Spiritual Disciplines: Fasting

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:9-15:

On this first Sunday of Lent, we are beginning a new worship series looking at some of the spiritual disciplines. And we are doing so because the season of Lent is a time of the year in which people often take on one of the disciplines, or at least have greater interest in them than at other times. That is especially true with the first spiritual discipline that we are going to discuss, and that is fasting. Now just a little background, normally when we hear the word discipline today, we think of punishment for someone who has done something wrong, especially for children. But that is not the only definition of that word. Another definition is that of a rule, or series of rules, that govern conduct or activity or operation, which is why the United Methodist Church has a book of discipline. But the definition that better applies here is training that molds, corrects or perfects. And so athletes, for example, have certain disciplines that they undergo in order to work to get better or maintain themselves. This can be found in other areas as well, including in academic disciplines, another meaning of the word, but for us as Christians it is the word that comes before that describes our disciplines and that is that they are spiritual.

There is not a set list of the spiritual disciplines, or maybe a better way to say that is there is not an exhaustive list. Any activity that helps you focus your life in Christ, that helps you become more Christ-centered as our core values call for, or that helps you deepen your faith or relationship with God, could be a spiritual discipline. But there are some disciplines that most people talk about. Some of them include prayer and service, which we are not going to talk about in this series because we just talked about them in our series on our core values. But, in what is probably the best book on the spiritual disciplines, called Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, who is a Quaker and was born in New Mexico, he lists 12 disciplines, four of which we are going to discuss, fasting, confession, scripture reading and worship and then we’re going to look at another that he doesn’t cover, but which is also crucial to a deepened spiritual life and that is giving, which I know you are all looking forward to. But, again, the purpose of all of the activities is to help us grow in our faith and our relationship with God by being intentional, by disciplining ourselves to a certain activity. We do not do these so we can check off some box, or so that we can brag about it, so that it becomes a rote law, which can lead to spiritual death. We practice the disciplines so we can grow and become freer in our faith and relationship with God.

When You Fast...

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The texts were Isaiah 58:1-9a and Mark 1:9-15:

Today we begin a new sermon series which will take us through the season of Lent in which we are going to be looking at spiritual disciplines.  We are only going to be looking at five of all of the spiritual disciplines, but all of these practices’ purposes are to help us strengthen our faith and to deepen our relationship with God.  But, a caution to always keep in mind is that many of them, or maybe even all of them, can be practiced without putting God first, of merely being an outward sign without signifying any inward change, which is why God is chastising the Israelites in the passage we just heard from Isaiah.  One of idea to keep in mind is about the word discipline.  Most of us don’t really like the word discipline, even if it has the word spiritual in front of it, or maybe especially if it has the word spiritual in front of it.  When we hear the word discipline what do we normally think of? (punishment…)   While that is certainly part of the meaning of the word, there is more to it than that.  There is an area of knowledge, especially in higher education, so I could say that theology is one of the oldest disciplines and then there is activities or exercises done, usually following a set of rules, that allow us to increase our skill in something, which is more the discipline we are thinking of here.  That’s what athletes do when they begin practicing.

If you want to become a world class athlete, you can’t just practice your craft for 20 minutes every other day or so.  It has to be something which you do for long periods of time every day, which means you have to choose what other things you are going to eliminate from your life and you take on the discipline in your life of doing what is necessary in order to reach your goal or to attain a certain level of mastery in what you are doing.  So what the spiritual disciplines do is very similar.  They are a set of practices to help us achieve our goal, and hopefully we have such a goal, of deepening our faith, of becoming better in what we do and what we know about our faith, and most importantly of coming into better communion with God.  And so today we begin with our first spiritual discipline and it is the one that most people think of for Lent and that is fasting.