• "Fasting :: Why Should We Stop Enjoying the Good Things God Gave Us?"
• Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent
• February 29, 2004
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

Many people have an almost allergic reaction to the very mention of fasting. To go without things we enjoy day by day seems pointless. After all, didn't God create everything and declare the creation to be good? Why should we stop enjoying the good things God gave us?

Fasting also seems scary-"What! You expect me not to eat or drink things I relish? You expect me to turn off the TV for a month and a half? "You expect me to...?" You can fill in the blank with your own fear. This fear gets to the point of the fast. We are afraid that we cannot do without things upon which we depend. This reveals that there are too many things upon which we depend.

God created the world for our enjoyment and pleasure, but we have turned many parts of his creation into idols. We depend upon them, we live for them, we do not know what we would do without them. The things are good, in and of themselves, but our attachment to them is not good.

God made man to have dominion over the creation (Gen. 1:26). Because of the fall of man and our own sins, the creation has come to have dominion over us. We worship and serve the creation rather than the creator (Romans 1:25). This is the very definition of idolatry.

Jesus died on the cross to set us free from captivity to the desires of the flesh, the lure of the world and the wiles of the devil. But this freedom is not easily won. We do not earn grace, but we must be willing to expend effort in prayer and discipline so that the grace of God will enter into our lives.

Much frustration results from the implication that our freedom is easily won. The preacher proclaims, "Christ has set you free!" In profound moments we experience God's presence and freedom in remarkable ways. But weeks or months later, the memory of the experience wanes and the old desires return. A fall occurs. Then the devil who tempted us stands as our accuser, "See," he says, "that experience of God wasn't for real and God is not strong enough to save you from yourself or me!"

The devil is a liar. God has saved us. But a seductive lie circulates by implication in our evangelical culture. The lie tells us that it is easy: if we have one experience with Jesus and learn the vocabulary of faith, we needn't take up the hard work of prayer and discipline.

The truth is that this life is meant to be a wilderness experience of testing. God purposely withholds the palpable sense of his presence and allows us to face temptations to see if our faith is for real. Deuteronomy 8:2, describing the experience of Israel in the wilderness, sums up the purpose of life: "The Lord your God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandment our not" (KJV).

That is the purpose of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. The Temptation takes place just after his baptism. Just after the Holy Spirit descended from heaven and the voice of the Father declared Jesus to be his beloved son, God withdrew the experience and sent Jesus out in the wilderness to be tested. In the wilderness, Jesus is revealed as the true and faithful son.

The testing of Jesus in the wilderness provides the picture of a moment in time of the ongoing battle for our souls. There is the temptation of the flesh-to use the good that God has created in a manner that he did not intend, in a manner that is not good. There is the temptation of the world-to compromise our faith in order to gain status, wealth or power. There is the temptation of the devil, which fills our minds with presumption, evil thoughts, doubts, fear and despair.

Jesus faced these tests after a period of fasting and prayer. This is a lesson for us. To attempt to live as a Christian in the world, in the face of these tests, without a serious commitment to prayer, to spiritual discipline and some measure of fasting, is to be like an unarmed soldier in a battle zone. As Ephesians says, "Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil" (6:11).

Fasting is not an end in and of its self. Nor is it a religious contest to see who can give up more. The goal is this. We get things out of the way in order to make room in our hearts for Christ.

How do we do this? We should give up some things: some foods and some drink. We should give up some entertainments. Perhaps the single most important thing we can do in Lent is to turn off the radio, the computer and the TV and create times of silence in which we can enter the presence of God. Perhaps no other single aspect of modern life reflects the presence of the demonic more than the continuous noise, the endless drone of voices that drowns out all silence, all room for reflection and contemplation. C. S. Lewis once wrote that the devil hates two things: music (by which I think he meant beautiful music) and silence.

We should add prayer, which is best practiced in conjunction with some reading and reflection on the Scriptures. In the silence and space created by the fast, we come into the presence of God. We discover, in the presence of God, the thing for which our soul most longs.

The power of fasting is not in the abstinence itself. The power of fasting is in the new experience of God that fasting makes available to us. The grace of God enters the void created by the fast. As we come to experience the presence of God through habits of prayer, the idols become less attractive. One who knows God and experiences his grace as a habit of life is less inclined to mistake a bottle, or another person, or food, or money, or possessions, or any created thing for God.

By this transaction of fasting-the removal of things and the addition of prayer-we gain freedom. We learn that we can do without. The voice of the demon whispers in our ear, "What will happen to you if you can't have the things upon which you depend? What will happen to you in the wilderness?" In Lent, we go without; we go into the wilderness and we learn that going without can be a vehicle to a closer relationship with God.

As Jesus said, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst" (John 6:35, RSV).