Fasting and Jonah

March 14, 2009.
It is the fourth of six Sundays in Lent. How is that fasting going?
I come here as an outsider to your congregation and I ask you, Why have you been fasting? Because scripture told you fast? Did you reason that you should fast? Does your family traditionally fast? Has your experience of fasting in the past lead you to continue to fast? All of these are valid reasons for fasting. Though there is a bit more to fasting than not eating food.
Traditionally Christians fast during Lent so that we may suffer. Suffer? Really? We live in the United States of America. No one suffers here! Unless of course they are not able to pull themselves up. And that, as Americans, is the point of suffering. Comparatively few in the United States have to suffer or lack for anything. Our understanding of what suffering is massively different from classical suffering in the Bible. Suffering, traditionally, is tied to the passion after Palm Sunday. Though we typically understand only the pain of suffering. In suffering there is also hope. Without hope, suffering is despair. That is unhealthy. Hope in the knowledge that God is with you in your suffering.
Fasting does not bring you closer to God. God is already closer to you than you could ever imagine. This suffering for God instead allows you to experience life without the comforts you are used to. It gives you the chance to reflect, in loss, upon life. When you go without, you can see God in the cracks that open up. This is the purpose of fasting, to see where God is active in your life.
Fasting traditionally is giving something up. That is, something that you like. Such as: meat, sugar, chocolate, coffee, smoking, etc. While fasting during let can allow you to make life changes for a healthier life, this is not traditionally the point of fasting. Fasting brings suffering which allows one to see where hope is and how hope is active in their relationship with God. Thus fasting could be better done I think by giving up a meal a week or going without food for a whole day. Fasting also can mean taking on something else. In this taking on, you are cutting away time that is not productive in your life. In taking on something else one must be mindful that you still need to be with God. Filling your life with things to do is the opposite of fasting.
It is important to remember that spiritual disciplines, which fasting is one of many, are not for you. We do these things for our relationship with God. God calls us to disciplines so that we may know God better. Thus spiritual discipline must include prayer. In prayer we are open to hearing and understanding God. So when fasting, don’t just fast, but when you fast, pray in lieu of what you have given up. Do not work through lunch. Get away from the workspace and spend the time in prayer. Hearing your own suffering, latent to the suffering of others and understand better the suffering of God. If you take something on, do it prayerfully. If you are knitting prayer-shawls, pray as you knit.
Again, this is important, fasting does not bring you closer to God. It allows for you to see God, active, in your life. And in your suffering you see a little of what God suffers when God is not in relationship with you!
God has been in the pattern of sending messengers to the people of God for millennia. First there was Abraham, then Moses, Joshua, Jonah, Daniel, John the Baptizer, Jesus, Paul John Chrysostom, Francis of Assisi, Luther, John Wesley and Mother Theresa.
Typically we call these people prophets, apostles, or re-newers of the church. Through their lives and preaching we are reminded of who God is. This is the Hessed, that is, the Loving Kindness of God. Often we hear of a God who is angry with the people. The people have forgotten God. This is why God sends prophets. To remind us of who it is we are in relationship with.
Imagine if you will that your partner has forgotten about you. He or she does not spend time with you any more. They just go through the rituals, eating, living in the same house, tending the yard, etc. But something else is taking their attention away from the partnership the two of you have. School, work, friends, etc. take unhealthy amounts of time away from the relationship. They become false idols within your relationship. This leads you to become angry with your partner. You begin to resent his or her relationships outside of the one the two of you have.
This is similar to God’s anger with the people and why God sends these prophets. The prophets are sent to the people to remind them of their relationship with God. This is the suffering of God. God is suffering because the people have forgotten their relationship with God. God does not want to be without you.
Suffering then is not something you can control. It comes from outside of you. From loss. You do not choose to suffer. Instead you can choose to give something up. In this suffering we can understand God better. In suffering we repent and make right our relationship with God. In the suffering of the passion Christ reconciled us, you, me, your parents, your children, your neighbors, strangers and yes, your enemies, all of these reconciled to God! We are all in relationship with God; we are still guilty of forgetting this.
Enter fasting. The forty days of Lent are reminiscent of the forty hours between the death of Christ and his resurrection. This is a time when we are without God. Christ is dead. God has died. We suffer this death, this separation from God. God was with us in Immanuel. Now that Christ, Immanuel, is dead, this seems to no longer be the case.
Our fasting reminds us of this time when God was gone. When the God, who suffered for us, for relationship with us, died. Remember, suffering is from loss of relationship God was with us. God showed signs of mercy and healing to us when Jesus walked upon the earth. In Jesus we finally understand who God is. We understand what God does for us. We know the pure love of God. God’s Loving Kindness, Hessed, is made known.
The prophet Jonah knows this God too. God loves the people. Not just Israel, but all the people of the world. God wants to be in relationship with all of them. God does not want to just love them from afar. God loves the people of Nineveh, the enemies and oppressors of God’s chosen people Israel. God is angry with the Ninevites though. What Nineveh has done or not done is not known. We know just that they do not follow the tenants of the LORD God. We can sense though that Nineveh does not know God.
Jonah would like nothing more than for Nineveh to be destroyed. And when he finally gets to Nineveh, after running to the other end of the Mediterranean, he calls out just for this, for Nineveh to be destroyed.
Read pg. 1267 in Message now.
Something happened that surprises Jonah, and surprises us. Nineveh repents! The people proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth. Everyone did, even the king! The king came down from his throne, did you get that? He came down from his throne and sat in the dirt. Then he commanded that the fast should continue and that they should not drink any water either. And in this decree he includes the animals! Everyone must ‘cry for help’ to God, that is everyone must pray to God, hoping that perhaps with their change in life that God will change God’s mind.
God, long in suffering for Nineveh saw how Nineveh was now suffering for God. God saw that the people loved God and that the people knew that they had done wrong. God loving the people of Nineveh repents and does not do what God had planned to do. Yes, God repents! God changed God’s mind because of what the people of Nineveh did.
With the act of fasting Nineveh gains an understanding of suffering. They, as a community, begin to understand their relationship with God. As we fast during Lent, as we go without, we understand better the suffering of God and our relationship with God grows stronger.
The Lenten discipline of fasting is not only for lent. It is also for whole of the year. After all, God does not stop suffering for us after Easter. Why should we suffer for God only during Lent? Why should we in our warm homes, with our full stomachs, fast only during Lent? There are people throughout the world, throughout the country, throughout the state, throughout the city who fast, not because they can, but because they must. Fasting helps us to understand these people, these neighbors of ours. Suffering for God and for others is one of the things we are called to in Christ.
Remember in suffering is hope. Hope that the world will be reconciled to the reign of God. The people of Nineveh were reconciled to God. And the king of Nineveh was reconciled to God when he came down from his throne. Again I ask, how is the fast going?
Amen.