“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
(Matthew 6:16-18)
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I fasted once. Many people find that hard to believe, but I really did. It was many years ago and it was Ash Wednesday. I thought it would be a very meaningful thing to kick off Lent with a fast. So I committed myself to 24 hours with only water or juice, but no solid food. I had great hopes and expectations. There would be revelations from God, I thought. Perhaps the secrets of the universe would be revealed. Maybe I’d even learn where Jimmy Hoffa was buried, or whether Oswald acted alone, or the truth about Area 51! Surely, at least, my spirituality would go through the roof, and my connection with God would be stronger than ever. I’d be a better Christian for the experience. You know what? All I actually got out of the experience was extreme hunger, so at exactly midnight - when Ash Wednesday was officially over - I had a bit of a pig-out. It was a disappointing experience. There are people who get a lot out of fasting. I don’t want to dismiss the powerful experiences that some people have when they fast. It just didn’t do anything for me - and the reason was probably because I was fasting for all the wrong reasons. I wasn’t doing it to glorify God. Instead, I was seeking something out of it for myself. The experience I was going to get was more important to me than simply fasting for the sake and glory of God, and if you’re doing something mostly for yourself rather than for God, then you’re probably going to end up disappointed. Or, at the very least, you’re going to find that God isn’t going to reach out to you just to satisfy your own ego by patting you on the back and telling you that you’ve done a wonderful thing. We do have to discover our own spiritual practices and traditions and rituals, and then we have to commit ourselves to following them with the goal of glorifying God rather than just making ourselves feel good about ourselves.
In today’s passage, Jesus was speaking about fasting, but fasting wasn’t really the point of the passage we just read from Matthew - fasting was only an example of a larger issue. Jesus used fasting as an example of something that had become so commonplace (at least among certain groups) that it had been emptied of its power and had become essentially an empty religious ritual, of no real value to those who were engaging in it. Jesus had nothing against fasting. At one point in his ministry he even said that some demons could only be cast out of people through “prayer and fasting,” but it’s interesting to note that as far as we know, Jesus himself never fasted (except in the wilderness after his baptism when there was no food, and therefore no choice.) Neither did Jesus’ disciples ever fast as far as we know. In fact, they were criticized at one point by some of the religious leaders of the day for not fasting. That lack of fasting among Jesus and his disciples suggests to me that Jesus had seen the spiritual emptiness of the fasts that the people were engaging in and so chose to completely disassociate himself from the practice. But it wasn’t just fasting. Jesus was concerned about the way “religion” - the word basically means the set of rituals any people use to worship God as they understand God - was being abused and emptied of its meaning. God’s people in his day were doing a lot of “religious” things - but it really wasn’t having much impact on them, nor were these practices of any practical use to God or to others. They were being done for show.
People in today’s world understand that the same thing is still happening. Some suggest that it’s at least one of the reasons for the decline of the church in recent decades - the growing sense that people who aren’t in church have that what those of us who are in church do when we’re in church doesn’t make much of a difference to us. We’re hypocrites, in other words. I’ve heard that from a lot of unchurched people. What was happening in Jesus’ day was kind of the same thing.
Jesus was criticizing those who had turned their religion into a source of pride that allowed them to look down their noses at those who, as far as they were concerned, didn’t quite measure up. The particular issue in this short passage was fasting. Jesus understood that fasting - as faithful as it might seem - could easily become a way of getting praise from people rather than expressing devotion to God. Fasting in Jesus’ day was certainly a part of showing that you were devoted to God. The Hebrew Scriptures actually required it at certain times and in certain circumstances, and Jesus wasn’t criticizing people for doing what God asked of them. But in this case, the Pharisees (as they often did) were going far beyond anything that God had required of them. Fasting was only required on special occasions - the Pharisees fasted twice a week! The Pharisees would actually disfigure themselves to make it obvious when they were fasting - which God had never asked of his people. Which raises a question: do we get any credit from God for doing that which God has never asked us to do, especially when we do it to impress people rather than to offer devotion to God? The answer, I suspect, is no - and the Pharisees also understood that. Their twice weekly fasts weren’t to please God - they wanted to rub everyone else’s noses into the ground of their own self-righteousness. There was nothing righteous about what they were doing. Truly righteous people are satisfied with being close to God; they don’t need to be constantly reminding others of how close to God they think they are. The Pharisees failed that test miserably. They had come to believe that seeking the approval and admiration of the crowd was the same as showing devotion to God, and truth and faithfulness and humility had been lost in the mix. The only thing that had come to matter to them was whether they could play the role properly.
To some extent we all do that I suppose. There’s a lot of truth in Shakespeare’s words “all the world’s a stage, and all the people merely players.” We all play roles all through our lives. We put the best foot forward, so to speak; we don’t let others see the less noble parts of ourselves. But when we do that in a life of faith - when we try to put on a religious show instead of living a life of devotion to God - then we aren’t going to fool anyone, and we’re certainly not going to fool God. That’s probably why Jesus said not to make our faith a show for others, but just to make it an act of devotion to God.
I’ve entitled my remarks to you today “How To Make A Difference When You’re Hiding.” Yes - I wanted it to sound a little bit humourous, but there’s also a serious point. If Jesus tells us not to be noticed, then how can we make a difference? Surely we’re supposed to make a difference! The gospel is supposed to transform lives, and, then, hopefully, to transform society as individual lives are transformed. So, yes, we’re supposed to make a difference! But how do we do that if we’re not supposed to draw attention to ourselves? I don’t think it’s all that complicated really. Maybe it’s as simple as this: those who are serving God by serving others are supposed to draw attention not to themselves but to those who are being served? Perhaps the result of Christian devotion and service isn’t to glorify individual Christians but is rather to draw attention to the plight of the poor, the hungry, the oppressed and the marginalized and to encourage others to accept the Christian mission of helping as their own. That, after all, is what Jesus understood as true devotion when he said that whatever we do for those he called “the least of these,” we were doing for him.
We don’t need to draw attention to ourselves or make ourselves seem better or holier than we are to be faithful servants of God. Perhaps we just need to faithfully and quietly serve God, and let that be our witness.
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