The Fasting of the Friends of the Bridegroom

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.

Jesus, we belong to you. 

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. 

Luke 5:33–39 

They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

Here we have a remarkable text that flew right over my head for most of my Bible-reading life. We are getting an inside look at one of the significant contrasts between the Pharisees, the disciples of John the Baptist, and Jesus and his disciples. Interestingly enough, it is on the matter of fasting. 

They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

It carries a hint of judgment as though they were saying, “You guys aren’t doing it right.” Now, watch Jesus’s reply:

Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

My translation: “It’s obvious to me you don’t understand what fasting is.” More generously: “I see fasting very differently than you do.” 

Question: How did the Pharisees see and practice fasting? Answer: Very religiously. The Pharisees were known for their meticulously fastidious and quite legalistic observance of every jot and tittle of every law in the Torah. The law required fasting but the Pharisees took this to the next level. You will perhaps remember the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector wherein the Pharisee boasts, “I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” (Luke 18:12).

The Pharisees believed Messiah would come in response to the people of God perfectly observing the Law of God and it was therefore their mission to spread this version of scriptural holiness across the land in preparation for Messiah to come and establish his kingdom. Their goal was to get the people of God to comply with the whole Law. Fasting was a part of this religious performance. It was quite burdensome on people, which brings to mind Jesus’s celebrated words, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28–30). 

Question: So how did John and his disciples see and practice fasting? Answer: Very rigorously. While I can’t verify this, I associate John and his movement with a first-century sect known as the Essenes. They had withdrawn from the society and set up shop in the wilderness. Scholars think the Essenes lived in Qumran, which is the site of the famous discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. John and his disciples were super serious about their mission and intense in their practice of faith. I suspect they fasted not so much out of legalistic obedience to the Law but out of activistic faithfulness. They wanted to hasten the coming of the Messiah and the ouster of their Roman oppressors and they believed their fasting and prayer would serve this end. I would characterize the fasting of John and his disciples as living on the functional end of the spectrum (i.e., spiritual technology). Theirs strikes me as a kind of militant spirituality. 

Now, back to the presenting question and Jesus’s response:

They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

Fasting is not legalistic obedience. Fasting is not spiritual activism. Fasting is about abiding friendship. 

Jesus’s brand of discipleship is about abiding friendship. Jesus decries performative religion (i.e., legalistic Pharisaism). I believe he denies transactional functional religion (i.e., if we can get enough people fasting and praying we can move the hand of God). For Jesus, it is all about relationships. 

But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

Fasting is about sustaining and deepening friendship with Jesus during his physical, bodily absence. Can we cut back to John 14:

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14:3)

Fasting is about cultivating relational presence during physical absence. Fasting is a primary, and physically embodied means of attention and attunement to the abiding presence of Jesus in his physical absence. Fasting is not about food and set periods of not eating followed by binge eating. It is about hunger and learning to carry hunger in love for God and others. Fasting is not about the religious presence or absence of food. It is about the real presence of Jesus. Physical hunger cultivates the bodily conditioning for spiritual attunement—that where I am you may also be and where you are I may also be. 

Fasting is learning to carry hunger and thirst as a way of love for Jesus, his kingdom, and his righteousness. It is becoming the peculiar kind of person (i.e., a righteous person) who learns to exercise a particular kind of power for the good of the world and the glory of God—”according to his power that is at work within us.”  

And all of this leads us to the revelatory gemstone of wineskins to which we will turn tomorrow. 

THE PRAYER OF TRANSFORMATION

Lord Jesus, teach us to fast. 

I want to be faithful. I am willing to fast because you tell me to fast and yet I believe you want more for me than this. I want to be powerful and effective too and somehow I think fasting will make me such. I somehow think it will supercharge my prayers and make them work better. Something tells me, though this is not your way. I think you are training me to fast as a dimension of belonging to you, as a way of training my hunger to seek a higher form of food. I hear you whispering, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Yes! I think that’s it and yet I still struggle to grasp righteousness. I think it is associated with my behavior or my faithfulness to duty. I do seek for your kingdom and your righteousness. Touch my seeking and transform it to hunger and thirst and lead me to fast from this kind of place. Let legalism be burned up by holy longing. Come, Holy Spirit, transform my heart, mind, soul, and strength so that my consecration becomes your demonstration; that our lives become your sanctuary. For the glory of God our Father, amen.

THE QUESTION

Are you seeing how Jesus’s way of fasting is different from the usual modes of fasting we see in the Pharisees and in John’s disciples? What differences do you note? What resonates with you in today’s post? 

THE HYMN

Today we will sing the hymn, “I Want a Principle Within.” It is hymn 313 in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise.

For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
Sower-in-Chief
seedbed.com

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