Weekly Words

Preparing to Fast

This past Wednesday, February 25, 2009, began the Christian season of Lent. The forty days leading to Easter comprise the season of Lent. Many of us participate or create some type of fast in which we take these forty days to give up something we would normally not go without. Yet, as many of us enter this season plotting and planning what we will go without, I want to raise a white flag of warning so that we may not miss the profound possibilities that this season has to offer.

On the one hand, fasting during Lent has become so commonplace, and even popular amongst some, that it runs the risk of becoming perfunctory. Whenever we begin to take part in an exercise week after week, month after month, and year after year, it can become so familiar to us that it loses its ability to touch us in a new way or impact us in a profound way. The second risk we run when we fast is making our fast about us. No, I don’t mean the bragging and boasting that we do to friends and family about what we are giving up and the tremendous toll that it is taking on our lives (though that has its problems). However, we often make fasting a competition with ourselves to see if we can make it forty days without this or that. As a result, we either become disappointed in ourselves if we fail to make it, or we assume a posture of pride about the accomplishment of making forty days of fasting.

Whether we allow our fasting to become perfunctory or ourselves to become prideful, both of these distract us from the true purpose of this spiritual practice. In the end, fasting is about God and our relationship with God. It is the abstaining from one thing to focus on an Other. It is the withdrawal from one thing so that we can withdraw into an Other. It is not to see how we can test or challenge ourselves, but rather how we can shorten the bridge between ourselves and God. Also, as a spiritual practice, it gives us an opportunity to practice saying no to something we would ordinarily like or do. At the same time, it gives us an opportunity to practice saying yes to spiritual virtues like sacrifice, renunciation, simplicity, and prayer.

I pray that as we enter this season of Lent, we commit ourselves to the magisterial movement of connecting our spirit with the Spirit of God. As we enter into the season that celebrates the resurrection power of God, I pray that we meditate and concentrate on what it is in us that God can bring back to life. I pray that this season of Lent will find new meaning and power in our spiritual lives and that we become better and closer to God in the process.

Humbly in Christ’s Love,
Pastor B.A. Jackson