Every year on Ash Wednesday this day I am struck by the strange contradiction that we read the Gospel lesson in which Jesus tells us not to disfigure our faces when we fast, and then we disfigure our faces with ashes to begin our Lenten fast.
One thing we need to bear in mind, though, as we remember Jesus’ words and prepare ourselves for a holy Lent, and that is that Jesus’ teaching is not about actions, it is about motives. The problem hewants to address, after all, is not fasting, but making a show of it – trying to impress others by a visible display of holiness. “Look at me! I’m fasting and you’re not.”
This was certainly not the problem when our ancestors created the ashes ritual in around the eighth century to mark the beginning of Lent. For them, the ashes on the forehead were a sign of solidarity, not of being set apart, because, after all, everyone in their community, indeed, everyone in the world they knew was fasting.
But things are as different for us now from that time as the eighth century was different from Jesus’ day. Lenten fasting is seldom practiced anymore, even among those who do bear the ashen cross on their forehead, and Ash Wednesday and Lent are not a part of the tradition of every Christian denomination. Without a clear, common practice, you must decide for yourself how to live into Jesus’ teaching. Wash the ashes off when you leave church, or wear them as a personal reminder, or even as an evangelical tool – for the ashes can be a spur not to boasting, but to real conversation about your faith with other people.
Whatever you decide to do, though, don’t forget the fast. Jesus is all for fasting as a spiritual discipline as long as it is that, and not an exercise in self-aggrandizement. So why do we fast? Lent, we are told in the Book of Common Prayer, is a time set aside for self-examination and repentance, prayer, fasting and self-denial, and reading and meditating on scripture. At the time Christians began to observe Lent, it was one fast in a year-long cycle of fasting and feasting – the greatest fast, to be sure, in preparation for the greatest feast, but fasting was once a regular part of people’s lives, and understood to be part of the rhythm of the year, the self discipline that enabled us to fully enjoy the feasts that followed.
Nowadays, not only is fasting unusual, and self-denial counter-cultural, but neither do we celebrate the feasts as thoroughly as our ancestors did. Western Christians tend to celebrate New Years’ Eve and Super Bowl Sunday with more abandon than we celebrate Easter, and we lack the stamina to keep up the Easter celebration for the entire fifty days.
So let me say a couple of things about fasting. Our ancestors knew that there were lots of degrees of fasting, and they all had value. They observed meat fasts, cheese fasts, oil fasts – starvation, you see, wasn’t the goal. In fasting, you give up something you are entitled to enjoy, to remind yourself that both the enjoyment and the thing you enjoy are gifts from God, and to help you enjoy it more fully when the fast is over.
So, two things to bear in mind as you construct a Lenten discipline for yourself this year. On the one hand, think about giving up, for a while, something that you want to appreciate more fully as a gift from God – something you take for granted, say, or something you want to better understand how it fits in your life. It could be food, to be sure, but it could also be something you do – driving, or chat-ting, or sleeping in. And you don’t have to give it up altogether – just reconsider and reshape its place in your life.
And second, remember that we fast from things that we are entitled to the free enjoyment of. So take some time this Lent to consider whether all of the things you have the free enjoyment of you are actually entitled to enjoy. And if you discover that in some ways you are taking more than your share, or enjoying things the enjoyment of which belongs by right to others, then maybe, as you leave behind your Lenten discipline for the richness of the Easter celebration, you might consider giving those unmerited pleasures up for Easter so that others may enjoy them fully.