The real lesson of fasting: Some thoughts for the first Sunday of Lent

“He fasted for forty days and for forty nights,

and afterwards He was hungry.”

--Matthew 4: 1-11

 

As another Lent begins, it is good to revisit the idea of fasting, sacrifice and penance.  Now, before we anyone starts objecting that Lent is not just about fasting, let me just say: You're right. It is also about prayer and alms giving (charity).   But the issue that most of us have more trouble with is this idea of fasting –of giving up something: food, drink, abstaining from some pleasure. Whatever it is we might be considering giving up, in the back of our head is often the nagging question: What’s the point?  Can’t I just enjoy my chocolate and be more charitable? Give money to a homeless person and eat a Snickers? Visit my sick neighbor and then sip on a root-beer float?  Would that make me any good? Any less holy?

 

My thought is that yes, you can enjoy root beer and popcorn and chocolate and favorite TV shows and still be a good person, even a holy one.  That isn’t the point of Lent—I don’t think.  I think the real point of our Lenten abstinence is not about the giving up, but about the wanting. The appetite. I have come to think that the real lesson of Lent and fasting has less to do with the value of abstaining and more to do with the importance of redirecting or refocusing my appetite, so to speak. 

 

I don’t think we are asked to give things up because they are necessarily bad for us; for instance, someone who enjoys chocolate and pork chops is not less holy than someone who lives on locust and honey—at least not based on diet alone.  As one of our local priests likes to say: Lent is not about losing weight and fasting is not a diet plan.   

 

I have begun to think that our appetites, our hungers, our desires are much more important than we might think. As the prophet Amos reminds the wayward Israelites: “Prepare to meet your God.” (cf Amos 4:12)  But who is our God?  In the book of Amos, Israel’s god is her pocketbook, her belly, her comfort. The people even pray for the end of their Sabbath so they can go back to cheating one another, and buy and sell the poor for a few shekels or a pair of sandals!  When the prophet tells them to prepare to meet your God, to my ear it sounds more like a threat than an invitation.  And now I can’t help but ponder: who is my God?  Who am I preparing to meet?

 

And isn’t that what our whole life is about?  Preparing to meet our God.  But who are we preparing to meet?  If I am all filled up with Cheetos and pickles and mayonnaise sandwiches,  I’m not going to be hungry for the kale and spinach salad my wife made for dinner.  And if all I ever eat is junk food and peanut butter crackers, how will I ever learn that I might actually like kale and spinach and cauliflower and even –dare I say… Brussel sprouts!

 

Well—the same goes for our soul.  If we fill it with momentary pleasures and self-interest and self-satisfaction, never allowing ourselves to become hungry for something more, something beyond our own whims and wants—something eternal—then who are we preparing ourselves to meet? Who is our god?

 

Fasting asks us to spend some time with that want, with the feeling of hungering for something that we cannot have, desiring something more.  It makes an opening in our soul, and gives us a chance to discover that no matter how many potato chips we eat or episodes of Midsomer Murders we binge, we will never be truly satisfied.  We will always want something more.  And that wanting of that something more—I think that is the real lesson of the Lenten fast. To –as Jesus did—separate ourselves from the ordinary and from the false security of a full belly and a distracted brain, and to spend some time wanting something more.   When we die and a voice whispers to us, Prepare to meet your God… who will you want to meet?

 

 One more note: In the Gospel for today with its story of the temptations in the desert, there is a very important lesson for all who fast. Anyone who has ever tried to fast from a habit or some pleasure (or some favorite food) knows that it doesn’t take 40 days and 40 nights for the temptations to begin.  The temptation to stop fasting, to just go ahead and do or eat that thing we are fasting from—just this one time.  The temptation to rationalize—just this once! And, the promise that if you give in this time, everything will be fixed. You’ll never be hungry again. But how does Jesus react to all these temptations? By turning to God. Reminding us: Human beings live not by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. He redirects His appetite, focuses His desire on the eternal and lasting good of God, the Father. His Father. 

 

Lent isn’t a time to deny the goodness of bread, but instead a time to remind ourselves: there is something so much better waiting for us. All we have to do is learn to want it.

 

 

Making Straight Paths (part 2) --Where does your path lead?

“A voice of one crying in the wilderness:

Prepare a way for the Lord.

Make his paths straight.”

John 1:23

 

It is almost a week after Christmas and I am still thinking about the Advent readings, especially this idea of making a straight path.  As my family might tell you, I am quite easily distracted, moved off task, redirected even.  My paths tend to be anything but straight—even when I drive!  I remember my first car, a white 1978 Honda Civic with a stick shift, no AC and only AM radio.  I remember how that car taught me the importance of shade.  And the blessedness of trees.  I cannot count how many times I had to answer the question: Why are you going this way? The freeway is faster. And my answer was always:  Memorial Drive is shadier—and you get to drive through the park.

 

I say this for two reasons; first, because I want to be honest. I am not someone normally concerned with making straight paths, nor innately inclined in that direct direction either.  However, as I have grown older and as life has become more complicated, I find that –especially when it comes to driving—that I tend to not take as much delight in detours as I once did.  I have a tendency these days to try and get home asap.  And stay there, if possible. And second, because I am about to take a detour.

 

It was the Sunday before Christmas, and I was driving some groceries over to one of my daughters (at UH).  Of course, our current car has air conditioning and even has one of those USB things that lets you listen to music off a thumb drive.  Which means I can download old Jack Benny Radio Shows and listen to them while I drive.  Some people listen to podcasts, others audiobooks.  I listen to 1940s radio shows.  Did you notice I just took a little detour? An aside?  Anyway, back to my story.  I was out delivering groceries, and hoping (as always) to get back home ASAP. I had important stuff on the agenda: plans to watch a movie with my wife and maybe even take a nap… I was making a straight path right back to my couch! I’m all about grabbing that gusto wherever I can! 

 

But the Lord had other plans. Heading back home, suddenly the traffic slowed, and then stopped and then inched forward bit by bit.  There was one of the many Houston traffic closures happening that weekend.  A bridge or something was being repaired and all the I-10 west traffic was being rerouted.  We had to stay on 45 headed north.  I wasn’t too frustrated because I was enjoying a jazzy number by Phil Harris’s orchestra, and we used to live in the Heights; I knew I could pretty easily find my alternate route home.  I would just exit North Main and drop by the old Shipley’s for a doughnut and some coffee and be home in no time.  I thought.

 

Apparently, everyone else did, too.  The North main exit was backed up onto the freeway, so I kept going.  I think I took the next exit—Patton?  Anyway, I got off, turned left and knew if I just kept going straight I would come to something I recognized.  So there I was, trying to make a straight path when out of the corner of my eye I saw someone I recognized—or thought I did. It was a friend who died about 2 years before. I slowed down and looked back, knowing it couldn’t be him and realized it was a homeless man. Thin, ragged, long hair, long beard, walking half bent over through a parking lot. I think I was still on Patton.  Just a block or two from the freeway.  I saw him and thought –how strange that he had looked just like our friend Forrest, and yet on second glance not at all.  And in the rearview mirror I thought I saw him lean against a wall and then kind of slump to the ground. 

 

It was a strange thing to see, but I was on my way home and actually in a bit of a hurry now with all the detours. I wanted to get home to that movie and that nap. So, I kept going. Kept trying to make that straight path… And then I thought of Forrest again, and how he would care for people when they were down on their luck. How many times he even came to take care of me and my family when we were feeling down on our luck.  How he would go out of his way to help just about anyone.  And suddenly I found myself turning around.

 

Another detour?  Perhaps, but I drove back and there the man was sitting on the pavement just outside the store, huddled up, with his coat pulled closed and his knees pulled up near his chest, his head slouched over.

 

I got out of my car and walked over to him.  Asked if he needed anything. Some money? He looked up with the eyes of the lost, as if the last thing he expected to see was someone offering help.  I got down on one knee beside him and we talked for a few minutes.  His name is Adolph.  And he wanted to know what church I went to.  He then told me about a church over by Mattress Mack’s store.  How kind they were to him when his brother died. How they helped him and took such good care of his brother for him.  I don’t know how long we talked, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. At some point he seemed done. His eyes looked away, exhausted, as if he needed to rest.  I gave him what money I had, and he looked at it like it was something strange and unexpected.  Before I left, I told him I would pray for him and asked him to pray for me. 

 

I got back in my car and drifted through the Heights toward Studewood and back to I-10, thinking about Adolph and about how I almost drove right past him.  There is that famous scene in John’s Gospel where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well.  He asks her for a drink of water. She is surprised that a Jewish man would ask help from a Samaritan woman. But He says to her: If you only knew what was being offered you… (cf. 4:10) That phrase, offered you, seems to me quite important.  What was it that was being offered to her?  A thirsty man was asking her for water... He needed a drink and had no way of getting it. She was being offered a chance to help someone. To serve them.  In fact, she was being offered a chance to serve God…  Driving home I realized that in my hurry to get back home to my couch and TV, I almost missed that chance myself.  

 

Making a straight path doesn’t mean making an easy one, or making the quickest one.  As St. Teresa of Avila once said, “God writes straight with crooked lines.”  In my efforts to make a straight path, I need to remember that. What looks crooked to me, may be leading me straight to where I need to be.  And so, the question I am now asking myself is this:  Where does my straight path lead?  Does it lead straight back to the couch, or does it make room for a detour that might just become a blessing?    

A reflection on intentions and babies for the 4th Sunday of Advent

“…such was his intention…”

--Matthew 1:18-24

 

We all have intentions, our hopes, our dreams, our plans for the day, for life—even for the holidays.  Maybe we intend to get up earlier, to start the day with a healthy breakfast, to eat more broccoli, to do core exercises every day before heading off to work…  When I was in 4^th grade a teacher asked me what I planned to do with my life.  I told her I wanted to be a singer!  My intention was to be another Donovan… or maybe another Davy Jones, even another John Sebastian.  Later in high school, hoping to impress a young lady, I tried singing for her.  She listened a moment, then asked (with some concern), “Does it hurt when you do that?”   My singing aspirations have been much more private ever since.

 

As the saying goes: If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. Or sing to your girlfriend.

 

In the Gospel for the 4^th Sunday of Advent, we hear of Joseph and his plans, his intentions.  Oddly enough, this story begins with Joseph original plans crumbling to pieces.  He was planning to get married but, right in the first verse he discovers that his bride has become pregnant and the baby isn’t his.  One can imagine his shock and probable disappointment, however, instead of lashing out or seeking justice, he comes up with another plan. It would seem that he still has some feeling for Mary, and so he plans to spare her any public scene. He intends to divorce her quietly, and protect her from the shame and possible consequences of being accused of adultery, which (at that time) might have included being dragged to the city gates and stoned to death. 

 

Joseph’s intentions were honorable, they were good, they were even merciful, and yet they were not God’s plan, not God’s intention.  God’s intention was to put a baby in Joseph’s house.  Think about that.  And maybe ask yourself: In some way, isn’t that the real point of Christmas?  To let a baby into our house, into our heart, into our life…

 

Consider, what happens when a baby comes into the house?  Speaking from experience, everything changes.  Sleep schedules, diets, volume levels, washing schedules, and even personal hygiene.   The baby makes demands on our time, our energy, our attention, our budget, our love.  A baby demands that we change our expectations, our intentions, our life for it.  Even our TV schedule! I never would have imagined a life that included Barney the Dinosaur and Teletubbies. We have to humble ourselves and do things we never wanted to imagine ourselves doing; i.e. listening to Wee Sing cassettes in the car, or changing a diaper on a city bus, or cleaning up an unexpected mess, and trying to figure out which end it came out of!!

 

A baby demands that we put our own needs and desires aside, for its sake, for its care. That we lay down our life for the sake of another.  And strangely enough, it is the baby that teaches us that this isn’t a curse, this isn’t an agony we want to avoid.  What we learn by caring for a baby, is that the more we sacrifice for a child, the deeper we love it; the more we give ourselves away to their care and their needs, their smiles and their laughter, their peace and their delight, the more we are filled with such things ourselves.

 

Some of my most blessed memories are of waking at 3 in the morning to walk with one of my daughters.  I was exhausted. Often, I was confused. My intention had been to get at least a few hours of sleep, but instead I would hear the cry, or the call from down the hallway and I would climb out of bed—sometimes a little grouchy—but always (in the end) renewed by the chance to comfort their need; in fact, by the gift of their need.  And through that gift,  I was fulfilled. Because somewhere in all that middle of the night walking and swaying and carrying of a baby, I began again to sing.  I became—at least for a time—the singer I had always wanted to be. Walking the floor, or even the neighborhood streets, singing old Bob Dylan songs or folk songs, hobo songs, and especially, “Goodnight Irene.” In my three daughters I had a very appreciative, and a very captive, audience for about 8-9 years—about as long as the Beatles lasted.  I can still remember a time when one of them, by that point a toddler, said to her mother, “No.  Let Daddy sing.  I like it when Daddy sings…”

 

This Christmas, are you ready to let your life be upended? All your plans and intentions disrupted, maybe even utterly and completely changed?  This Christmas are you ready to let a baby into your house? Your heart?  Your life?  This Christmas, don’t just focus on the gift wrapping and the Christmas lights, the traditions and the trappings of the holiday.  This Christmas, take a little time to focus on the baby. Imagine it.  God took flesh and became not a king or a prince or a mighty hero, but a helpless baby, crying in a manger, a baby became completely and utterly dependent on the humans He had created.  Think about that as your Christmas gift… This baby needed feeding, cleaning, needed to be held and to be comforted.  And all He asked was that Mary and Joseph set aside their own plans, their own expectations and intentions and let themselves be changed, blessed and fulfilled beyond their imagining, by the love of a child.

 

This Christmas, let a baby come into your life. 

 

It will change everything.