The sermon I want to preach

[I love this theme, but sadly, will not be able to preach this sermon. I will be out of the country working on acquiring my visa so I can come back to Ukraine and be able to preach.]

Food is important to every culture. When we think of a culture - we almost immediately think about the food that they eat. Who would the Japanese be without Sushi? The Italians without pizza and pasta? Americans without cheeseburgers and fries? Ukrainians without Vereniki and Hrechka.

We eat for many reasons: for comfort, sustenance, and tradition.

Think about the last great holiday you celebrated and imagine it without the food. Food brings people together.

And throughout the history of religion, fasting from food has been part of religion. In the Jewish faith, fasting was connected with a deep longing and desire to hear from God. In Christianity it holds a similar place. Why do we fast?

(Allow some time for responses)

It's interesting that when we want to draw closer to other people we feast - and when we want to draw closer to God we fast.

Those who have fought for social justice have often fasted. Ghandi fasted for long periods of time and so did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., giving something up gives you more time and energy to focus on something more important. It proves a point to those around you and it often makes people sit up and pay attention.

I fasted once for over a week. It was a wonderful time for me, spiritually. But, every time someone asked me if I was hungry, or why I wasn't eating - I was super ready to explain my fast and why I was on it. I just couldn't wait to talk about myself.

This was the situations that many believers found themselves in during the time of Isaiah. They were fasting to get God's attention - but, man, were they ever ready for the attention of the people around them.

When they would fast they would make a huge procession out of it. They would throw a pity party, look hungry and tired all the time, (look tired and slump about for a bit) and complain constantly about how hungry their devotion was making them.

Their anger came from the fact that they were doing such a good job being martyrs, but they were the ones holding the gun. And, after all the parades in their honor to honor God - they couldn't figure out why God wasn't answering their prayers.

[At this point we will read Isaiah 58]

Fasting without the right heart and intent is like playing soccer without the soccer ball. You can dress up in soccer uniforms and run around the field so people can see you - but you'll never win. There's nothing to win.

Without the right heart and motivation, fasting is pointless. Don't get us wrong. We would never discourage you from observing the fast. We think that this is hugely important - in fact, we think that a fast is so important that we want to make sure we are doing it right.

One of my professors was reading the Bible with his wife when they stumbled on this chapter. Now, they were missionaries who had planted churches in the Phillipines and they had both grown up in Christian homes - so, obviously, they had read this chapter of the Bible before. But, when they read this together, they were amazed. They were so convicted about the way they had fasted in the past. They were middle aged and lived in a large house. All of their children had grown up and they had an empty room. They began praying for the opportunity to have a true fast.

When we fast with the right heart we are able to see that there is so much more to be done than simply refusing food or Facebook. God wants us to draw closer to him by drawing closer to other people. God's desire is that we would share in great communion with one another. When we have a true fast, we connect with God by connecting with God's littlest - the poor and the brokenhearted.

That day my professor got a phone call. His son was a pastor in the city and knew of a woman who was being beaten by her boyfriend and needed a place to hide. The woman was an illegal immigrant, of a different religion, and truly had no place to go. My professor and his wife welcomed her into their home and celebrated a true fast as they helped this woman put her life back together.


What amazes me is that Christians feel they are powerless. "Well, I'll pray about that." has come to mean, "Sorry that there's no hope and things aren't going to improve." Have we read the same Bible? Have we read the stories of Moses parting the red sea, of Esther saving her people, of Jesus and Peter and Paul raising the dead back to life? We worship the same God and God is still able. With a third of the world population claiming to be Christian – we could knock out every curable disease, we could end extreme forms of poverty, we could bring the dead back to life by building hospitals in every village and training doctors, teachers, and pastors.

We might be a small community of believers. We might "just be students" and just live on government scholarship or much less. But, if we chose to live the true fast this Lent we could change this city. We could help people see who God really is and how much God really loves them.


Whenlive out the True Fast, we choose to live in a radical way in pursuit of God.

Why do we study and why do we work? We are taught to live our lives in the pursuit of comfort. Is this the reason that God has created us?

John Piper, an American pastor wrote, "Don’t waste your life on the American dream of retirement. But live recklessly for the one who died for our sins in his thirties." We read the Bible verses about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air and it amazes me the ability we have acquired to smile, nod, and move on with our pursuits to accumulate more stuff and make more money. The same amazement I feel when I step over a homeless man – that my culture has so effectively convinced me to believe that they are not real people or at least they are not worth my time or energy. They are “in God’s hands” but we forget that we are God’s hands and feet. The homeless among us our are responsibility. In the True Fast of Isaiah 58 we learn that God calls us to rethink the way we live and the pursuits of our heart.

We could work for the Kingdom of God. Or we could choose to continue working to build up our own empire. The question is "will you choose to live these words out and follow Christ to the cross, to celebrate the True Fast in the same way that Jesus did?"

[Read Isaiah 58 a second time while playing the into for "Lead me to the cross"