Living Stones – Friday, January 5, 2018
Wedding food
Matthew 9:15
And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.
In answering the question posed about fasting in the passage Matthew 9:14-17, Jesus starts out with a reference to the presence of a bridegroom as cause for celebration with much eating and not an occasion for mourning. Simply put, you eat at the wedding and find some other occasion for fasting.
This reminds me of a little story. A few years ago, my friend in Maryland, USA, asked me to represent him at his godson’s wedding in Georgetown, Guyana. He was unable to travel at the time but wanted his love and best wishes for the bridegroom to be conveyed during the speeches at the wedding reception. I agreed to do this for my friend without checking my calendar. The wedding was taking place on the Saturday of our quarterly fasting and praying weekends at our church. So, I ended up at the wedding, sitting at a table with friends who were in full celebratory mode, eating and drinking, and I was trying to stick to my water only, even as I raised my glass to toast the bride and groom and to say to the young man many nice things that his godfather would have said if present. Once I was done speaking, I knew that the only thing I could do was leave the hall as dinner was being served. It looked good, smelled good, and I thought about it all the way home.
This, again, like the issue of patching the torn garment and setting up new wine for fermentation, is a very practical issue before them. At the very beginning of His public ministry, we find Jesus at a wedding. There was much celebration and the catered wine ran out. Jesus produced about 180 gallons of Cana’s finest wine to keep the celebrations going. Later, in Matthew 22, Jesus tells a story of a man who was hosting a wedding for his son. He was likening this to the Kingdom of Heaven He describes the scene this way, “See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding.” Matthew 22:4. Back then, like now, the wedding reception was mostly about the feasting and celebrations.
Jesus, often likening Himself to a Bridegroom, was not coming out against fasting, rather He was making the point that there is a time for fasting and that time was not in His presence. It may seem that John’s disciples, who were the ones challenging Him on the issue of fasting, had missed the sermon on the Mount. Jesus had made it clear then, that fasting was a part of the spiritual discipline and activities of those who would follow Him.
It is interesting that Jesus, in that extended teaching session at high altitude, got to the issue of fasting right after teaching His followers how to pray, in what is commonly called today the Lord’s Prayer. In the prayer, Jesus taught us to look to God for our daily provisions, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Matthew 6:11. And right after that taught us to forgo our daily bread in fasting, “But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” Matthew 6:17-18.
It is clear that the issue with fasting is the time. Back in Ecclesiastes, the times of celebration are clearly contrasted with the time of mourning (fasting) in twin couplets in the poetry of the section generally titled, A time for everything. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says, “A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance;
As the people of God, we have to continuously celebrate the presence of God and our belonging to Him. In the old days we used to sing a lot more scripture including this from Revelation 19:7, “Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His [bride] has made herself ready.” With the chorus from the previous verse, “Alleluia! For the Lord God [Almighty] reigns!” This is the big wedding, “the marriage supper of the Lamb!” Revelation 19:9
The marriage supper of the Lamb though, is for the future. And when Jesus responded to the disciples of John the Baptist that was the past. In the present, between celebrations of the Bridegroom’s presence, there is the need for, and opportunity to fast. Fasting should be a part of our discipline as Christians and should be organised for the church.
In January, right after the yearend feasting, many churches organise days or weeks of fasting. This is as it should be. Our fasting in these times should, however, go beyond routine and should be focused on the needs of the individual, the family, the community, the church and the country.
In my experience, the thing that is critical during the fast is to not be thinking about the wedding food you are missing but rather to be thinking about what is being gained by the fast.
Think on these things:
- Do you regularly practice fasting and praying?
- Do you fast alone as part of your personal discipline or do you participate in times of fasting organised in church?
- What Have been your greatest challenges to fasting and what are you doing to overcome them?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would set aside time for fasting and to spend that time prayerfully waiting to hear from God.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex