To Share

For thousands of years, God's people have fasted. There seems to have been more stress on this act of piousness in the Old Testament than in the New, and there have long been debates over whether we should fast or what God requires from us in fasting or what even the point is. 

It seems weird, as we come to the Table, to talk about fasting, but stay with me. 

God's people were, for a time, very serious about their fasts. Think about what you consider during Lent every year, when you decide to abstain from this or that, but on steroids. They were extremely diligent about their fasting. 

When we think about fasting, we think about abstaining, about doing without, about depriving ourselves of something. The intent is that we would then have more energies, not taken up by things of this world, to focus on God. The goal is that instead of being able to meet our own needs, we would feel our needs very deeply and depend on God to fill them for us. 

A hungry people seem to have a deeper connection with the God of manna. Those are just the facts. 

But there's a verse in Isaiah that says that the true heart of fasting is not depriving yourself of food, but sharing your food with others. 

And that...changes everything.

Our individualistic culture has seeped in even to our faith, and many of us come to church...and even come to this Table...thinking about ourselves. About our relationship with God, with Jesus, with the Spirit. About what our own heart has been like lately. About our own spiritual state. About God's goodness for us. About all the things we personally want from Him. 

I'm struck by the image of the dipping of the bread in the Bible's telling of the Last Supper, how Jesus said He would identify His betrayer by dipping the bread into the oil and giving it to the man He was talking about. This tells me that even at this first moment, at the time when Jesus shared this Table with His disciples, it was truly a shared experience - one communal reservoir for dipping. 

So different from the way we approach it today. 

So important, then, the way that Isaiah reminds us that even the things we think we're doing for ourselves are really things that are meant to be shared. The true heart of Christian discipline...is and always has been generosity, hospitality, and service. 

The true heart of fasting is not making yourself hungry, but putting yourself in a position to recognize and minister to the hunger in others. 

The true heart of Communion is not coming to the Table for the body and the blood; it's dipping your portion in the communal cup and making sure this Table isn't just for you - that it's for everybody. 

Come, let us feast together. Come, let us feed the hungry. Come, let us love one another. 

Let us pray.