February 28, 2022
Lent is coming: why fast?
In the last letter I sent, I mentioned that to read the Old Testament, it is important to remember 1) It will take time 2) We will need help 3) It will be worth the effort. Thinking about that advice now, I see it’s pretty much a philosophy for life. What’s certainly true is that it’s taken time for me to get this newsletter out, so thanks for your patience with me.
As many of you know, this Wednesday begins the 40-day season of Lent, a period in which Christians throughout the centuries have dedicated themselves to fasting as an act of self-examination, contrition, and repentance. I didn’t grow up in a church that followed the Christian calendar, nor do people talk much today in my church about the practice of fasting. It always leaves me a bit uncertain at this time of year. What do I give up, and does giving up something for Lent really mean anything?
My own relationship with fasting is on-and-off (mostly off, I grant), but I’m starting to see the real importance of this practice that attempts to reorder our relationship with God and also with food. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have with people in Toronto about the delicacies of good food and good wine. There is always another best restaurant to try, another best dish to rave about. There is a bottomless appetite in our city to have the freshest fish, the most marbled beef, the leggiest wine, the flakiest pastry crust.
In Toronto (at least when COVID restrictions don’t rule the city), half of your entertainment is food: food you stand in line for, make reservations three months in advance for, even pay hundreds of dollars for. I’ve always felt that our food snobbery makes home hospitality feel second-rate. Can it ever be enough to serve a steamy pot of soup and a crusty loaf of bread to friends? (I’ve been testing my small group in just this way.)
I love to eat, and I think it’s a grace that this habit—which keeps us alive—can be so enjoyable. And at the same time, living in North America disorders our relationship with food. Most of us are well practiced in the sinful patterns of eating Gregory the Great described in the Middle Ages: “too daintily, too sumptuously, too hastily, too greedily, too much.” This is eating that forgets how many grow hungry. In November 2021, it was reported that visits to Toronto food banks were up 50% since the start of the pandemic. Given that food prices have increased this year by 7%, I’m sure those numbers will rise even more.
There are many reasons to take up a Lenten fast. Orthodox theologian Kallistos Ware has this to say: “The primary aim of fasting is to make us conscious of our dependence on God. If practiced seriously, the Lenten abstinence from food . . . involves a considerable measure of real hunger, and also a feeling of tiredness and physical exhaustion. The purpose of this is to lead us in turn to a sense of inward brokenness and contrition; to bring us, that is, to the point where we appreciate the full force of Christ’s statement, ‘Without Me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5).”
“If we always take our fill of food and drink,” Ware continues, “we easily grow confident in our own abilities, acquiring a false sense of autonomy and self-sufficiency. The observance of a physical fast undermines this sinful complacency” (Rebecca DeYoung, Glittering Vices, 185).
DeYoung reported that when she took up a Lenten fast, it made her tired and less productive. Three weeks into Lent, she prayed, “Lord, I gave you my eating. I did not give you control of my schedule and all my plans for what needs to get done” (229). She realized that Lent was a call to not only give up food but give up a certain version of herself. “Lent comes around every year for a reason,” she writes. “The church year circles around and around again. There’s an ‘always’ lesson here too. We must keep conforming to Christ Jesus—over and over and over again” (230).
If you’re unsure about how you might engage a Lenten fast this year, I have some suggestions for you.
1. Give up a decadence: alcohol, dessert, snacks, this habit of eating “too sumptuously.”
2. Give up fast food: this habit of eating “too hastily.”
3. Give up ordering food with special instructions: this habit of eating “too daintily.”
4. Practice serving others the first and last portions, giving up this habit of eating “too greedily.”
5. Set a new limit on the quantity of food you’ll eat. Resist late-night snacks, maybe even breakfast or lunch for 40 days.
Do this because, as the late Dallas Willard wrote, we “live from our bodies.”
We fast—and perhaps learn to love God and our neighbor a little bit more.
Jen
Last year, I wrote a piece about Lent for Christianity Today. I discussed not gluttony (as I have above), but acedia, or sloth. It seems I haven’t yet worn out my interest in the monastic wisdom of understanding and fighting the seven deadly sins.