Mourning and Fasting

Mark 2:18-19

18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?”

19 Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them."

In the past, when I have thought about fasting, I have thought of it as an opportunity to separate myself, to create time and space to focus on God, and to use the physical experience of need to alert me to my spiritual needs.

But as I reviewed the passages on fasting in the Bible, there were a few words that kept showing up in the same context: weeping, wailing, mourning, lamentation, sackcloth and ashes.  It became clear to me that many of the times that fasting is mentioned in the Bible it is actually a response to suffering.  It was not necessary to create suffering in the form of hunger in order to provoke oneself to focus on God; the suffering was already there.  The fasting was a response to the suffering to seek God while in mourning; to pray and cry out to God because you are in pain.

When we think about fasting during Lent, we do not need to think of it as creating a need for God to fill.  We can take the time of Lent to acknowledge the needs in our own lives and in our world.  Together, the world is mourning.  We mourn the lives lost in a pandemic.  We mourn the suffering caused by war.  We mourn the extinction of species and the loss of habitats.  We mourn the loss of children in our schools.  We suffer with those who have internal battles with mental and physical illness or with addictions.  We have much to lament for ourselves and our world.  

Fasting can be a response to that.  The Bible calls us to fast in solidarity with the suffering around us.  It calls us to fast as a form of prayer and worship, acknowledging total dependence on God.  This Lenten season, if it is healthy for you to do so, consider fasting as a way to mourn with those who are mourning and as a form of prayer for God to meet us in our needs.

Fasting is only for a time, however.  Fasting and mourning have their season, but one cannot fast during a celebration.  Jesus said his disciples do not fast.  He compared himself to the bridegroom at a wedding.  A wedding is a time for feasting, not fasting.  Though we mourn now, we await the day when the world will be made new and we will live in peace with God and with each other.  We celebrate that hope every Sunday in remembering the resurrection and most of all on Easter Sunday.  

We can remember this detail throughout Lent as we mark the time until Easter.  In the Protestant churches, Lent is counted as the 40 days before Easter, but it does not count the 6 Sundays because those days are celebrations of the resurrection and we cannot mourn on those days.

So, as you go through Lent, if it is healthy for you to do so, choose a moment to fast and pray in response to the suffering in our world.  But every Sunday, join together in feasting for the hope we have in Christ gives us much to celebrate.

Laurel Clapper