The solar was setting on a steamy Friday afternoon in Amman, Jordan. The solar broke by the mud within the air, glistening on the buildings and streets beneath, whereas the odor of gasoline wafted by my open window.
I had simply returned from a protracted day of learning and praying on the Qasid Arabic Institute and was making ready a dinner for my Muslim buddies. That they had proven me super hospitality final night time after they served dinner at their residence, and I wasn't positive if I might have the ability to match their degree of affection and sincerity—or stay as much as the culinary requirements my Mexican mom instilled in me. . Greater than something, I wished no matter meals I cooked to precise the fullness of my mutual affection and true brotherhood with them.
In any case, this was the month of Ramadan – the holy month for Muslims, the place they quick from daybreak to nightfall to invoke hospitality, prayers and religious purification. How might I fill my deep gratitude for what I’ve discovered about fasting and prayer from my Muslim buddies with the aromatic love of Christ? “God, please bless these rooster fajitas after a day of fasting and revive a great dialog after prayer time,” I prayed silently.
By God's grace, my selfmade rooster fajitas had been properly acquired, and our group sat across the desk to get pleasure from hours of excellent dialog—concerning the gospel, prayer, and what it's prefer to have honest religion in a world that appears to be transferring towards secularism.
The quick three months I spent in Jordan essentially modified my understanding of God in some ways. And on this holy season of Lent, I started to suppose once more about what it means to quick and pray as a Christian in mild of my expertise of studying the Gospels in a Muslim majority context.
Rising up in a Catholic household, I believed fasting meant not consuming sure meals and praising individuals who dedicated themselves to a strict weight loss program. After changing to Protestantism in highschool, I got here to think about fasting as one thing misguided individuals did to attempt to earn salvation—and I, Alex, a reformed Christian, clearly knew higher than they did. As an alternative, I “fasted” by giving up one thing I loved to indicate God how critical I used to be about fasting. In return, I pray for repentance, for God to invade my inside life and make me holier. I believed in God's sovereignty a lot that I anticipated God to do all of the work.
Wanting again, I notice that I misunderstood the which means and objective of religious practices like fasting and prayer—each as a Catholic and as a Protestant. Fasting will not be about meals; it's not about wanting emaciated like St. Jerome. And it’s also not an act of giving one thing as much as exhibit my holiness. I’ve come to grasp that true fasting and prayer as outlined in Scripture is an act of rise up in opposition to our needs and tendencies to behave.
In Matthew 6, proper after enumerating the beatitudes, Jesus teaches his disciples to not look gloomy whereas fasting—an indication of hypocrisy. Relatively, he says, “if you quick, anoint your head with oil and wash your face, so that it’ll not be apparent to others that you’re fasting, however solely to your Father who’s invisible; and your Father who sees what is completed in secret will repay you” (Matthew 6:17-18).
Fasting will not be for different individuals and even for ourselves. Jesus appears to be telling us that fasting is for God. Those that look gloomy and mark their faces with ash crave the eye of others. Their religiosity is seen. Their pursuit of holiness is motivated by self-gratification and the eye they obtain from others. They consider that they’re spiritually saturated as a result of they really feel full of spiritual energy and devotion. However this isn’t the sort of religiosity God needs.
The prophet Isaiah criticized Israel for in search of God's blessing whereas oppressing others in Isaiah 58 when he declared “within the day of your quick do as you please and exploit all of your employees” (v. 3). He describes Israel crying out for God to acknowledge their fasting as a result of they’d bowed their heads “like a reed” and laid down “rags and ashes” (v. 5).
But Isaiah responds, “You can’t quick as you do as we speak and anticipate your voice to be heard on excessive” (v. 4). As an alternative, God needs to “unfastened the chains of unrighteousness and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and to interrupt each yoke.” He additional exhorts his listeners “to share their meals with the hungry and to present shelter to the poor pilgrim” (verses 6-7). This fasting will lead to Israel's righteousness shining “just like the daybreak” and “therapeutic will quickly seem” (verse 8). Solely this fasting of righteousness will convey glory to God and invoke his blessing, says Isaiah.
Isaiah criticizes these whose stomachs are stuffed with holy energy as a result of they carry out the outward acts of fasting and anticipate God and society to acknowledge their piety. Their fasting grew to become detached to God's needs. Self-preservation, whether or not by fasting and even giving to the poor, has change into a method to additional their very own agendas, resulting in injustice.
The fasting that God requires in Isaiah is one which not solely cares for the oppressed, but additionally ends the systematic exploitation (verse 3c) and violence (verse 4) that oppression perpetuates. As an alternative of merely giving to the poor, Isaiah calls on Israel to “unfastened the chains of unrighteousness” (verse 6a)—by addressing the unjust programs that hold them in poverty.
The Lord needs a quick that rebels in opposition to the systemic breakdown on this planet—a quick that overthrows injustice, frees the oppressed, feeds the hungry, and garments the bare. The objective of fasting will not be a hungry abdomen – however starvation is important. It isn’t strictly a type of self-denial, however the self should be denied. Fasting is an act of rise up the place we are saying no to the issues we need with the intention to create a deep sense of starvation for the proper justice and righteousness of God.
At our age, we’re continually bombarded with calls for on our consideration, distracted by leisure and anxious with our on-line self-image. After we starve the idols of our need, we really feel starvation, stress and restlessness. And so I consider that the fasting that God needs is a fasting that unsettles us on the core of our being, the place we can not really discover relaxation till we join with the thing of our needs: God. Merely put, fasting permits our soul to expertise an insatiable starvation that solely God can really fulfill. The fasting soul, united with God, doesn’t need the reward of others. What’s the reward of others when one is crammed with God?
Fasting entails rebelling in opposition to our capitalist consumerism that tells us we have to eat extra to be completely satisfied. The soul in God doesn’t really feel too burdened by feeding the poor, liberating the oppressed, and combating injustice. As an alternative, the fasting soul feels compelled by God to do these items. The soul that’s in God can not assist however lengthy for God's kingdom right here on earth.
It’s this need for God's kingdom of justice and freedom right here on earth that compels the fasting soul to wish. This compulsion to wish is the results of the strain that the fasting soul reaches between dwelling within the presence of God and dwelling in a damaged world. On the one hand, the fasting soul dwelling with God has a imaginative and prescient of the potential glory of creation accurately within the kingdom of God. Then again, we can not dwell in God's presence perpetually on this life. We should have interaction creation as it’s and never flee to a holy shelter away from the downtrodden and the poor.
Certainly, we see this within the transfiguration, when Peter needs to “construct three shelters” for Jesus, Moses and Elijah, indicating that he needs to stay on this state perpetually (Mt 7:4). Nonetheless, Jesus leads them from the mountain of glory and instantly heals the demon-possessed boy (Mt 7:14-20). Jesus exhibits his disciples that whereas it’s good to see the glory of the Lord, it’s not sufficient to stay in that state perpetually whereas the world wants therapeutic.
On this season of Lent, we must always think about how the fasting soul strikes the believer from need to motion impressed by prayer. After we quick, we practice our soul to concentrate on its true need—God. Fasting souls hungry for idols yearn for God. But within the face of the world's nice want, our first resort is to cry out in prayer. Prayer like fasting will not be for the reward of others. Jesus taught his disciples to “beware that they don’t observe their righteousness earlier than others” as a result of they “can have no reward” from God (Matthew 6:1).
As an alternative, he exhorts his followers to wish privately and with intention as a result of God already is aware of what’s finest earlier than we communicate (Matthew 6:5-8). This creates an fascinating stress. On the one hand, individuals want phrases to wish as a result of with out phrases now we have hassle speaking. But after we use phrases, we are able to fall into the idea that God acts in line with our requirements and restrict God to the ideas our phrases convey. For instance, after we pray for “goodness,” we’re restricted to the English language and our cultural context. A Christian to wish for Hasan in Arabic is a prayer for one thing good, glorious or auspicious.
Then again, Jesus tells us that God is aware of what’s finest even earlier than we communicate. On this sense, God is past the restrictions of human language. God accommodates the intentions in our phrases and is past the restricted linguistic ideas embedded in our phrases. Our thought of what’s “good” can not embrace a God who’s ineffable, exterior of our human thoughts. The fasting soul understands this as a result of the believer has renounced his mental idols and is open to a God who works in methods past our understanding. God is really better than our restricted idea of excellent. And reward God!
Practising fasting and prayer collectively cultivates the soul's need to commune with God and search his kingdom by tangible actions on this world. The fasting soul confesses: “Thy kingdom come, thy might be carried out, as it’s in heaven, so additionally on earth.” Such fasting awakens the will to loosen the bonds of injustice, break the yoke of oppression, feed the hungry, open properties to the homeless and dress the bare. Prayer from a fasting soul typically results in tangible motion. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel mentioned when he returned from Selma with Martin Luther King Jr. and was requested if he discovered time to wish: “I prayed with my ft.”
As I sat in my house that late June night, listening to the fading sounds of prayer echoing from the mosque subsequent door, I used to be hungry. I haven't eaten all day. It was Ramadan and I used to be fasting with my Muslim buddies for instance of my Christian religion. After fasting for a number of days and consuming solely earlier than dawn and after sundown, I grew to become accustomed to feeling bodily hungry.
Throughout that month, nonetheless, I found one other, deeper starvation – a religious starvation for God's kingdom to be manifested in my life and the lives of these round me. I wished to see the gospel for the poor and oppressed in motion: for the person along with his donkey-drawn cart of gas tanks to be free of his poverty, for my refugee buddies to discover a secure and everlasting residence, and for town the place I lived to flourish. I longed for the universe to realize the concord it finds in its Creator.
And although we ate, I left hungry. Although we talked late into the night time, I felt unhappy. Fasting woke up a brand new perspective that was not glad with data or materials achieve. After fasting throughout Ramadan, I started to comprehend the holy discontent one feels when confronted with a world that’s struggling and in want of individuals radically remodeled by God.
I left Jordan a very long time in the past. I’ve a beautiful household, a job that’s fulfilling and significant, and I couldn't ask for extra. But within the quiet moments of the day, I discover my soul restlessly craving for fasting. On this season of Lent and Ramadan, allow us to quick to make clear our soul's eager for God. Let this readability immediate you to wish. And let these prayers stir you to motion.
Alexander Massad is Assistant Professor of World Religions at Wheaton School.