Matthew 6.16 “When you fast do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show everyone else they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have their reward.
There’s a name for it in our social media age; it’s called virtue signalling. Telling everyone else how good we are, how angry we are at someone else’s faults, or how kind we’ve been and would like people to know it. Why do we need other people’s approval? God sees what we do, and that’s enough reward. What are you giving up for Lent? How about us giving up telling others what we are giving up? Live for the approval of God and give up self-advertising. Not as easy as it sounds!
Tuesday
Matthew 6.18 “Your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you openly.”
For myself, I have to keep remembering that God sees it all. The words I thought of saying, and then thought twice. The compassion felt and the kind act that followed. Those transactions between the homeless veteran I sometimes pass when I go to the Oxfam book shop. God sees, God knows, and it’s no one else’s business! Giving up chocolate for Lent might be easier than denying our hunger for other people’s praise. A true fast is to act kindly in secret, and leave the approval ratings to God!
Wednesday
Isaiah 58. 6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Fasting is an act of self-sacrifice for the sake of making space for God in lives too preoccupied with our own concerns. Isaiah lambasts the hypocrisy of looking after my own spiritual life and inner righteousness, if at the same time I do nothing for those who cry for justice. The single mum at the food bank, the asylum seeker feeling lost, elderly lonely folk who haven’t spoken to anyone for days, the exhausted carer unsupported in bearing the cost of love. Fasting is to take a break from my personal piety and discover that I meet God much more readily in the face of these others.
Thursday
Isaiah 58.7 “Is it not to share your food with the hungry, and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter –when you see the naked to clothe them, and not turn away from your own folk.”
These words are embedded in Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats: “Forasmuch as you did it for one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.” (Matthew 25.40) It isn’t that our own righteousness, holiness and devotion to God are unimportant. But our inner justification before God finds its validation and outer justification in being agents of that same grace-filled love in the lives of others. A true fast is a quite intentional lifestyle of being a sacrament of the welcome of God.
Friday
Acts 13.2 “While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
Worship and fasting are two self-forgetting attitudes before God. In praise and prayer, and the discipline our own appetites, there is space for God to speak. Worship, fasting and prayer are important ways of paying more attention to God by leaving aside, for a while, our usual self-concern and preoccupation. In this sense, fasting makes space for God to speak, and for us to hear. Spiritual disciplines have the same function as any other work-out; they energise and keep us healthy!
Saturday
Isaiah 58.9-10 “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.
The true fast is for us to hunger and thirst for justice, and not only for ourselves. “If…Then…” Those two words are God’s conditions for blessing. The old apostle John said all that needs to be said here; “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need and has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” (I John 3.17) When our fasting takes the form of generous compassion, God’s light shines.
Sunday
Matthew 6.17 “But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to anyone else that you are fasting, but only to your Father who is unseen; and your Father who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
God of justice and grace, unseen yet seeing everything. Teach us the blessing of a true fast is to refrain from self-praise and practice generosity; to do good in secret, to be kind to strangers, to use our words, our money and our actions to break yokes that burden and crush others. Father in heaven, we can’t fix everything, but may we be faithful, persistent and caring in all our efforts to repair what we can, making space within us to be attentive to your call and receptive of your grace. Amen
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