For seven days King David fasted. Day and night he went without food as he prayed desperately for the life of his newborn child. The baby had been born as a result of his affair with Bathsheba, an adulterous affair that had led to the murder of Bathsheba’s husband. From the moment the baby was born, it was evident the child’s life was hanging by a slim thread. So David prayed for the life of the child. He prayed with great intensity. He fasted as part of his prayers, hoping that by his petitions and by his avoidance of food he could make God be gracious to him and let the child live. But on the seventh day, in spite of the king’s hunger and all his prayers, the baby died.

Fasting, such as King David did, used to be a regular part of religion. People fasted as a sign of sorrow over their sins. People fasted in grief over the death of a loved one. People fasted when they prayed about something important. They fasted to excite the pity and compassion of God.

In the book of Jonah we read about a whole city that fasted. God sent Jonah to the cruel and wicked city of Nineveh to proclaim to them their sins and God’s anger with them. After Jonah preached his message of divine destruction, all the people, from the king on down to the littlest person in the city, hundreds of thousands of people, all repented. As a sign of their repentance, their sorrow over their sins, the whole city fasted. They went without both food and water because they wanted to show God that they had turned from their evil ways.

God only commanded fasting for one day of the year, and only for the Hebrew people. On the Day of Atonement, a day of national repentance and confession of sin, God wanted all the people of Israel to fast. But aside from that one day, God nowhere else commanded general fasting. Nevertheless, people began to fast for a number of different reasons and at any given time. We read in the Bible that Moses fasted; so did Elijah, Ezra, and Daniel.

Today, if people fast at all, only rarely does it happen as part of their religion. Today people fast when they are on a diet or they fast to protest something. Some IRA revolutionaries fasted themselves to death some time ago, as a protest to conditions they found unacceptable. Ghandi was an expert at fasting; through his hunger strikes he was able to effect a number of changes in his country. While God has not commanded Christians to fast, for some people it is a good thing to do. Our Lord Jesus fasted; so did Saint Paul and many others in the early Christian Church. They fasted as part of their faith relationship with God.

By the time of Jesus, fasting had grown to be nothing more than a tradition for most people. There came to be a great deal of fasting but it was not connected to a healthy fear of God. People fasted mostly to show off how religious they were. Our Savior told a story about a Pharisee who fasted for this reason. Remember the parable of the Pharisee who went to the Temple to pray? He prayed a proud prayer, Jesus tells us, in which he boasted to God of all the good things he did. As part of his self-righteous list he bragged, "... I fast twice a week! ..." (Luke 18:9-14). God was not pleased with his fast nor with most fasting that went on because people fasted for themselves but not for him. Because their fasts were seldom faith-full, God said through Jeremiah, "Though they fast, I will not hear their cry ... but I will consume them ..." (Jeremiah 14:12).

Since fasting was a way of measuring how religious a person was, Jesus and his disciples were criticized by some because they didn’t fast. They didn’t act "religious enough." "Why do the disciples of John the Baptizer and the disciples of the Pharisees fast?" the people asked Jesus, "But your disciples don’t fast?" Matthew tells us this question bothered not only the general public, but the disciples of John especially. They didn’t like the idea that, while their stomachs growled because they were empty, the stomachs of the disciples of our Lord were full and content.

Jesus explained that his disciples didn’t fast because there was no reason for them to fast while he was around. Jesus wrapped his answer in the imagery of a wedding reception. He called himself a bridegroom. Just as the mood of a wedding reception is one of gaiety and joy, so also the mood of the followers of Jesus is to be full of joy. The mood of a fast is like the mood of a funeral and that’s just not an appropriate mood for Christians.

Remember, fasting happened as a response to grief when a loved one died, out of remorse over sin, as a way to make God listen to prayer and (for most people) to show off their religion. For the Christian, Jesus says, there is no reason to act that way. Where there is death, Jesus Christ gives life! Where there is guilt and separation from God, Jesus Christ brings forgiveness and oneness with the Father! Jesus has opened up the way of communication between God and us, and we don’t have to make God listen to our prayers any more; he listens just because of Jesus! And most of all, Christians don’t go around trying to prove how good they are; they trust Jesus who has made them good already, through his own righteous life, death, and resurrection.

This last point was the real concern behind the question of the people. They wanted to know, "How can you tell when people are religious?" With fasting and other such outward practices it’s very easy to tell who the "religious" folks are. They are the ones who have deep circles around their eyes from lying awake at night thinking about food. They are the ones who break into a cold sweat everytime somebody mentions food.

But the truth is, it’s not always easy to know who the religious people are. Perhaps a better way to say that would be, just because people look religious does not mean they are close to God; and the opposite is also true. In the days of Jesus one could see people giving alms to the poor in the Temple and on the streets; one could hear people praying aloud in public; and one could see people walking around with long faces because they were hungry from fasting. Jesus called them all hypocrites (Matthew 6). He condemned them because everything they did was done to show off, to impress people. Jesus said, in response to their irreligion, "When you do your good works ... when you give alms, when you pray and when you fast, do it in secret so no one sees you but God and he will reward you" (Matthew 6).

How can you tell who the really religious people are? We can’t always tell because the truly faithful do what they do not to impress us but simply because they love God. That’s something that happens in the heart - and how can one look into someone’s heart? For this reason, Jesus told us to be very careful about judging others.

Religion that happens in the heart first and then on the sleeve was a very new teaching for the people who heard the Lord. It required changes in the way they thought about their religion and some people hate it when changes are made. Jesus admitted it was a new teaching. He called it, "new wine for fresh skins." It was all part of the new covenant, the new agreement, he came to make between God and humanity. Our Lord’s new covenant is a covenant built not on what people do but on what he has done and keeps on doing for us and on what we believe. The covenant depends on Jesus Christ alone. "This is my blood of the new covenant," Jesus said, explaining how it happens.

What counts is not what we do but what Jesus Christ does for us and in us and that we believe in him. The January 1984 issue of the Lutheran Witness had an article that powerfully illustrates this truth. It’s the story of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Mission in Kansas City. The people of that ghetto church would not measure up to being religious by anyone’s standards. Every single girl in the parish over fifteen years of age has at least one child of her own. One woman in the Bible Class set fire to her neighbor’s house to cover the evidence of her break-in to steal from her neighbor. The law of their community is that if it’s not nailed down, it’s going to walk; if it is stolen it’s your fault for not taking better care of it. Like most people in the ghetto, these people have to scratch and claw to stay alive - and they do. Are they religious? They say they believe in God; they worship him and they study his Word. Are they religious? Are they any worse than the nice people who gossip and "fudge" on their taxes and flirt with the god of money? What makes people truly religious is Jesus Christ and their faith in him. That’s all.

In that same article, the pastor asked a disturbingly provocative question. Remembering the way Jesus treated the woman who had been caught in adultery he asked, "If you were the pastor and you were at the altar of your church, holding the host and the chalice in your hands, ready for Holy Communion, and there before you knelt a woman whom you knew for certain did not spend the night alone ... what would you do?" The pastor went on to answer his own question: Jesus said, "I don’t condemn you; go and sin no more." The Church can do no less.

We need to be careful that we never fall into the trap of thinking the way the Pharisees thought, that we are better or more religious than some other folks because we don’t do the same bad things they do. We are all sinners and we are all good only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Amen