Ash Wednesday marked the beginning of Lent. This year most of Lent will take place in the month of March. Lent is the period of time before Easter that Christians fast in preparation for the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Scholars can’t even agree on where the practice of Lent came from. There seems to have been ancient and widespread fasting leading up to Easter. The length of the fast varied from location to location. Irenaeus and Tertullian wrote letters to each other and in those letters we find that the fast they wrote about was two days or forty hours before Easter, signifying the exact period of time Christ was in the tomb. Others like Dionysius of Alexandria talk about of fast of 6 days while Socrates practiced 3 weeks. Following the Council of Nicea in 325 many traditions in the church got formalized and Lent was one of those. Tradition tells us that as they were reading the letters between Irenaeus and Tertullian they saw different punctuation marks and believed that it wasn’t 40 hours but 40 days. Because of that Lent became 40 days of fasting.
The idea of the 40 day fast is all over scripture. 40 days of fasting is a popular number in the scriptures. Jesus fasted for 40 days, Moses fasted for 40 days, and Elijah took 40 days to walk to the Mount Sinai. The execution of the 40 days has varied throughout history. It has been as long as 8 weeks and as short as just 40 days. Tradition today is 6 and half weeks with Sundays being a day off from the fast. The 40 days start on Ash Wednesday and concludes on Easter Sunday.
Fasting is a spiritual discipline that every follower of Jesus is called to practice and it is a good practice to follow for our spiritual growth. Fasting is not about getting something from God but it is about responding to a sacred moment. I think too many times we go into a season of fasting thinking that will get something from God. God is not a genie in a bottle where if we rub the bottle we get what we want. That is an exercise in futility and gives us the wrong picture of who God is.
Fasting is about digging our roots deeper into Jesus whether we get something out of it or not. It is about bringing our doubts, fears, sin, discouragements, shame, and burdens to Jesus. It is about our journey to Christ and away from the things that are hopeless. We fast to reset, refocus, and even grieve. May this Lenten season truly be one where our journey takes us home to Jesus.