Fasting and Waiting

Homily for the First Sunday of Lent, Year C
Deuteronomy 26.4-10 Psalm 91 Romans 10.8-13 Luke 4.1-13

In an interesting quirk of the calendar, the season of Lent this year corresponds to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. And I think the one event can teach us about the other. Part of what seems to draw people to events like the Olympics are the stories behind the athletes. Especially in recent years, news coverage of the Olympic Games has focused more and more on the athletes’ personal lives, their struggles, their journeys, their triumphs and their failures. In many of these personal stories, there is an element of waiting. We hear about snowboarders who must wait for their sport to gain recognition and acclaim. We hear about skiers who must wait for an injury to heal before being able to reach for their dream. We hear about ice skaters who must wait four more years for another chance to prove themselves after a disappointing performance at the last winter games. And we hear about bobsledders and lugers who must wait for years to hone a championship technique in a difficult and dangerous sport. The stories of the trials and challenges and waiting of these Olympians is often what makes us most interested in the athletes as people, and not just as medal-winners. And it is here that the Olympic Games meets in a curious way the Christian observance of Lent.

Because, in a way, Lent too is about waiting. During these 40 days, we wait for Easter … we wait to celebrate the resurrection … some members of our community wait to be baptized or to join the full communion of our Catholic faith. But on an even deeper level, the waiting of Lent is seen best of all in the practice of fasting. Before he began his public ministry, Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert. And so our Christian tradition has long made our 40-day Lenten journey a time of fasting. But what is fasting all about? Why do we fast from desserts or soft drinks or computer games or television? For the most part, the things we fast from are things that we typically enjoy. It’s pointless to give up chocolate if we don’t like chocolate and never eat it anyway. But it’s also pointless to give up Facebook if we spend the time that we would have been on Facebook instead texting people or on e-mail. We fast in order to create an emptiness in our lives, an emptiness that turns us away from ourselves and toward God. We fast in order to wait. We rid our lives of some earthly experience so that we can fill it with things that come from God. We fast from something that makes us happy now – temporarily – in order to wait for something that will make us happy forever. We fast from the things of earth in order to wait in joyful hope for the things of heaven.

That’s the wisdom that Jesus knew that the devil didn’t. The devil tried to tempt Jesus with things that would make him happy now – bread to eat, power over the kingdoms of earth, security from failure. But Jesus knew that none of those things bring true happiness – they bring passing pleasure, yes, but not true joy. Jesus knew that we can glimpse true joy here on earth, in serving and loving others to the best of our ability. We can glimpse true joy among family and friends and a community of faith. But for complete, endless joy, we must wait. We must wait until we are able to hand everything over to God. We must wait until all pride and selfishness has been removed from our hearts. We must wait for the time when we can say to our Lord – everything I have is yours. Fasting reminds us that we need to wait – that earthly pleasures will not bring us true joy. Because our hearts will only be completely filled in the glory of heaven.