Is not this the kind of fasting I
have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the
yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with
the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter --
when you see the naked, to
clothe him,
and not to turn away
from your own flesh and
blood?
(Isaiah 58:6-7 NIV)
The fast God chooses teaches us to have God’s heart for the hungry, the oppressed, the naked, the homeless. When we taste a little brokenness ourselves, we have a greater sense of urgency to repair for others what is broken. Fasting is meant to scour our gut. It is God’s intent that we feel the pangs of hunger, the gnawing emptiness, the dizziness and weariness. That’s how a third of the world lives. And if we never live that way, even briefly, how will we learn to care for the least of these? Without hunger, our consumption will lead us deeper and deeper into acts of oblivious or intentional neglect, abuse, exploitation of those who are hungry. Fasting gives us a small taste of what their world is like, a taste we will never get if we do not for a time forsake the taste of food.
I have a friend who organized a dinner at his church to raise money for famine relief in Sudan. About 80 people signed up to come. He had tables set for various-sized groups -- as small as six, as large as 15. People came in and took seats at random. Then the servers came out. The smallest tables were served first. They received an abundance of rich, sauce-laden food, hot, tender, tasty. The servers were polite, attentive, quick to bring more food at the slightest indication that it was running low. They were quick to do the guests’ bidding, and usually anticipated their wishes.
Next, some of the larger tables were served. Theirs was a sparse, messy, bland meal. The few dishes were brought out in no particular order. The servers were curt and hurried. There were no seconds.
Two of the largest tables were served second to last after the few guests at the first tables had already had all they could eat and their dinner plates, piled with uneatened food, were whisked away and replaced with rich desserts and coffee. At the large tables, the servers plunked down, with rude haste, one bowl of rice in the middle of each table. No one got a plate or bowl. There were no utensils for serving or eating. The waiters never came back.
The very largest table was served last of all. They got a bucket of water. There was barely enough to go around. The water was brown and lukewarm. If you wanted some, you had to drink it from a wooden ladle, passed along with the bucket. Most people didn’t bother.
At first the people at the largest tables, the last ones served, complained. Several people got up and spoke to the servers. The servers ignored them. Some went to my friend, the organizer. He ignored them. He and the servers paid attention only to the guests who sat at the smallest tables and who had received the most. The servers would come around often to those tables, ask if everything was pleasing and agreeable, and did they need anything else? There was much laughter, banter, politeness.
After a while, it became obvious to everyone what was happening. The church was being given a taste of how the world works -- its lopsidedness, its patchy rhythm of muchness and emptiness, of affluence and desolation. Some got to experience, and all got to witness, the hunger of the hungry.
The offering for famine relief was good that night.
God has chosen to teach us to care in a practical way for the oppressed, the homeless, the ones with empty bellies. We are to allow the gnawing in our own guts to break our hearts, and the breaking of our hearts to lead us to break others’ yokes and repair walls.
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