Don't Worry . . .
more than the body
This is the third daily reading from my Lent book — I’m posting the first few of these here as there are a few people who have ordered the book but are still waiting for it to arrive. I wish you a Happy and Holy Lent.
Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you – you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ Luke 12:22–34
I remember, years ago, reading a column in one of the national newspapers in which the commentator wrote dismissively of the whole idea of Lent, saying that he didn’t see why giving things up should earn God’s forgiveness of our personal failings. In fact, without realising it, he had hit the nail right on the head! Giving things up for Lent has never been about earning anything from God, least of all forgiveness. Christianity is founded on the idea that we cannot atone, or make payment, for our wrongdoings. The whole point of the gospel is that we cannot save ourselves, and nor can we buy or earn God’s love or forgiveness through self-sacrifice.
Perhaps it is no surprise, if people believe God is such a hard taskmaster, that they want to keep their distance from religion. But a God who demands that we earn forgiveness is very far indeed from the Christian concept of God. We don’t have to read far into the New Testament to find Jesus teaching us that God is neither harsh nor legalistic, but full of goodness and grace – yet it seems to be a human tendency to believe that a joyless, judgemental God who demands endless penance is more suitable to a religious disposition. Maybe we cannot cope with a God who is generous, forgiving, and the giver of all good gifts. The negative effect of the tendency to replace a life-giving God with a dark and lifeless religion has a venerable history, and the habit of turning Lent into self-punishing stoicism, instead of the journey into grace it was meant to be, is a case in point.
The traditional Lenten fast was exclusively to do with food and drink, not giving up bad habits – and not about luxuries such as chocolate or coffee, but everyday essentials. Not only was meat prohibited, but everything that was of animal origin, including milk, butter, cheese and eggs. To make matters even more difficult, supplies of other foods were scarcer because Lent fell at the end of winter. It is hard to imagine now, with the ready availability of imported fruit and vegetables, but in generations gone by, whatever fruit and vegetables were still left by February would mostly be old and wrinkled, and possibly a bit mouldy. Only cabbages and winter leeks would be fresh. So Lent would have been spent eating mostly bread, porridge, peas or beans, salted or dried vegetables, fish (fresh or preserved), onions, leeks, and rather old apples, unless you were lucky enough to be wealthy, in which case you might also have had a few dried dates, figs, raisins and almonds.
The Lenten fast, then, was focused on giving up the daily essentials of life. Statements such as ‘life is more than food’, and ‘man shall not live by bread alone’ (Matthew 4:4, RSV) had a chance to become a daily reality when the whole community deprived itself of its regular diet.
Not only is Lent not about earning forgiveness, then, neither is it about achieving our aspirations. At a physical level, we seem prone to turning Lent into an exercise in self-improvement. I have sometimes heard people say things like, ‘It’s a good thing Lent is coming – I need to lose some weight, and I like the way Lent gives you a deadline to achieve that,’ or, ‘Giving something up is good because it stops you spending too much on stuff you don’t need.’ Both of these views are based on the misconception that Lent is about giving up things that are bad for us, like overeating, or buying too many consumer goods. Originally, Lent was about giving up things that are good for us, essentials rather than luxuries, not for therapy or self-improvement but to reconnect our understanding of our daily existence to God. Even though a cycle of moderate fasting and feasting is undeniably good for the body as well as the soul, the meaning of Lent is lost if it gets subsumed into the quest for a perfect body or a regime of fitness.
In a society obsessed with body consciousness, it is easy to slip into the idea that fasting is focused on the individual. Somehow, a half-remembered custom of giving things up has been mixed into our society’s obsession with self-help and self-improvement. As a result, we’ve blurred the true meaning of the fast into a rather individualistic concept, like a New Year’s resolution to detox or declutter.
Fasting in the Christian tradition is essentially about recognising that there’s nothing we can do to improve ourselves. We are fallen creatures, and we need redemption, not cosmetic surgery. No amount of self-improvement will change God’s view of us – God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, who is not fooled by the way we present ourselves in prayer or religious observance, and who loves us anyway. We do not need to put on a show for him and we cannot save ourselves apart from him. We are not trying to impress God or the person next to us; neither should we be trying to impress ourselves, satisfying our egos with the idea that we are very cool, very smart, or very in-control. The point of the fast is, in fact, to humble ourselves – an old-fashioned word that really means accepting our true self with absolute honesty, both good points and bad.
Lent, then, is not about giving up luxuries or losing weight, not about food per se, not about decluttering or any other kind of feel-good, detoxifying exercise. If fasting allows us the space to face reality and gaze more deeply into the honest yet loving face of God, it’s worth working at. But if we regard the Lenten fast as an opportunity to lose weight, improve our skin tone or drop a dress-size, we’ll miss the point altogether.
In the end, Lent is about denying ourselves some of life’s essentials in order to focus on the reality that we depend upon God for life itself. It is about realigning ourselves with God and his purposes in our world; about reminding ourselves that all we have is a gift from God in any case. If we understand the Lenten fast this way, it will relieve us of the need to try harder, achieve more, or feel more worthy, and instead will ground us in the firm and unshakeable knowledge that we are human – we are but dust, and to dust we shall return – but that to be human is enough, under the loving gaze of God.