Swimming in Egypt

Isaiah 58.1-9a

Matthew 9.14-17

Preached Canberra Baptist Church 4th February 2007

As we approach Lent and then move through Lent toward Easter, we will be exploring in our preaching spiritual practices than enhance and support our faith. Lenten observances have not been a traditional aspect of Baptist practice although the Baptist World Alliance is offering studies that engage with elements of Lenten disciplines: it is a part of Christian experience and teaching that we are re-discovering. We will be exploring the disciplines of prayer and fasting, of remembering the poor and remembering to celebrate life, the importance of confession and fellowship and generosity in developing a strong spiritual life. Today we will start by looking at fasting as a spiritual practice in the modern world.

Recently when discussing the progress of a mutual friend who had been through personal turmoil I asked one of my mates how he felt our friend was doing. “Ah mate” came the reply, “He’s not doin’ real well. He’s swimmin’ in Egypt!”  “What do you mean ‘swimming in Egypt” I enquired. “He’s in de Nile, brother, in de Nile!”

To be ‘in denial’ is one of the great contemporary sins! To be ‘in denial’ is to shut oneself off from awareness, to refuse to acknowledge what is going on, to reject all the data that is available about one’s emotional state and circumstances. To be ‘in denial’ is to be lacking in self-awareness and disconnected from the richness and complexity of your situation. This attitude to denial reflects a cultural bias towards openness, reception, acquisition, as if shutting out or refusing something is a moral failing.

Yet ‘denial’ (in the form of self-denial) is an important element of the religious life. To people of many faith traditions, including the Christian tradition, to practice self-denial is to open oneself to knowledge and learning, to encounter and understand more deeply the reality of one’s life and situation. Rather than ‘denial’ being an avoidance of painful reality, self-denial is a willingness to engage reality and let it impact oneself.

Fasting, of course, refers to one form of self-denial – how and what we eat and the avoidance of certain foods or substances at specific times and for defined reasons. It is only one instance of the practice of self-denial. It is perhaps the most personal and intimate because its effect is so immediate, so present to our minds, wills, and bodies. It affects our physical being and our consciousness because our minds and feelings are grounded in our physical being.  This is part of the power of fasting as a spiritual practice.  Within the New Testament there are other forms of self-denial mentioned, including married couples abstaining from sexual relations (1 Cor 7.5).  Fasting is only one example of a wide range of practices of self-denial. I know one Christian friend who denies himself air travel: as part of his discipleship he will only use surface transport. In reflecting on ‘fasting’ we are engaging this whole spectrum of practices of self-denial.

We must also acknowledge two other aspects of fasting. First, fasting is not a distinctively Christian practice: many religions practice it in a variety of ways and it can be far more central to some other faiths than it is in ours. Secondly, there are passages in the Bible that critique fasting and practices of self-denial and there can be a deep ambivalence around fasting and ‘ascetic practices’ among Christians. (1 Tim 4, 1 Cor 8, especially v 8). Fasting as a specific practice is not central to Christian faith and is certainly nowhere decreed by Jesus or the early church but it has been found to be of value by Christians over the ages. Of the bigger picture of self-denial there can be no question. I want to examine self-denial as 1) personal discipline, 2) as social sign, and 3) as the enactment of justice.

1. The fast as personal discipline. Self-denial is central to the call to discipleship that Jesus makes to all who would follow him: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mk 8.34). This is the core of the gospel: deny yourself, take up the cross and follow Jesus! Now this is intensely personal. Jesus called individuals to leave their nets and fishing boats (Mk 1.16-20), or to leave their job in the tax office (Mk 2.14), or to leave their possessions and give them to the poor (Mk 10.17-22). Just how someone is called to deny themselves in the gospel varies although it usually involves surrendering our grasp on social position and financial security. At the heart of the call to follow Jesus is the call to surrender something of the self, to use an appropriate but old-fashioned word to sacrifice the self.

This does not mean self-annihilation or destruction. The promise Jesus makes is that that those who lose their life for my sake and the gospel shall find it (Mk 8.35). But the self-surrender at the centre of response to Jesus is a letting go of one’s own control life and letting Jesus, through the Spirit, remake us, refashion us.

“All that we have is yours and of your own do we give you”. We use these words often when we present our offering. Is that giving token or a real sacrifice? ‘Giving’ here embraces our time, our love, our hopes and dreams, our money, our careers?

At the heart of all Christian spiritual life is a surrendering of the self to God. That is always intensely personal. It is also total: some Christians say ‘I have given my life completely to God – why do I need to enact that in token ways?’ This Tuesday I will have been married for 30 years. Dinner with Jane on Tuesday night will in some senses only be a token celebration – so it seemed right up until the time I confessed that I had double booked the night! A big commitment is one thing – but if it never finds expression in tangible action how real is it? The book of James says: “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” (James 2.18).

The danger of course is that personal self-denial can become a kind of a trap, in which the outward sign or act becomes more real than the motivating love behind it. In the recent ABC comedy series We Can Be Heroes Chris Lilley has unmasked some of the hypocrisy and inanities of our culture. One of his characters, schoolgirl Jaime, has been nominated for an award because she is personally supporting dozens of the world’s poor and refugees through World Vision. She does this by completing the 40 Hour Famine every week. As the show progresses we recognise Jaime as a self-obsessed egotist who does this ‘because it keeps me looking hot’. What looks like self-discipline is only self-interest. What masquerades as altruism (a commitment to others) is really narcissism (an obsession with self).

Self-denial - fasting in all its forms - is a central and personal enactment of discipleship. Whether it is foregoing a cup of coffee as an act of personal commitment or giving thousands of dollars to someone who needs it, it connects us with Jesus and his call to live openly, freely, generously!

2. The fast as prophetic sign. Christian fasting always occurs within an analysis of social and historical conditions. In Matthew 9.14-17 the question being engaged is a very important one for the early Christian communities. Why did everybody else fast, but the followers of Jesus did not? The kind of religious discipline practiced by Pharisees and disciples of John was not embraced by Jesus and his followers. The answer Jesus gives includes a ‘reading’ of the contemporary historical and social situation: because ‘the bridegroom is still with them’ the followers of Jesus do not fast. The ministry of Jesus in which the Kingdom of God is announced and inaugurated calls for a party not a fast! Later there will be time for fasting.

This passage is closely connected with the preceding passage in which Jesus’ eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners has scandalized the Pharisees. In this passage there is the teaching that God desires ‘mercy, not sacrifice’ – consistent with the general critique that Jesus made of religious practice than had been separated from the demand for justice and mercy.

Jesus said that whether we are feasting or whether we are fasting reflects our analysis of the spiritual conditions of our age: if the kingdom is breaking in and the bridegroom is with us how can we fast? In a drab and dreary world where the general spirit is governed by stern religion and regular fasting the followers of Jesus will be counter-cultural and be feasting!

But we are living in one of the richest countries in the world at a time of unprecedented production and consumption. As a nation we use credit to drive our consumption in all areas. With regard to food and diet we are facing an obesity problem as a nation as a whole, and yet, within defined sub-populations we see such problems as steroid and other drug use among the super-fit athletes and body-builders and the terrible impact of eating disorders and anorexia among especially some populations of young women.

It’s not just food – it’s consumption of every type driven by a credit binge. What does faithfulness to Jesus, the Son of Man who had nowhere to lay his head, mean in such a world?

You may have heard of the anti-shopping movement emerging in the USA. Sarah Pelmas and her neighbours looked around their homes in affluent San Francisco and realised they just had too much “stuff”. So, the group of friends took a pledge not to buy anything new — except food, medicine and fresh underwear — for six months.

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“Particularly in America — but worldwide as well — shopping has grown to fill a spiritual gap in people. It’s what they do to feel good about themselves,” Ms Pelmas said. “We want to find something more meaningful in our lives than shopping.”

The friends named the group the “Compact” after a pledge of piety taken by the founding Pilgrim Fathers when they landed in the New World aboard the Mayflower in 1620.  Now, fuelled by the internet, their shopping boycott is catching on. More than 8000 people have signed up for the group’s blog (http://sfcompact.blogspot.com) and chapters have opened across America, with interest also coming from abroad.

Self-denial is not only personal discipline, but social sign. In a consumer world in which shopping has become a ‘spirituality’, a way of finding meaning and ultimate purpose, the willingness to deny oneself and ‘live without’ points to another way of being.

3. The fast as enactment of justice. Self-denial that ignores the active making of justice and peace, the liberating of those who are oppressed, is entirely misplaced.

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

(Isaiah 58.6-7)

‘The fast’ is not a religious practice but an active engagement with realigning social reality. Refraining from bread has no purpose unless it is to share it with the hungry, the foregoing of personal power is only effective when others are empowered and freed from the oppression.

It is one thing to deny ourselves resources or food or comfort, and such denial may have intrinsic benefit, but that denial is most powerful and meaningful when it is linked to work for justice, when the power or money or resources we deny ourselves are then placed at the service of the weak and the oppressed.

Do that in our thanksgiving offerings and Christmas offerings in this church. $19,000 for the Christmas offering: wonderful!  Doesn’t have to be great. Jesus told a story of a widow’s ‘mite’ – two small copper coins given into the Temple. (Mk 12.41-44). Fr Gerard Kennedy Tucker founded the Brotherhood of St Laurence in Melbourne in the 1930’s. Many years later it had become one of Melbourne’s best known and best resourced welfare agencies. He preached one day on the needs of the poor overseas and their plight in an old-people’s home. After the service the group of pensioners had left an offering of less than one dollar from memory it was about 5/- (50c). Yet that 50c was the beginning of the organization we know as Community Aid Abroad.

Fasting, self denial: personal discipline, prophetic sign, and force for justice and transformation in the world. If we belong to Jesus we too should be ‘swimming in Egypt’, paddling against the tides of personal desire and mindless consumerism. When we follow him we come to discover in our own experience that it is in giving that we receive, in forgiving that we ourselves find forgiveness, and in dying that we are born to vibrant, energising, eternal life.