After Fasting and Praying
Week 6: Lenten Fast 2024
The Lord said to me: “Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.”
Then I said: “Ah, Lord God, behold, the prophets say to them, ‘You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place.’” And the Lord said to me: “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name although I did not send them, and who say, ‘Sword and famine shall not come upon this land’: By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed. 16 And the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem, victims of famine and sword, with none to bury them—them, their wives, their sons, and their daughters. For I will pour out their evil upon them.
Jeremiah 14:11-16
Pray
From Fasting to Feasting
Lord, cut out our lying tongues and replace them with words of life. Help us to choose the food of faith and obedience that we might be nourished for the mission. Let our religion humble us to the point of death to self and life at your feet. Our worship is the fruit of your word establish by your spirit in our hearts. You are a just God who makes us whole and holy by your son’s work of reconciliation. In Jesus we thank you and praise you. Amen.
Justice and Peace
The Christian life is a life of fasting.
Our fasting is justified only when it is done from a pure heart. And a pure heart only exists wherein the spirit of God dwells.
When we yield to the holy spirit in us, it should result in specific action or inaction.
In the case of our religion, the holy spirit is the sole distinction between God-centered worship and man-centered worship. St. Augustine wrote a letter to a brother and fellow Presbyter in the church to discuss this distinction in religion. In this letter focused on fasting, Augustine wrote:
by the same rule, to fast twice in the week is in a man such as the Pharisee unprofitable, but is in one who has humility and faith a religious service. Moreover, after all, the Scripture does not say that the Pharisee was condemned, but only that the publican was justified rather than the other.
Our ways are meant to serve God; God’s ways are not meant to serve us.
We are to humble ourselves and exalt him. Not the other way around.
Nevertheless, in God’s redemptive plan, we see another sacred paradox: God humbled himself in his son to exalt us his people.
This happens because God is just, and he is holy.
In dialogue with the prophet Jeremiah, God made this clear. He would not save a people just because they put on a good show. Their fasting and burnt offerings and grain offerings amounted to evil.
The people’s prophets were liars, taking the Lord’s name in vain, so the Lord gave them what they deserved: their own evil poured out on them.
This is God’s justice. But it begs the question: how can a God of justice also be a God of peace?
Because he is the one true and holy God.
And he humbled himself in the person of Jesus Christ taking on flesh. Of Jesus Christ, Paul writes to the church at Colossae:
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,
Colossians 1:19-22
Jesus’s death undoes our evil deeds in order that we would be holy and blameless.
That’s a miracle!
He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, and he humbled himself in life-giving obedience on the cross.
And so, in humility and faith, our minds are no longer in a permanent state of hostility; and we are no longer separated from our creator God. We no longer demand justice be done by our hand because we trust it’s done by God’s. We no longer labor towards wholeness in an unwinnable battle with our sin because we know victory is the Lord’s.
We know we are the Lord’s and his will be done.
Barnabas, Saul, and the early church knew this — God is the one who sets us apart.
While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
Acts 13:2-3
This is peace. Peace is the restoration of a holy relationship with our maker. We are made whole and complete in our restored relationship to God.
In fasting, we symbolize and experience our dying to sin and living by the word of God. By consuming that word do we taste peace. To the words spoken by Jeremiah again:
O Lord, you know;
remember me and visit me,
and take vengeance for me on my persecutors.
In your forbearance take me not away;
know that for your sake I bear reproach.
Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart,
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts.Jeremiah 15:15-16
Our just God put onto Jesus what we deserve. We are justified by faith and obedient repentance. And in the resurrection of Christ, we are made holy — made complete by the peace of, in, and with Jesus Christ who lives and reigns.
May our fasting bear reproach and our feasting joy.
Proclaim Christ exalted.
Let us fast from all food together from 12 noon on Wednesday until 12 noon on Thursday. Please feel free to define your own parameters for joining in this fast, e.g. times, days, and dietary needs, as we seek to draw near to the Lord during a season of penitent prayer.
