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Matthew 9:14-17
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Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved." (ESV)
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Satisfactory Starvation
C. F. W. Walther, Theologian
7 May 2012
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What madness we human beings can involve ourselves in! Some years ago, an acquaintance of my wife began a radical diet to lose weight. My wife had been evangelizing this young woman for some time and to little apparent avail. She had become convinced that she would lose her husband if she didn't have the svelte appearance of the half-starved fashion model. She picked up a regime of "cleansing" which purported to be a Christian method of weight loss. She was more interested in the bodily benefit of Christianity than its spiritual benefits. She wanted to save her body, and had no thought about saving her soul. Talk about a clash of world views!
Unfortunately, "Christian" has become an adjective that can modify anything these days, like "Christian weight loss program," "Christian economics," "Christian politics," "Christian Mormon," etc; all of which are oxymoronic. I can just see Jesus as a first century Gene Simmons (or maybe not). The young woman was not able to save her marriage anyway, because it had been founded on the wrong principles. Her husband left her, despite her near-anorexia.
Christianity is not about the stomach. Martin Luther says that "fasting and other bodily preparation are fine outward training" for those who are going to take the sacrament of the altar, "but those are truly worthy and well prepared who have faith in these words, 'given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins'" (SC 6.4). Mere fasting is never a sufficient preparation for the reception of Christ's body and blood. The communion is not about our stomach, but His body. It is not about abstaining from wine, but about receiving the richest of fare (Is 55:1-2) at the hand of God's own Son. Indeed, reasonable people might well find ways to argue about various kinds of abstinence; as to whether more of this or that or less of this or that would be beneficial to faith. One man's feast is another man's famine.
We must not reduce Christianity to the things of the body, no matter how good and beneficial such external works might appear. For Christianity must be about the proclamation of the work done by the eternal Son of God, who suffered, died, and rose for us Christians. Even Christ Himself scandalized His contemporary opponents by feasting with those who were outcasts of their society. He produced wine for the wedding of Cana. So much for an abstemious nature. True feasting is the feasting upon His body and blood, which is given and shed for the forgiveness of sins. As a monk, Martin Luther pursued the signs of fasting and abstinence as testimonies to a saving faith. Such testimonies are susceptible to the measurement of "more and less." When is our fasting enough? When are we sufficiently starved to be satisfactory to God (or to husband!)? Satisfaction can only be made for us by God's eternal Son, not by our self-denial. Our holiness is received from Christ not on account of our works.
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Martin Luther
"While I was a monk I tried to attain to that felicity by which I would experience the conduct and life of one truly saintly man. During this time I dreamed of such a holiness as that of the hermits, who abstained from food and drink and who ate only the roots of herbs and cold water. My opinion concerning this monstrous "holiness" I absorbed not only from the books of the sophists but also from the fathers. To someone St. Jerome wrote: 'Concerning food and drink I hold my tongue, since it is a luxury even for those who are weak to drink a little cold water and some cooked cereal, etc.'
"The truth is as clear as daylight when we see Christ and the apostles calling saints, not those who abstain from the life of the stomach or who perform other works greater in appearance, as we read often in the lives of the fathers, but those who are called by the gospel and who are baptized and believe themselves to be cleansed and made holy by the blood and death of Christ. So when Paul writes to the Christians he calls them the saints, sons, heirs of God, etc. Therefore saints are all those who believe in Christ, whether men or women, slave or free, etc. They are those who are received by faith, not on account of their own works, but those of God, such as the word and sacraments, the suffering of Christ, his death, resurrection, victory, and the sending of the Holy Spirit, etc. In summary, the saints have a passive holiness, not an active holiness."
Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians, 5.19
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Prayer
Almighty God, give us grace that we may reject dependence on our own works and put upon ourselves the armor of light in the time of this mortal life in which Your Son, Jesus Christ, came to visit us in great humility and offered Himself to death for us poor sinners, that on the Last Day, when He shall come again in glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to life immortal; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
For the family of David McFarland, who was called out of this valley of sorrow by His Lord Jesus Christ, that they might commend him to the Lord's care
For the family of Brian Ashick, who was called home to the Lord, that Jesus would comfort those who mourn with the hope of the resurrection of the flesh and the life of the world to come
For all those who are undergoing cancer treatment, that they might be strengthened by the Lord their God
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Art: DUBOIS, Thomas Lamb of God
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 © Scott R. Murray, 2012
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