people - food =

** just added a couple of concluding paragraphs and a footnote, folks **

My pastor has asked Pato (my coworker) and I to think through fasting. There's a John Piper book on the subject but I wasn't able to track down a copy so I just went ahead and did a simple search for places where the word appears. Here's what I'm thinking.

In the Old Testament fasting...

• is almost always spontaneous (not preordained, although the critical, organised annual fast on the Day of Atonement is the clear exception to this);
• can happen at a leader's command (eg 2 Cr 20:3), because of the choice of an individual (eg Ps 69:10) and occasionally a smaller group (1 Sam 31:13);
• always sees people humbling themselves before God. This one's deserving of some quotes - "There, by the Ahava Canal, I proclaimed a fast, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask him for a safe journey for us and our children, with all our possessions." (Ezra 8:21); "‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’ . . . . You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves?" (Is 58:3, 4-5); "Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth and humbled myself with fasting." (Ps 35:13).
• This 'humbling' almost always involves three things: sorrow, distress and mourning; turning back to God (sometimes explicitly because of sin); and a specific petition. Indeed sorrow and repentence are expressed, sincerely, in the urgent hope that God might intervene in their plight (eg an advancing army in 2 Chronicles 20, protection while travelling a dangerous road in Ezra 8, healing in Joel 1 & 2). There is perhaps only one occasion in which people fast to give expression to sorrow alone - at the death of king Saul and his sons (1 Sam 31).
• This humbling of self isn't a mechanical religious rite; it needs to be sincere and see expression in the rest of your life (Is 58).
• The Old Testament ends with a mysteriously positive vision for fasting, with the Lord declaring, "The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months will become joyful and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah.” (Zech 8:19) 

In the New Testament, the negativity of fasting remains but we also see the positive vision with which the Old Testament ended playing out. Here, fasting is...

• assumed ("When you fast..." Mt 6:16);
• supposed to be practised individually and secretly (Mt 6:17-18),
• although church leaders fast as a group (perhaps as a normal practice - Acts 13:2 - and certainly when 'committing new leaders to the Lord' - Acts 13:3, 14:23);
• equated with mourning (by Jesus, Mt 9:15),
• but also practised positively by the church leaders* (above) and Anna (Lk 2:36-37). Perhaps in these godly people's practice we see something of the joyful fasting spoken of in Zechariah. Perhaps for them, fasting was more an expression of humility before God and maybe also associated with bringing petitions before him - although they would of course have expressed sorrow and repentence at their sin.

And then we have the words of Jesus at Satan's temptation, spoken after having fasted for forty days and forty nights (like Moses before him)! To my mind, his rebuttal takes the practice of fasting in something of a new direction. Quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, he says "Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Mt 4:2). Whatever the reasons for his fast, clearly Jesus was clearly not using it to mourn his sin or to turn back to his Father. Nor does it seem to have been associated with a specific petition. His words indicate that the act of going without food can show that there is something more important than eating, than being alive - the word of God. Here then, the focus is less on yourself in your sorrow and humility and need for physical care (although remember that earlier Jesus equated fasting with mourning), and more on God in your dependence on him, for physical care and in every way. 

However - and it's a sizeable however - the fact that fasting is nowhere mentioned in all the practical instruction of the New Testament's letters indicates that, even if Jesus' followers envisaged or assumed its continuation, they did not see it as an especially important aspect of the Christian life. 

So it seems to me fasting is a natural thing for a Christian to do, principally as a way of humbling yourself before God and expressing your utter dependence on him and his Word, and perhaps also as a way of expressing repentence and sorrow for sin and when presenting specific petitions. It's a good thing to do from time-to-time, at your own discretion and as a private thing between you and God (unless you're a church leader commisioning new leaders... and perhaps also regularly). But though it is good, it's not essential, and it's not that you're sinning or that you can't attain the same spiritual heights if you never practise it - it's not in the same category as prayer. So it's a personal thing, but, heck, why not!


* This practice, however regular or irregular it was, happened after Jesus was restored to the church leaders and the disciple Paul and after they had received the gift of the Holy Spirit, God's presence with them (John 14:16-18). This must mean that they did not understand Jesus as indicating (when he said "The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast" Mt 9:15) that fasting was only to be practised for the three days in which he was dead (although it certainly applied then). Whether the mourning aspect so intrinsic to fasting in the Old Testament carried on after Jesus' resurrection or whether it was now to be wholly/largely positive is, however, unclear to me...