The Fasting Practice - Week 4
Readings for this week October 7 - 12
Click here for a pdf of this week’s readings
Day 1 – Standing with the Poor
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Isaiah 58:1-2
A smaller section of this passage from Isaiah was our opening bible passage for this fasting series and it is appropriate that we return to it now as we enter the final week, in which we examine how through fasting we can stand with the poor of the world and show solidarity with them. Many in this world do not have enough to eat as they live in areas and economies that suffer from food scarcity. Others in this world have too much and live in societies that each year throw away hundreds of millions of tonnes of food. Millions are hungry and millions have more food than they know what to do with. What might the practice of fasting and the way of Jesus Christ have to offer in this paradoxical situation? Is fasting just for personal transformation, or is it also a means of social transformation too?
Discipleship is never just an internal discipline. It is external too – in fact, if our discipleship does not result in changes to the external reality of our lives and our world then our discipleship is a lie and our God – Creator, Sustainer, Revealer – is false. Fasting is a way in which we can proclaim the biblical vision of justice and care for the poor and the marginalised and show that we stand with them, and not just stand but also walk with them and work with them for justice and wholeness. God wants our service to him to go beyond our own personal growth. Remember: a true fast has teeth: it takes God’s word to the world around us, it feeds the hungry, it shelters the homeless, it sets slaves free from oppression.
Question to Consider
How might the practice of fasting be used to show solidarity with the poor? What practical ways can this be shown? What could you do?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, show me how to give more of myself – even my body –for others. Teach me that my spirituality is not just mine, not just ‘for me’, but also a gift for others, if I will use it so. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 2 – Two Visions of Fasting
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Isaiah 58:3-7
We see here that the people’s vision of fasting was not God’s vision of fasting. And more, we see that God’s vision of fasting doesn’t seem to have very much to do with fasting – abstaining from food – at all. The people are fasting for the wrong reasons: to show how pious they are, how worthy of God’s love and attention – and possibly even as a means to wring something from God. But Isaiah challenges them on their supposed probity, saying that if they wish to deprive themselves, they should do so for the needy and the helpless, not for their own religiosity. It is in God’s nature to give away to those who have no hope of repaying him. His followers, if they truly are his followers, should behave in the same way as he does.
These verses give a very clear reason for this type of fasting: it is to fight injustice, oppose oppression and free people from it; to share food with the hungry and provide shelter to refugees, immigrants, and the homeless; and to clothe the naked. No mention of the piety of those who are fasting, no reference to their internal spiritual transformation. Just actions that aim to meet the practical needs of people around us. The fast that Isaiah has in mind is one where we stand in solidarity with the poor, we share our resources, and we stand against evil and injustice. This is the nature of a true fast and is the discipleship that God calls us to live out.
Question to Consider
What does Isaiah 58 teach about the connection between our worship of God and our treatment of others?
Prayer
Gracious God, fasting is not just a tool for myself but for me to use on behalf of others. Show me how fasting can be a tool for changing the world and bringing justice and freedom to those who are in chains. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 3 – Seeing How Others Live and Not Turning Away
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Isaiah 58:8-12
As followers of God, if we choose to live rightly and sacrificially for others, then we will find the solace we seek in God. The very meaning and sustenance we seek to find in religion will be ours as the beneficent fruits of a life lived righteously for the sake of others. But if we make ourselves and our religion and the comfort of our own lives the focus of our efforts, the result is darkness, disease and separation. God’s concern is that the worshipper would be moved from a focus upon themselves to focusing on a concern for worship that results in genuine caring for others. Jesus called us to be a light to the world; many centuries prior to Jesus’ reminder of this, Isaiah told us how to do this: meet the needs of the oppressed and feed those who are hungry.
Those who love God should work to remove the yoke of all sorts of oppression that afflict others. Added to this in verse nine is the removal of slander and defamation. No more finger pointing and malicious talk. Oppression of the poor and the weak will not stop until they are seen and treated as fully human, worthy of dignity and compassion, not as victims or objects of scorn and contempt. They are our brothers and sisters under God. A true fast, a faith-full fast, is one that does not seek its own fulfilment but that always seeks to be generous towards others and that works ceaselessly to bring freedom to all people.
Question to Consider
How can you practically implement the "true fast" in your family or your church community? How might it change your discipleship practice?
Prayer
Holy Lord, discomfort me. Keep me from complacency and the blindness that comes with a closed heart. Show me the lives of others and the people and places you want me to fight for. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 4 – Counter Testimony
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Philippians 2:1-4
Regularly going without food by choice can put us in touch with the millions of people around the world who regularly go without food through no choice of their own. This is a way in which we can emotionally and spiritually join in solidarity with those who experience such food poverty and who are forced to go without or see their children and family do without. Experiencing and acknowledging the situation of others, even in this chosen, limited way, reminds us of what it means to have empathy for others and teaches us the nature of compassion. We begin to see the poor not as a stranger, not as a distant ‘problem’ that needs to be addressed, but as a brother or sister worthy of the same dignity and compassion as anyone else.
As well as this, fasting can be a witness to our own society and culture – and especially to our children – of what not being warped by our own society’s exclusivity and materialism might look like. If all they see and know is the gluttony and uncaring excess of our wasteful overconsumption, then that is the lived experience of almost half the world’s population completely unknown to them. But if people see us joined in abstaining from food, offering our bodies in worship, and working to end poverty and injustice, then they will begin to see the wrong done to others, the injustice being combatted and the people of God at the forefront of the fight to bring life and dignity and wholeness to all people.
Question to Consider
How can you ensure that your spiritual practices are not self-serving, but rather serve God and others?
Prayer
Almighty Father, help us live another way, a way that is generous, a way that pushes back against the selfishness and isolation that surrounds us and shows your love and compassion as the true way to live. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 5 – The Fast and the Feast
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Revelation 21
At the very beginning of scripture one of the commands that God gives to Adam and Eve is the command not to eat – not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From the very first verses of the bible comes a very particular, specific command to abstain, to withhold, to fast. There are times when such actions are appropriate. But at the other end of the book, in Revelation, scripture ends with a feast. The consummation of the kingdom, the final renewal and redemption of all things, the gathering of every nation and tribe and tongue together, where pure water flows and fruit grows in abundance, is one heralded with all people gathering to feast. No more fasting. No more need for fasting, for the bridegroom is with us at the table, there is no more poverty, no more suffering, no more need, other than the need to feast and celebrate the glory of King Jesus.
When we feast – when we enjoy the fruits of God’s good earth and invite the stranger and the poor and the marginalised to the table – we act out this future reality in the present. And when we fast, we pray with our bodies for Jesus to bring this future into being here and now. We pray for all to experience the bounty of the Lord’s table and we work and pray and put our very bodies on the line to show that we are ready to do what we can to bring this future into being in the present. That we will do whatever it takes to stand with those who do not yet know God’s goodness and to work to bring it to them.
Question to Consider
How are feasting and fasting connected now? How do we feast in a way that connects with the importance of widening the invitation to our tables?
Prayer
Father God, grow our hearts and grow our fellowship with each other. Help us feast in a way that reveals the ultimate gathering that is your kingdom and the universal invitation that you offer to all. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)