to add double stuff Oreo cookies to the list, no problem! I just go to my blackberry, type in “double stuff Oreo cookies” and it’s added to her phone in a matter of seconds. I can even see the items that she’s already crossed off her list.

I love this app. It ranks right up there with sending a man to the moon. It’s brilliant!

But what is even more brilliant than smart-phone apps, are the apps we have to help us grow as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Today, we look at the spiritual app of fasting. So I guess I shouldn’t have told you that story about wanting Oreo cookies. Fasting – The spiritual application of giving up a meal and spending that time with God instead.

Fasting is often associated with the Season of Lent. You’ll hear people say that they’re giving something up for Lent, like a meal or candy or sometimes people give up other things like watching TV or going shopping.

But what really is this spiritual app of fasting, anyway? And what’s the real purpose behind using it?

Scot McKnight is a New Testament scholar who is the author of the recently published book, “Fasting.” And guess what? I downloaded this book to the kindle app on my smart-phone! See how all of this ties together? This is a great book so I give Scot McKnight the credit for a lot of what I’m about to cover on our topic of fasting this morning.

Scot McKnight defines fasting this way. “Fasting is the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous sacred moment in life.”

Now, there’s a lot to unpack in his definition. But the main point of his book is that fasting is not meant to be something we do in order to get results. I know that might sounds strange. Most of us won’t try something unless it will produce results. That’s true of me and probably most of us here. We like results.

Scot writes that fasting could very well lead to positive results for us, but that’s not the point of fasting. The point of fasting is about helping us to respond to significant moments in our lives.

What are those significant moments? To answer that, the bible and the church as early as the 2nd century provide some specific examples.

The first example of a sacred or significant life moment is when the people of Israel, or the church, or even a whole nation realize that it needs to confess their sins and turn toward God. To this day, Jewish people observe what is called Yom Kippur or The Day of Atonement. It’s a day for the people to repent of their sins, turn toward, God, and fast, and it’s observed every year.

Notice that this is a communal fast and not just an individual fast. Fasting isn’t always a communal discipline of our faith, but there are times when it does involve the whole community of faith.

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a National Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer. He did this for the whole country to participate. In his address that year, Lincoln shared these words, “We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God.” A little later in his address, he said, “It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

A second example of a sacred or significant life moment is when the people of God are in particular need of guidance and direction from God. In the Old Testament, when the people of Judah were still in exile in Babylon, they reached a point where they needed to know if it was finally time for them to return to Judah and Jerusalem. Ezra then took the lead and proclaimed a fast at the river Ahava where the exiles were gathered and it was there that the people prayed that God would grant them a safe journey home.

This was definitely what we would call a sacred or significant moment for the people of Israel. And this is why everyone fasted before beginning their journey back to Israel.

In the New Testament, the Book of Acts, chapter 13, we find Paul, Barnabas and other leaders in the early church fasting and worshipping and asking God for guidance and direction. It was while they were fasting that the Holy Spirit prompted them to set apart Paul and Barnabas to be sent out for their missionary journey.

This connection between fasting and needing God’s guidance and direction is the main reason why I called for our church to observe a day of fasting and prayer by gathering together on a Monday evening this past November. With all that we had been through in 2010, I felt that God was calling us to seek out God’s guidance and direction to help us move forward with hope into God’s vision for us as a church.

A third example of a sacred moment that often leads to fasting is the call for God’s people to care for the poor and the needy. With approximately 2,500 verses in the bible focused on God’s call for us to care for those who are poor and who are in need, it makes sense that the spiritual discipline of fasting would be connected to this important aspect of our faith.

In Isaiah, chapter 58, the prophet Isaiah speaks these words from God to the people of Israel: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly.”

One of the things that the prophet is emphasizing is that the point of fasting isn’t just to appear religious. The point of fasting is to help us connect with the hunger and the brokenness in our world so that we might do something about it.

When we fast and miss a meal, and begin to feel those hunger pains, that’s when we are reminded that we live in a world in which 854 million people are going hungry even as we worship this morning. Each year 9 million people die worldwide because of hunger. So the purpose of fasting isn’t just to do something that the bible tells us to do. The purpose of fasting is to challenge us to be involved in ministries that help and care for the poor.

A fourth example of a sacred moment that often leads to fasting is whenever God seems absent or distant. During a critical time in Israel’s history, the Ark of the Covenant, which symbolized the presence of God for the people of Israel, had been in the possession of the Philistines. When the ark was finally returned to Israel, Samuel, who was Judge over Israel at the time, called for the people of Israel to fast and turn toward God again.

Often times, grief can make it seem that God is absent or distant in our lives. The Psalmist in Psalm 77 offers a prayer that is filled with deep grief and it expresses his feeling that God is absent.

The Psalmist prays, “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, that he may hear me. In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted. I think of God, and I moan; I meditate, and my spirit faints.”

Later in that Psalm, the Psalmist reminds himself of how God is faithful and you can sense that his faith is being restored even in the course of him saying this prayer. And while he doesn’t specifically talk about fasting in the midst of his grief and sorrow, most likely, he probably did fast especially since fasting is often times a natural response to grief.

Maybe this is why people will often bring meals to families who have experienced the death of a loved one. It’s because they know that cooking or eating are the last things on their minds since they are experiencing the early stages of the grief process. It’s difficult to eat when your heart has been broken.

This is why the definition of fasting says, “Fasting is the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous sacred moment in life.” Sometimes, we don’t need to consciously choose to fast. It will be a natural response because we just don’t feel like eating when we’re going through a time of grief and loss.

A fifth example of a sacred moment that leads to fasting is when we make a commitment or a recommitment of our lives to Jesus Christ. This has always been a tradition in the church dating all the way back to when the Apostle Paul experienced his conversion from being Saul, a persecutor of the church, to Paul, who became a new person in Jesus Christ, and a leader in the church.

Immediately after Paul experienced that sacred moment when he encountered the risen Christ on his way to Damascus, we are told that he didn’t eat or drink for three full days. There’s a tradition over the course of church history for people preparing for church membership to first be instructed in the faith, then fast, and then be baptized and join the church at the Easter Vigil. Over the course of Christian history, fasting and making a commitment to be a disciple of Jesus Christ have often been closely associated.

So those are the five major examples of what would be considered sacred moments from both the bible and the history of the church that have often led to the people of God fasting and refraining from food. 1) Confessing and repenting of sins. 2) In need of guidance and direction from God. 3) God’s call to care for the poor and the needy. 4) When God seems absent or distant. 5) And when we make a commitment or a recommitment of our lives to Jesus Christ.

These five biblical reasons to fast give us plenty of opportunities to practice this very important spiritual discipline of our faith.

For the remaining time, I want us to think of how we can utilize the spiritual app of fasting in our day to day living.

And the first way is by fasting during the Season of Lent. Lent is a time that people have fasted from meals or from certain kinds of food over the centuries, dating all the way back to the early church.

It’s the Season of Lent when we are reminded that Jesus began his ministry by first going into the wilderness and for forty days, he didn’t eat any food. The forty days in the wilderness is significant because Jesus was symbolically living out the Israelite’s 40 year wandering in the wilderness as they were being rescued by God and led into the Promised Land.

Part of the story of the Israelites journeying through the wilderness includes the time when Moses fasted on behalf of Israel during the time when he was receiving the Ten Commandments.

So when we see that Jesus chose to begin his ministry by going into the wilderness to fast, he is showing that it will be through him, that God’s people will be rescued again. But this time, it won’t be from slavery in Egypt. Jesus will rescue us from the slavery of sin and death through his own death and resurrection.

So every Lent can be a time for us to connect to the mission and purpose of Jesus, and like him, fast and give up meals throughout these six weeks which lead up to the glorious celebration of Easter Sunday.

The second way is by fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays. In biblical times, the Israelites would have fasted on Mondays and Thursdays to remind them of their need and dependence upon God.

When the early church first formed and for the next several centuries of church history, Christians continued the weekly practice of fasting, but instead of Mondays and Thursdays, they fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Wednesdays, to help them remember the beginning of the events that led to Jesus being betrayed, and Fridays, to help them remember when Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world.

John Wesley, the 18th century of the Methodist movement encouraged those early Methodists to continue this practice of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays. Wesley went so far as to say that fasting was just as important as prayer and that they belonged together.

Since this past fall, I have chosen to not eat lunch on Fridays to reclaim this ancient tradition of fasting. It’s not always been easy. For the most part, I don’t eat lunch on Friday, but once in a while, I’ll have some kind of church event that involves a lunch or I’ll just plain forget. And once in a while I’ll eat just because my will power isn’t all that great.

I admit this to you to show that even with our best intentions, we won’t always follow through. It’s not easy to refrain from eating when you’re hungry. Let’s admit it. But when we do, fasting helps us to be drawn closer in our relationship with Jesus Christ.

I want to encourage us to give up a meal during this season of Lent as a way of preparing us to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And I encourage us to give up a meal on Wednesdays or Fridays throughout the year or maybe there’s another day that is more meaningful for you. By fasting in this way, it becomes a weekly reminder of our need and dependence on God.

One last thought about fasting. For health reasons, fasting should not be done by children, or by women who are pregnant or who are nursing, or by those who have diabetes, or by those who have other serious conditions or illnesses.

For those who may wonder if there’s a way to help them offer a natural, inevitable response to a sacred moment in life, there’s an app for that.

And that app is fasting.
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