Matthew 6:16-18

“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

I wonder how many of us actually fasted in preparation or as a way of playing along for this evening. I meant to. I stopped eating at around 10 p.m. last night, but was so hungry by the time our simple meal of rice and water was ready, that I jumped right in line and started eating. I intended to make Holy Communion as part of our worship my first meal of the day, because one of the ways I first heard about or learned about practicing a fast, was to make Holy Communion the first meal of the day on Sunday morning.

That’s not usually a difficult thing to do for me, mostly because I rarely eat breakfast anyway, and because Holy Communion happens early enough on a Sunday morning and is followed shortly thereafter by whatever donuts or pastries or cookies or muffins most Lutherans so faithfully have to share as part of our Sunday sabbath ritual.

All of that is to say that that kind of fasting isn’t all that much of a sacrifice – skipping breakfast for an hour or so, and feasting on donuts, I mean. Today was a little more of a stretch.

Which is to say there are many ways and various degrees to which one can fast. Minimally, you could simply abstain from some specific kind of food for a time, giving up meat or pizza or ice cream, of course.

You could choose to eat nothing and drink only water or juice for a set period of time.

You could prepare for or “baby-step” your way into a longer fasting practice by skipping a meal or two, now and then. And then by fasting for a twenty-four-hour period, perhaps, like from noon to noon, making eight or more hours of that a good time to sleep.

Some people might even progress to a number of days without eating.

Don’t do any of this, of course, without knowing about your body and your health and with permission from you doctor, perhaps, if you want to take it to an extreme. But the truth is, most of us can go longer than we’re used to – longer than we are comfortable with – without eating like we’re used to. And we can exercise our faith and experience some meaningful spiritual growth when we do. And it seems like Jesus knew this.

See, it’s meaningful to know that, fasting as a spiritual exercise – like every other spiritual exercise we are invited to practice as followers of Christ – is not lifted up as a “command” from our creator. It’s never lifted up as something we are ordered to do.

But, it’s also meaningful to know that fasting, as a faith practice, is mentioned by Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, in the same breath as he preaches and teaches about prayer and giving.

That bit of Matthew, Chapter 6, which we just heard, is sandwiched between (ha ha!) Jesus’ teaching about the Lord’s Prayer and his instruction about not storing up treasures in heaven. In other words, Jesus assumes God’s people will fast, just as surely as he assumes we will faithfully pray the Lord’s prayer, and just he assumes we will faithfully give away our money and our stuff and our things.

And Jesus assumes it because he fasted himself, which we read about in Scripture, like that time he fasted for 40 days and for 40 nights, before the devil tempted him to turn stones into bread out in the wilderness. And fasting was a thing for some other heroes of the faith like Moses and King David, Elijah, Daniel, and the apostle Paul, too.

The practice of fasting, though, just isn’t engaged by most Christians I know, like it used to be – or like it is – in other places and other faith traditions in the world. Muslims, we know, fast from dawn until sunset, throughout the month of Ramadan. Faithful Jews fast during Yom Kippur’s Day of atonement. And so on.

So maybe we leave fasting to the monks and the mystics and the Muslims, like it’s supposed to be reserved for the uber-religious or the hyper-faithful or for someone else. Or maybe we don’t bother with it because it’s only meant for certain times of the liturgical year, like Lent. Or maybe we don’t do it, because it’s hard and takes practice and discipline and our food and drink are too easy to find. (Refusing to turn stones into bread pales in comparison to passing by the McDonald’s drive-thru or ignoring refrigerator full of your favorite things or pretending you don’t see the leftover pizza on the countertop.)

And I think our aversion to fasting as a practice has something to do with our distaste for being hungry – our unfamiliarity with being hungry; our inability to go without; our assumption that fasting is all or only about sacrifice, suffering, and self-imposed misery.

But what if we could view the practice of fasting, instead, as a Marie Kondo-style method of organizing our physical and spiritual selves for a period of time. For those of you who don’t know, Marie Kondo is the Japanese queen of organizing, who has written books and hosted a Netflix series, teaching a method and a mentality for organizing your home based on whether the things and the stuff you own bring you joy or are useful or necessary, or not. And she encourages the purging of anything and everything that doesn’t meet those criteria.

A time of fasting invites us to consider what we put into our bodies from the same perspective, I think. Does what we eat and drink bring us joy? (Not just happiness or instant gratification, but joy?) Is what we eat and drink necessary? Is what we eat and drink useful for our body’s health and wellness? Does how or what we eat honor the world around us?

For example, sometimes fasting might remind us of and bind us in solidarity with the poor and the hungry in the world around us. (Something like 1 in 8 people in the United States live below the poverty line, which amounts to a total household income of just $25,750 for a family of four these days.)

Sometimes fasting might be an exercise in gratitude for the abundance that surrounds and fills most of us, most of the time.

Here is a picture of me with my 15-year-old, Jackson:

Here is a picture of me with my 15-year-old friend in Fondwa, Haiti, Davidson:

Jackson isn’t just strapping and strong and handsome because he hit the gene-pool jackpot. He eats well and often and abundantly. And Davidson isn’t just “short” or “small for his age” he’s seriously undernourished from lack of money, food, and resources.

But fasting isn’t just about challenging our worldview – or even mostly about that. Fasting is a way to worship, in and of itself. Fasting is a way to take away that which we need to live life in this world, and focus our heart’s desire, instead – with gratitude – on the God of our creation, whom we need to live life in this world and in the next.

And all of this is why I wanted to make Holy Communion the focus of our time together and connect it with the practice of fasting, tonight.

One blessing of the practice of fasting, in this case, which really makes God the center and focus and aim of it all, is our very real longing for the sacrament … our hungering for bread and wine … anticipating the taste of food and drink … and being filled, literally, with the body and blood of Christ and all it represents for us; being actually, physically satisfied by the tasting, the chewing, the drinking, the swallowing; experiencing the sensation of what was parched becoming quenched; what was hungry becoming full; what was empty becoming filled – our mouths and our minds, I mean; our stomachs and our souls.

And this is different than how most people wonder about what it means to fast, from what I can tell – myself, included too much of the time. I mean, we tend to consider fasting as nothing more and nothing less than an exercise in sacrifice – which it is – but it’s not all or only or even mostly about going without. If we can learn to approach it differently – with an eye for what it will add to our walk of faith – my hope is that we might give it a go and find meaning in it more often.

So I’d like to invite you to receive Holy Communion now, with a hungry heart, whether you have feasted or fasted in preparation for worship this evening. I’d like us to gather around this table with parched souls; feeling the emptiness within us that is waiting to be filled by the only thing that can quiet the pangs of longing and need that are known to each of us in many different ways.

My hope is that we’ll come to this table – flowing with milk and honey, bread and wine, body and blood. That we’ll come hungering and thirsting for righteousness… that we’ll come longing for forgiveness; aching for mercy; yearning for peace; desiring justice. That we will empty ourselves enough to crave, like so many hungry children, the kind of love and grace and hope that can only come – and that is on the way – thanks to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen