Listen to the true source of good

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012119.cfm
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 2:18-22

The question of fasting brought to Jesus in today’s gospel assumes a practice that few of us today really chew on. When discussing our relationship to God with our friends the subject of forbearing food (fasting) in order to place ourselves in prayer seldom gets mentioned. Jesus, though, spoke of its place in religious life with expectation. He fasted himself for 40 days! So, the exercise of purposely subsisting over different (some quite lengthy) periods on just bread and water certainly has verifiable certification.

Fasting grafts nicely to the branches of both Jewish and Catholic life, maybe especially for the suffering involved. I’ve read quite a bit about fasting as a fruitful form of discipline in the Evangelical faith life, too. I must confess that I seldom think about or consider implementing a fasting lifestyle. Not just as an option for faith, but not even as an option for losing weight. The last time I purposely missed a meal must’ve been 40 years ago. Obviously, I need to address this subject.

At the root of fasting (notice how food words pop up rather often on this subject) exists some very important realities of God’s presence. The issue isn’t really about fasting, from what I can tell. It’s about how our being, our body and mind (and indeed soul) properly connects to the being of God. 

Consequently, I do not digress when I bring up the overwhelming powers of science and religion and politics and how I can use them to chat about fasting. I’m still within the subject area of fasting. I think so, anyway. The synchrony of these worldly subjects and fasting might help me, and maybe you, to grasp the repentance of sin and preparing for grace that fasting intends to deliver.

Consider the disciplines of science, religion, and politics. Quite often, if not always, we describe these subjects areas as entities, as living things that wield their own swords at what they describe as evil, and subscribe to as good. In fact, though, none of these things are actual powers with physical swords. They are only categories, helpful places to organize stuff that needs to get done, described or discussed. They don’t decide on good and evil. We do. We wield science, religion and politics in our human structures in order to point out boundaries around good and evil. These things don’t create good and evil either. Nor, in fact, do we.

The complication of our lives confuses us into thinking that science progresses, that religion inspires us, and that politics governs us. These things are not entities, though. They are constructs. We’re the sword bearers. The studies and exercise of science, religion and politics help us in our search for truth, engages us in helpful rituals, and helps us to negotiate and compromise. Many of us simply accept the trajectory of the things. We forget, though, that we humans are the ones who bandy about the actual declarations of good and evil. 

All of our decision-making using these three categories of thought, action, and rules relies upon how we relate to the creator, not how we relate to them. We don’t decide upon good from science. We discover what is good from scientific endeavor. There is a difference. We decide upon good really from the source of good, not the presentation of good as we view it.

Most of us are lazy. We don’t project the creator’s presence and graces upon how we live. We project science, religion and politics upon our lives. They’re easier to deal with, even in their corruption. God, who ordered the universe which we study in order to develop science, religion and politics, has been usurped. By us. But we blame the categories that we organized. It’s silly, really. Well, it’s more than that — it’s dangerous.

The decisions about good and evil come from some other place than constructs. They come from our relationship, or lack of one, to God. That’s where fasting can probably help us (especially the never-hungry me). The context and purpose in how I relate to God can be sharpened through elimination of being distracted and being fed. While prayer doesn’t need fasting, the constructs of our existence must often be fasted from in order to pray.

Mostly in our prayers we are concerned with good intentions, not the actual delineation of good from evil. Why? Because we have already identified good and evil, and we struggle to listen to God. We are cleverly addicted to and hooked up within a separate communication network than that proposed and offered by God. Our networks are tied to science, religion and politics, not actually tied to God.

You might think I’m going to begin raving about social media, television, books, radio, newspapers, and the plethora of venues for each — news, features, advertising, promotions, and entertainment. Or, you might expect me to object to the wholesale enveloping of our attention through both print and online versions of all these tools and the constant range of input and output expected by us. Our days are full of keeping up, staying informed, and then replying, analyzing, and ingesting the whole lot.

Well, OK. That is a bit of a rage there, but to concentrate on the rage would simply be misdirection. I’m not opposed to the breadth of tools and communication interfaces that we have at our disposal; even those now supplementing our relationships. Technology improvements, though certainly overwhelming, can be both lovely and exciting. So, no, I have no objection to the existence of new technologies or even the complication of any of their uses. In fact, the presence of so many ways to communicate with each other only increases the importance of separating good from evil. 

Fasting is not calling food and the communication networks of our world evil. Fasting recognizes that we are largely unprepared to be good, and unrepentant to the evils we participate in. 

Jesus’ declaration that his disciples would not fast while he was with them did not say that fasting wasn’t necessary. It simply led him to explain that the network connections of his disciples were now with a new revelation of God — the Son of God made man, and the upcoming indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The religious discipline of the Jewish world defined God and applied both scientific and political rules around good and evil. The religion had usurped God’s position, though, in not being aware of what the Jewish covenants had foretold about Jesus and his coming.

New cloth cannot be sewn onto old cloth. New wine cannot be poured into old wineskins. We live in a world of old cloth and old wineskins. Cloth and wineskins are not bad. They hold the organized and structured truth. Jesus’ life and death and resurrection were not really new. They’d been spoken about in scriptures. The Jews, though like us now, placed religion and science and politics as the entities and not the living God — the supple cloth and wineskin of grace and truth in Jesus and his Holy Spirit.

So, as I understand it, we fast from our worship of entities that are constructs in order to repent and be prepared for Jesus’ coming. Most assuredly we should do so for our own ending of life in this age, redirecting our connections to God and understanding the source of goodness, and then to lift the fog of evil.

It now makes more sense to me, anyway. Food has been calling my name, and that’s just creepy. There’s another who calls me, and I need to answer.