All Saints’, Dorval
March 6, 2022
When I was a child, my family gave up sweets and desserts for Lent. Some of my elementary and middle school classmates were very mean to me about this (I vividly recall at least one occasion of having a Snickers bar waved in my face in the lunchroom), but it never occurred to me to try to “cheat”. I kept up the practice throughout college and my early adulthood, although as I moved through my 20s I was increasingly aware that it was not actually helping me spiritually. Quite the contrary, in fact: it was making me cranky and hangry. But I genuinely couldn’t imagine doing Lent any other way.
It was serendipitous, then, that Peter’s due date was February 11, in a year in which Easter was very early, and thus Ash Wednesday was the 6th. I looked at the calendar, considered my own metabolism, and realized that trying to breastfeed a newborn while fasting from a significant source of calories was Not Going To Happen. Thus, 2008 became the year I gave up sleep for Lent instead.
As it turned out, of course, the baby came early, on the 1st, and although born at home, ended up in the PICU when he was four days old. On Ash Wednesday of that year, I sat in the hospital beside Peter’s cot and ate a hamburger and an ice cream sundae for lunch, and that was exactly what I needed.
Since that year, I’ve tried different Lenten disciplines, with varying success. I still do abstain from sweets and desserts during Holy Week. But letting go of the rigid fasting practice of my childhood and adolescence has been a source of growth, not a defeat.
It’s hard to talk about fasting in our culture. There is an increasing consciousness of the prevalence of eating disorders, and how harmful disordered eating can be, and how talk around any kind of food restriction plays into that. And yet, at the same time, we still live in a culture of absurd and toxic overabundance – overabundance for some, anyway – a culture that insists that our primary identity is as consumers, and yet one in which many people go without some basic necessities in the midst of the glut. How, in the middle of all this, can we think responsibly about our Lenten practices?
Jesus certainly doesn’t set an easy example to emulate. When he went into the wilderness, Luke says, “He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.” A normal human who eats no food whatsoever for nearly six full weeks will be on the verge of death. Perhaps the very extreme nature of this fast, though, in a way makes it easier to talk about – I think we can all agree today that this is very much a “Do not try this at home”.
So, short of actually starving ourselves for six weeks, what can we learn from Jesus’ fast and temptations?
We should note, first of all, that the fast and the temptations are separate. Jesus has finished his forty-day fast before Satan gets down to business.
And when Satan tempts Jesus, it’s interesting to observe that he doesn’t use any of the standard things that we think of as “tempting” or “sinful”. He doesn’t wave in front of Jesus’ face a bottle of expensive wine, or a Caribbean vacation, or a Patek Philippe watch (or the first-century equivalents thereof …). Nor – crucially – does Satan tempt Jesus with sex.
The three things Jesus refuses are (1) the chance to provide for himself basic human needs by magical means; (2) worshiping Satan in exchange for earthly power; and (3) essentially daring God to prove is identity as God’s Son. Jesus doesn’t turn down chocolate and steak and beautiful women. He turns down political power, idolatry, and shortcuts.
So as reflect on our lives this Lent, perhaps what we should ask ourselves is not, “What harmless indulgence can I eliminate?” but “Where am I tempted to take more power than I am entitled to, cut corners in harmful ways, or worship something that isn’t God?”
We are not trying to make ourselves suffer for the sake of suffering. We are trying to make space in our lives for the goodness of God, to realign our lives according to God’s priorities.
On the other hand, perhaps that is more of a question for the whole of our lives, rather than for one six-week season. Again, the fast and the temptation are two separate things.
Because the thing about fasting that’s most important for 21st-century people to remember is that fasting is not a diet or a New Year’s resolution.
Let me repeat that: fasting is not a diet or a New Year’s resolution.
Fasting is not something that happens permanently or indefinitely, or in a vacuum. Fasting makes sense only in the context of feasting, which is its inverse and complement. Cycles of feast and fast, of abundance and scarcity, have been a fact of life for all of human history –imposed at first by the cycles of nature, later by human cultures. We fast, not to change our bodies or permanently alter our habits, but to mark the rhythm of our days, and to better appreciate the abundance when we do enjoy it.
After Jesus’ 40-day fast in the wilderness, he did not go forth and preach the gospel of extreme fasting for self-improvement and optimal health. He feasted. He ate at the homes of wealthy people who invited him to dinner. He multiplied the loaves and fishes for the hungry crowds. He was, in fact, accused by his enemies of being “a glutton and a drunkard” because he and his disciples didn’t fast as often as John the Baptist’s did.
For all of Christian history, our fast days have alternated with our feast days. The whole year is shaped by these observances. My family didn’t just give up sweets and desserts for Lent; we also abstained every Friday throughout the year, except in Christmas and Easter seasons and on major feasts – and I still do. On the other hand, our Lenten fast never lasted more than six consecutive days, because every Sunday is a mini-Easter, and thereby a feast day, or at least a non-fast day. (That said, since we mostly didn’t buy any sweets in Lent, I have to say that by Palm Sunday the feasting options were pretty dire. Think freezer-burned Girl Scout cookies.)
As Robert Farrar Capon put it, “The dieter says, ‘Sweets are bad; I cannot have them ever.’ The faster says, ‘Sweets are good; I will not take them now.’ The dieter is condemned to bitter bondage, to a life that dares not let food in. But the faster is preparing for a feast. His Lent leads to an Easter, and to mirth and weight of Glory.”
Or, as one of my wise colleagues put it during lectionary study this week, “If you give something up for Lent, it should be something you are ready to re-embrace with joy at Easter, not something you want to cut out of your life forever. This is not the time to give up smoking.”
During the Great Vigil of Easter, at the invitation to the renewal of baptismal vows, the celebrant says to the people, “Now that our Lenten observance is ended, let us renew the promises we made in baptism”. Whenever I have pronounced those words, I have infused them with the gleeful and slightly unhinged anticipation of someone who has not tasted chocolate for six days but knows that the bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs will be busted open within the hour – and that then the feast will continue for fifty days.
I keep up the Friday fast, even when I find it deeply unpleasant, in order to remind myself that I will not actually die if denied chocolate for 24 hours. But the idea of giving up chocolate forever – of never again rejoicing in that great gift of God – fills me with existential horror. (And I have a magnet on my refrigerator that says, “If there’s no chocolate in heaven, I don’t want to go there.”)
We fast in order to feast. We “give something up” in order to make space for God. If we wish to reorder our lives away from power, idolatry, and shortcuts, we should be doing that all the time. But for Lent? Put something down for a season, if it helps you to understand your life and come closer to God. But at Easter, pick it up again, also to come closer to God – and give thanks.
Amen.
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