Fasting Labs- Rev. Wallace W. Bubar- March 9,2024
The Rev. Wallace W. Bubar
First Presbyterian Church
The First Sunday in Lent, Year C
March 9, 2025
Fasting Labs
Okay, how boring is this? Every morning, I have the same routine for breakfast. I sit at the table for an hour or so, reading the New York Times, doing the Wordle, the crossword—all that stuff—while enjoying a bowl of Trader Joe’s Maple Pecan Clusters cereal, and a glass of Tropicana Homestyle orange juice. Every day. Same thing. Except for the one day a year when my doctor makes me come in for my annual cholesterol panels.
Fasting labs, they’re called. No food or drink for twelve hours. Twelve whole hours?!
Which means no breakfast that morning. No Maple Pecan Clusters. No orange juice. I just sit there at the table for an hour, reading the newspaper. Still reach over periodically out of habit for the glass that isn’t there, the spoon that isn’t there.
It’s not the worst thing in the world, of course. I know it’s for a good reason. I know I’ll get to have breakfast eventually. But for those couple of hours when I can’t eat—man, I’m grumpy. I’m grouchy. My stomach is growling.
* * *
All of which is to say: I don’t think I would have lasted very long out there with Jesus in the wilderness. He’s out there forty days, in all. Fasting the whole entire time. “He ate nothing at all during those days,” Luke tells us, “and when they were over, he was famished.”
Now it’s not like this was some oversight. Like Jesus had forgotten to pack a lunch before he left. No, this was intentional. And it’s certainly not that Jesus was on some kind of newfangled diet out there. You know, an alternative to the Atkins diet, or the Paleo diet, or the Keto diet. The Jesus diet?
No. According to Scripture, Jesus went out there into the wilderness, not to lose weight, but to gain wisdom.
* * *
Now Jesus grew up in a tradition that had fasting as a spiritual practice. In the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah—those two characters we met last week on the Mount of Transfiguration—both of them fasted in some way. Moses atop Mt. Sinai, where he received the Ten Commandments. Elijah atop Mt. Horeb, where he heard the still, small voice of God.
And by the time of Jesus, fasting was an accepted part of Jewish spirituality. It was just something that good Jews did, like go to the synagogue, read the Torah, keep the Sabbath.
It’s interesting. If you study religion at all, one of the things you notice is that pretty much all of them have some ritual or another that involves a period of fasting. Of giving something up. Going without something. Clearing out space for something else.
Jews still fast on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Muslims, during the month of Ramadan—which is going on right now, as a matter of fact. Catholics fast on the Fridays of Lent. Hindus have certain fast days appointed. Buddhists, too.
It’s an almost universal practice. Except, of course, for us Protestants in modern America. We don’t really fast anymore, if we ever did. Unless we have a cholesterol test in the morning, I suppose.
But I wonder if there’s something that we’re maybe missing out on? Is there some spiritual wisdom at the heart of this practice that all the other faiths have that we could learn from?
And let me be clear. As someone who is well aware that lots of people in our culture suffer from disordered eating in various ways, and that can be extremely dangerous—I am absolutely not saying to go home and start fasting, or restricting what you eat. I don’t want anyone going home and saying, “Well, Pastor Wallace suggested I stop eating for forty days.” No. Absolutely not. Food is fuel. All bodies are good bodies. Period.
* * *
I guess I’m more just wondering what Jesus’ experience out there in the wilderness taught him about life. Or maybe how it helped prepare him in some way for his ministry.
For one thing, I suspect it probably gave him a certain sympathy for—and solidarity with—the poor and hungry. Jesus knew firsthand what it was like to be famished. To go for days on end without anything to eat. And maybe that’s why so much of Jesus’ later ministry is spent feeding the hungry, and instructing his followers to do the same?
I think his time in the desert may also have taught Jesus something about dependence on God. A sense of basic trust that—somehow or another—God would provide for him. Would sustain him throughout this wilderness ordeal.
That was certainly the case with the people of Israel. They had spent not forty days in the wilderness, but forty years in the wilderness. The whole time, there was hardly anything to eat. Except that every morning, God would provide them with manna, remember? Just enough to get them through the day. And after forty years of gathering manna every morning, the people of Israel learned something about relying on God’s providence.
In some way, Jesus is kind of re-enacting that desert experience here. And the lesson he learns will be one that serves him well. After all, even for Jesus, there would be lean times in his life and his ministry when there was no one or nothing else to count on, except for God. But he knew that God would sustain him. God would take care of him when he needed it.
Most importantly, though, I think fasting maybe helped Jesus to acquire a proper perspective on the world, and worldly things. An ability to transcend them. Not that this world is evil. Not at all. God created the world, and called it good. And Jesus was the one, after all, who turned water into wine at that wedding in Cana. Jesus was no gaunt-faced, world-rejecting ascetic. Jesus loved the world, and took delight in the things of this world.
But Jesus also knew that—as important as the body is, as important as the world is—there is still another reality behind it all that must be attuned to. The world cannot be reduced to purely material things. So you shouldn’t let yourself grow too attached to the world.
After all, time would come that Jesus would have to lay down his life for those he loved. And the discipline of sacrifice out in the desert maybe helped prepare him in no small way for the greater sacrifice that lay ahead.
* * *
“One does not live by bread alone,” Jesus says, “but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
If there’s any lesson in this story for us, in our day and time, I think it just might be this one. One does not live by bread alone. Bread is important, to be sure. But life cannot be reduced to purely material reality. Life consists of much more than just meeting physical needs, or pursuing physical pleasures, or striving after material gain. There’s a whole other spiritual reality that pervades the world. We have souls that have to be nourished, as well as our bodies.
Of course, it’s one thing to know this in your head. It’s another thing entirely to know it in your gut, so to speak. Which is where these ancient spiritual practices might be able to help us.
I don’t know if any of you make it a practice to give something up for Lent. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a very Presbyterian thing, I don’t know.
But for whatever it’s worth, maybe think about giving it a try this Lent. Try a little experiment. A fasting lab, if you will. But I’m not talking about food, though, necessarily. But the discipline of giving up something nonessential, in order to focus on the essentials. Whatever that might mean in your own life. Find something that you just can’t live without, and live without it.
Maybe it’s meat on Friday afternoons, like our Catholic friends. Or maybe it’s Netflix on Friday nights. Maybe it’s getting on the Peloton every morning. Maybe it’s that daily New York Times crossword. (No, not that, please!) Maybe it’s social media. (Look, you lived for forty years before Instagram was invented, and you managed somehow. You could make it forty days without Instagram.) It could be just about anything.
Not self-denial for self-denial’s sake. Not to punish yourself for anything you’ve done, or not done. Not because any of those things are evil. But to teach you some very important things about life.
To grow in humility and compassion. To prove that you’re more than just a unit of consumption. To carve out time for cultivating your spiritual side. To keep you from clinging too tightly to things as they are. To practice the discipline of sacrifice, so you’ll be ready when some sacrifice is asked of you. To make you aware of how much you really have, and how little you really need.
Give it a try this Lent, and see what happens. Because as Jesus taught us out in the wilderness, there is some enlightenment that can only come from a place of emptiness. Amen.
