This is snow dog. She loves Christmas. Below is my niece, Shyana. She loves Christmas too. But you can't tell because she hates pictures. Jesus’ disciples must have thought that fasting was important because each of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) record his threefold teaching on the subject. Jesus did not want his followers to fast while he was with them, and wanted them to realize that he was bringing in the new age. The church today should remember and act upon his teaching, since he explains that the ones who should fast are the ones who are alive during his absence, just as the church is today.
In Jesus’ day, the common thing to do while you were fasting was to let your hair and beard get tangly and to smear ashes on your face. But Jesus taught a different way to fast (Matthew 6:16-24). He said that fasting is something that is between you and God, not something you do to show what a great Christian you are. When you are fasting, he said, just do what you normally do. A person’s motivation for fasting shows where his priorities are. In this passage, Jesus uses three examples to explain the same point; that our eyes need to be fixed on Jesus.
In Matthew 9:14-17 Jesus again paints three pictures to illustrate what he is teaching. When John’s disciples ask him why his disciples do not fast he uses a wedding example to explain that now is not the proper time to fast. His disciples (groomsmen) should not be gloomy when it is time to rejoice. But the time will come when they should fast. He talks about new and old wineskins and new and old fabric to illustrate that now a new era has come, and that the new era and the old era should not be combined.
This teaching is recorded again in Mark 2:18-22. The same point is driven home: the old ways of Judaism are obsolete. If the new and the old are combined, both will be ruined! This is similar to his teaching on fasting in Matthew 6 where Jesus concludes by saying that that you cannot serve both God and money. You cannot serve the old ways of Judaism and the new way of God’s kingdom. He is declaring that he has come to bring in the new, and that his new way is God’s way.
Jesus’ teaching on fasting must be very important, for we see that it is recorded again in Luke’s gospel (5:27-39). We are reminded that for the people in Jesus’ day, fasting represented mourning, in this case waiting for God’s kingdom to come. Jesus is saying that that new kingdom has come, and there is therefore (at the moment) no need to mourn. When Jesus declared that he is bringing in the new age and new ways of doing things, he is not saying that the old ways were bad or wrong. He is saying that a better thing has come. This new age is one of power and of hope. There is a new potential for his followers. But we can’t forget that Jesus mentions that there will be a day when they will fast again, when the bridegroom goes away. That day is today.
The church is living in the time between the bridegroom’s temporary presence on earth and his eternal presence with his bride. Jesus wants us to mourn for his presence by fasting. We should not do it to show how holy we are or to gain man’s approval. We should do it secretly, as a sort of secret handshake between us and God. We should continue to do the same things that we would normally do, not acting gloomy or drawing attention to the fact that we are not eating.
