Fasting for Lent

We have failed to love our neighbors, their offences to forgive,

have not listened to their troubles, nor have cared just how they live,

we are jealous, proud, impatient, loving overmuch our things;

may the yielding of our failings be our Lenten offering.

--Sunday's Palms are Wednesday's Ashes

Singing this hymn and listening to Rev. Tim Stevens preach at the Ash Wednesday service at Vail Chapel on the campus of Northwestern University last night made me think about the discipline(s) I've chosen to drop/take on for this season of Lent. I have chosen to fast from TV (netflix, hulu, Bones in particular) as I have been noticeably distracted by these things for the past year (or more). Watching TV has made me laugh, cry, and feel, and I know those are good things, but this practice has also distanced me emotionally from the people I am around and the call God has placed in my life - to love and listen and grow with these people. I has also allowed myself to be consumed in the characters of many television stories and created for myself a false reality. This may sound obsessive, and probably it is, but it is also true and honest and makes me feel vulnerable. So I confess this sin of disengagement with the world that God has created, and I repent of my self-serving, self-denying sin. 

My second Lenten practice will be a weekly fast - from Monday evening to Tuesday evening. This is the discipline that really made me think last night. I have experienced fasting as a means of grace and God has been deeply present with me in times of intentional fasting. I'm also involved in many things at Garrett-Evangelical about which I want to be in deep prayer and meditation and, rationally speaking, I thought fasting would be an appropriate addition to these practices and this work. So, I settled upon a weekly fast for Lent. But, last night, I sang these words, and I hear Tim preach about fasting, and I remembered Rev. Cynthia Wilson's prayer from earlier in the day, when she prayed that the members of the Garrett-Evangelical Racial and Cultural Healing Task Force might decrease so that God might increase in us and in our work.  At first, I was affirmed in my choice, but then this thought came to me: I can fast, and it can be a discipline for me, because I live in a place with unfathomable abundance. This discipline is a discipline, a sacrifice, because of the resources I have available to me. And that isn't what fasting is at all. Fasting without prayer, service, sacrifice of my whole self is, as the lyrics above remind us, pride, jealousy, impatience. My real discipline, my real sacrifice for this Lenten season is to offer up these failings, draw close to God, and make myself vulnerable to the call and work God reveals to me.

I am still going to fast, Monday evening to Tuesday evening. To pray, to listen, to repent, to study, to serve, and to remember vividly, honestly, and carefully how others live - faithfully, sacrificially, oppressed, hungry, abundantly, excessively, thoughtlessly, forgiven.

Almighty and everlasting God, maker of every thing,
you care for your creation with mercy and steadfast love,
you forgive our since and raise us from the dust of death.
Be gracious to us as we stray from your ways.
By your power and grace,
create in us clean hearts,
bring us into your love,
that we may repent of our sins,
return to you,
and lead lives worthy of your calling to love, justice, and mercy;
Through Jesus Christ you Son,
who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, here, now, and forevermore. Amen