True Fasting

Lent is traditionally a time of fasting. It is a commemoration of the forty days Jesus spent fasting in the desert after his baptism, and for centuries Christians have practiced self-denial of one form or another during the season. Perhaps you have “given something up for Lent” yourself. Unfortunately, actual fasting, once a regular and expected practice, has fallen by the wayside in much of the contemporary church.

By contrast, the people who live in the time of the prophet who wrote Isaiah 58 undoubtedly know about fasting. They know about it and they do it. Regularly. The prophet raises no objections to the practice of fasting; his ire is raised by the way they accompany their fasting with other, less worthy activities. “Look,” he says, “you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist” (vv. 3–4). He warns them, “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high” (v. 4).

This prophet has observed the religious practices of the people and has found them wanting. Not wanting as in their not performing them, but wanting as in the spirit in which they perform them. He objects not to fasting itself but rather to fasting accompanied by injustice, violence, and oppression. One imagines the prophet, his forehead creased and brows knitted, saying in a bewildered tone, “How on earth can you claim to worship God when you cheat the workers in your fields, when you use dishonest balances and weights in your trade, when you pick fights with your neighbor, or when you do nothing except that which will enrich you or increase your power?” It’s a rhetorical question. The prophet is really saying that it’s not possible to worship God truly while at the same time abusing God’s other children or seeking only one’s own self-promotion. It simply can’t be done.

The prophet goes on to share what God considers acceptable behavior on one’s fast day: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (vv. 6–7).

The prophet is not suggesting that the people stop fasting. Instead, he tells them to start matching their behavior with their profession. If you profess to worship God, he says, then do the things that please God. If you say you love God, then stop hurting God’s children. If you want to truly follow the way of God, couple your religious practice with practices of justice and peace that will bring more light into the world instead of more darkness.

That is our challenge, too. During Lent, this time of fasting, let us seek ever more ways to be light-bearers. Let us not say one thing and do another. Let us accompany our fasting with works that are pleasing to God. Let us be agents of shalom.