Fasting and Temptation

A Sermon Delivered to All Saints Anglican Church
February 25, 2007

The Old Testament Lesson:
To begin with today, I can’t resist some comments about our Old Testament reading. I know it’s a stretch to apply the Word this way, but the coincidence just seems too rich.

When we began this church, our first Sunday’s Old Testament lesson was Joshua 3:1-17, how the people of Israel crossed over Jordan and into the promised Land? We developed a three point challenge form that passage:

Step out in faith
Step up to the challenge
Step into the promise

Today we read: When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you…This is literally true is it not? This week, we have taken possession of the land that the Lord has given us! Let’s take this reading from Deuteronomy and enact it as a way of showing our gratitude to the Lord for what He has done for us. I’ve asked Tom to place the names of Tom, Walter and Harry in a basket. These names represent the ‘first fruit’ of those whom we believe the Lord will rescue from addictions and other maladies through the ministry at 1410 Charleston Avenue

Read: " When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him…"


Tom comes up from the back with the basket and says, “Today I declare to the LORD your God that we have come into the land that the Lord challenged us to pray for.”

Andy takes the basket from Tom and sets it down before the altar.

The people together say, “ A wandering Aramean…O Lord you have given me....

Andy says: Let us bow before the Lord our God and celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house”

Let us now have the offering of our tithes and gifts.


Sermon:

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit …was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.

Our observance of Lent is based upon this experience of fasting for forty days. But the experience of fasting is basically anathema to our culture. It seems that our whole economy is based on people seeing things and being consumed with getting them. Then when they finally get them, they find that the must-have item does not really satisfy at all.
So for most of us to contemplate fasting in order to gain some kind of spiritual benefit seems odd.

On second thought, does it really though? Fasting is known as an “ascetical” practice, from the Greek word ‘askesis’ or ‘athletic’. If we were to stop and think a moment about an athlete and what he or she does to prepare for their sport - we don’t find it at all unusual that they would practice every day, lift weights, run, and limit their diet. That would be part of their training, which is designed to help them win the championship or the gold medal. As a culture, we admire this and we put the images of these champions on boxes of Wheaties.

But if we, as Christians, were to tell our friends that we are giving up something for Lent, we might feel a little embarrassed and our friends might even comment that we are being too ‘religious’ or too ascetic. This is ‘bad’, to be too ascetical. One shouldn’t have to suffer anything for one’s faith. It should make you feel good all the time. If you have to experience hardship, there’s something wrong with God. …Now admittedly it is appropriate to look askance at those who practice severe discipline of the body for legalistic reasons. Neither fasting nor all-night prayer vigils will save you or cause God to love you any more than he already does.

But just like an Olympic athlete, such as Mary Lou Retin, knows that her father loves her, she also knows that if she’s not stronger, quicker and more adept than her competitors, that she will end up with second place instead of first. Often the difference in performance is only hundredths of a second. So she has to be the very best she can be in order to succeed. Therefore, rigorous training is a must, and athletes are willing to devote years of their lives to the single-minded pursuit of the goal, a goal which is ultimately passing and meaningless in view of eternity.

Contrast the athlete in training with the Christian. We also have a Father that loves us and has saved us, but God offers us a much more worthy goal: Namely, something called ‘Theosis’. Theosis is union with God, becoming “Christified’ as the Orthodox say – a state where Christ has totally penetrated and softened our heart and we become completely at one with God. The whole aim of the Christian life is seen as reaching the goal of being ‘divinized, of sharing the divine nature as Peter says. ( II Peter 1:4).

Part of my Lenten reading this year is the book The Mountain of Silence by Kyiacos Markides. In it he describes his conversations with a monk by the name of Fr. Maximos. Fr. Maxiomos talks with Kyriacos about the heart and how various things can harden the heart:

“Over preoccupation with worldly affairs, focus on physical pleasures, and obsession with wealth are passions that toughen the heart. They rob the power of the heart to channel its energy toward God. We consume vital energy with worldly preoccupation and the allurement of all the things around us. Our attention becomes fragmented, scattered.” (Quoted in The Mountain of Silence, by Kyriacos Markides, pg. 59.)


Psalm 51: 18 says ‘a broken and contrite heart you will not despise. The opposite of having a tough, hard heart is to be broken and contrite, to have your heart crushed by God. While it is true that we can simply pray that God gives us a broken and contrite heart, Fr. Maxiomos reminds us that “it happens through systematic askesis: fasting, ceaseless prayer, all-night vigils, work and the like. Beyond that, and most important, it is when human beings learn how to have patience with the many and unavoidable sorrows that they will encounter in life.” (op cit. pg. 60). Through experiences of grief, human beings have the opportunity to place the stone of their heart into a grinder and turn it into dust. …Through grief they may come out victorious… Life itself is a form of aksesis…

Here then is the rationale for Jesus being led out into the desert. Although he was one with God already, it was in the desert that He continues his identification with the plight of human being and suffering. In the desert, alone with God, he faces the essence of human existence. There is nothing there to distract him from experiencing the presence of God, no physical sensations of pleasure to take him away from direct experience of the Father. In depriving the physical body of food, we gain mastery over it, just as Jesus himself was later to say, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the Father.”

Jesus’ experience of fasting in the desert both strengthened him, and thrust him into the grips of temptation from Satan. Again, it seems odd to us that God in the flesh would have to undergo these privations and temptation from his enemy - unless we remember that the Greek word for temptation, peirasmos also means ‘trial’ or ‘test’. Trials and tests can be from the devil as we see in our lesson today, but they can also be from God in order to help us progress on our spiritual way. (op cit. pg. 62). Temptations are allowed by God in order to help us grow in our spiritual lives. They are a normal part of the Christian life, as the Apostle Paul tells us in I Cor, 10:13: “No temptation (trial) has overtaken you, but such as is common to man, and God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can endure, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you might be able to endure it.”

Here is what we so often miss: God provides the way of escape that we might be able to “endure” it. And the way of escape is God himself and His Word. Notice how Jesus is able to refute Satan so skillfully. When the adversary misquotes or misrepresents God’s word, Jesus comes back with the counter, quoting the right sense of Scripture. Jesus was able to confute Satan because he had spent time memorizing God’s Word, fasting extensively and no doubt going without sleep while praying constantly, perfecting his ascetical practice in order to could defeat his enemy.

Down through the ages people like Anthony of Egypt, Pachomius and Simon the stylite have taken seriously the injunction to be like Christ and have followed him literally into the desert. Others have adopted a monastic life that is ideally constructed to perfect one’s spiritual skills in order to defeat the enemy and attain Theosis. Through a life-time of askesis, a monk or nun is able to so master the body and the passions that he or reaches a state of ‘apathia’ or liberation from egotistical passions, thus becoming a vessel of the Holy Spirit. “Then, whatever that person wishes is given because it is what God actually wishes. The consiousness of the saint is fully attuned with the spirit of God.” (op cit. pg. 81).

Can you imagine living in such a place that what you want is what God actually wants? I confess that this is too awesome for me imagine most of the time. I have seen glimpses of it perhaps in my life, but to reach a place of being so at one with God, that in a sense, God defers to me in my desires… this is mind-blowing.

But this is indeed the goal for every Christian. Our small attempts at askesis during Lent must be seen as the upward striving for this state of Theosis. Only then will it make sense to give up something or take on something for a period of time. Only when we realize that “whatever good or bad things happen to us, they have only one single purpose, to awaken us to the reality of God and help us on the path toward union with Him (pg. 77)…we will be able to truly appreciate the holiness and spiritual profit of the Lenten season. May God give us the grace to understand this, and the will to perform it. Amen.