“The Practice of Fasting” by Addison Hodges Hart (from Taking Jesus at His Word: What Jesus Really Said in the Sermon on the Mount)

Addison Hodges Hart’s new book Taking Jesus at His Word: What Jesus Really Said in the Sermon on the Mount is still a few months away from publication (June, 2012; available to preorder now). After reading his chapter on “The Practice of Fasting,” though, we couldn’t resist sharing a sneak preview of the book on Ash Wednesday.

(Please note that since the following excerpt has not yet been published, it may still be subject to changes before its release.) 

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Matthew 6:16“And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

In Jewish practice, fasting and prayer went very much together. Jews fasted twice weekly, a custom picked up by early Christians. The traditional days for fasting, from the apostolic age onward, were Wednesday (the day on which Jesus was said to have been betrayed) and Friday (the day of his crucifixion). Jesus here gives no specific weekdays for fasting, but he assumes that his disciples will continue the practice. Fasting was thought to give greater intensity to prayer. In the spirit of the influential passage in the book of Isaiah, fasting was related as well to the needs of the poor and to almsgiving:

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a man to humble himself ? Is it to bow down his head like a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, Here I am. If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. (Isa. 58:4-10)

Taking Jesus at His Word

With this passage, composed some six centuries before, we can glimpse the mind of Jesus as well. Just as Jesus condemned mere liturgy and religious posturing among the religious leaders of his day, Isaiah condemns those same things here. It was expected practice on special days of fasting to look drawn and haggard, to pull out the sackcloth and ashes, and to make a display out of the whole thing. The prophet points out the incongruity between the outward religious show on such holy days and the sort of quarreling and violence engaged in by the same persons the other days of the year. Instead, says the prophet, what God desires is righteous action in caring for the needy, the homeless, the hungry, and the oppressed. Real fasting is not just giving up food, and it certainly isn’t about showing off one’s best sackcloth wardrobe and fashionably ashen face; true fasting involves correcting injustice and acting compassionately. If you deal with those latter things, God will come to you.

There isn’t much difference here between that age and its religiosity and, say, the sight of a wealthy cutthroat of a Catholic or Episcopalian businessman who attends church on Ash Wednesday, gets his forehead marked with the traditional cross of ashes, noticeably fasts from meat and dessert, and goes about the rest of the day sporting the ashes on his face as a sign of his devotion. His business practices may be vicious most of the year, just barely honest, utterly dishonest, savagely capitalistic, and/or injurious to the less advantaged near and far, but his devotion on Ash Wednesday is heartfelt and even a touch sentimental. It makes him feel good; he gets to demonstrate his faith. Perhaps he’s a member of Opus Dei and attends St. Patrick’s Cathedral, or perhaps he’s a member of the Vestry of St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue. Perhaps he gave a fat check for the new pipe organ recently, and the organ has a big brass plaque with his name engraved on it. He’s renowned as a benefactor. The message of Isaiah to this man, and Jesus’ message as well, would be that none of this can be called true religion at all. True religion would be the transformation of the man himself, and that would be visible in how he conducted his business in the future. The story of Scrooge rests entirely on Jesus’ teachings, and those of Isaiah as well. The sign of the reality of this man’s religion would not be his religious activities but the practical details of his workday living. The other things — church attendance, the Ash Wednesday service, the brass plaque on the organ — may all have their place, and perhaps they might even suggest something worthy about the man. But how he lives and works, and not his expressions of piety, are what really and lastingly matter for the disciple of Jesus.

Jesus tells us that fasting — like almsgiving and prayer — is not something to be paraded. We are to keep our faces washed, and especially of those ashes after an Ash Wednesday service, and to put away the sackcloth. No one is supposed to know how “religious” we are. Real fasting means we give from what we have and learn to curb our appetites. Real fasting may mean eating less expensive food, not going to the swankest restaurants, and not being a practical narcissist. It may mean not buying the most elaborate cell phone on the market, the biggest car, the best entertainment system — maybe going without some of these altogether. Real fasting, especially in our consumerist culture, means to stand apart from the unthinking point of view that we are what we buy. We may need to reduce our time given over to entertainment and self-gratification in order to have time for others’ needs.

Fasting is not strictly a matter of food and drink. It has to do with how we eat, certainly; but also with how we travel, dress, furnish our homes, shop, are entertained, and otherwise pamper ourselves. What we save from cutting corners — from the practice of mindful fasting — may amaze us. From those saved resources we might find we can give more generously than we ever could before for the sake of those whose poverty would also amaze us, if we were to notice it.

Click here to preorder Addison Hodges Hart’s Taking Jesus at His Word: What Jesus Really Said in the Sermon on the Mount. 

“Entrusting Ourselves to the One Who Judges Justly” by Darrin W. Snyder Belousek

Darrin W. Snyder Belousek

The holiday season is a time when we remember the angels’ message of “peace on earth, good will toward men.” In his new book Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church, Darrin W. Snyder Belousek carries the angels’ song all the way to the cross, as he critically examines traditional atonement theology and offers a nonviolent, biblical alternative to the theory of penal substitution. Beginning with Paul’s message of the cross and the Gospel narratives of Jesus, Belousek develops a comprehensive vision of justice and peace in light of the cross — a vision that connects theology and ethics, salvation and mission. 

In this post, Belousek lays out the problem that is at the heart of his new book — can we trust a God who “left his own Son derelict as he faced powers of darkness and death”? — as he sketches the biblical outline of a different way to understand Christ’s saving work on the cross. 

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Can God be trusted?

In a time of economic woe, political turmoil, and continual war, most of us sense a deep need to entrust ourselves to a power that is not only bigger than ourselves but is also able and willing to secure our very selves against powers that threaten to overwhelm us. As Christians, we are to put our ultimate trust not in the economy (money), government (power), or military (weapons), but in the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12:2).

Why, though, should we — or anyone — trust God? In the midst of “earth’s lamentation,” it is far from obvious that “Love is Lord of heaven and earth,” as the song says. What answer, then, do we as Christians have to offer in response to this pressing question?

The cross of Christ is the center of Christian faith. It is the crux of the gospel, the message of reconciliation with God in Christ (2 Cor 5:18-21; Col 1:20). Now, if the message of the cross is to be at all credible to the world, then it must carry the indubitable implication that God himself is trustworthy. After all, why be reconciled to God if God can’t be trusted? So, in world desperate for security, the church’s preaching of the cross should persuasively answer the pressing question “Whom can we trust?” with the only possible answer — trust the God revealed in Christ crucified.

The standard account of the cross within evangelical Christianity — penal substitution — runs roughly as follows: God, who is holy and just, cannot tolerate sin and so must judge sin by punishing sinners with death; but God, who is also merciful, provides sinners an escape from divine retribution by ordaining Christ’s death as punishment in their place.

According to this account, Christ at the cross did not merely experience the God-forsakenness of sin on our behalf (Mark 15:34), the reality that God judges sin by “giving us up” to sin, by leaving us free to choose sin and suffer the consequences (Rom 1:24-32). No, God literally forsook Christ — turned his back on him — in order to judge Christ in our place. As the late evangelical preacher John Stott put it in his classic work, The Cross of Christ, Jesus’ cry from the cross was “a cry of real dereliction,” such that at the cross “an actual and dreadful separation took place between the Father and the Son.”

Atonement, Justice, and Peace

This account prompts two questions, theological and pastoral.

First, theological. As the Nicene Creed testifies, the Son of God became human, suffered, and died — all “for us and for our salvation.” What good could the Son’s solidarity with us through the incarnation accomplish for our salvation, however, if at the extreme point of the Son’s solidarity with sinners, when he dies for us at the cross, God breaks solidarity with him? If God alone can save us and God has sent us a Savior, yet God actually separates himself from the Savior at the crucial moment when the Savior is to accomplish salvation, are we actually saved? Can one trust this salvation?

Second, pastoral. What assurance is it to us to know that God, in order to judge sin and save sinners, forsook his own Son? For if God can abandon his own Son at the cross, what assurance do we have that God won’t abandon us in our time of trial? If the cross shows that God left his own Son derelict as he faced powers of darkness and death, what assurance do we have that God won’t leave us derelict to face peril and sword? Can anyone trust this God?

Penal substitution, precisely because it understands the cross as that which separates God from Christ, generates uncertainty concerning the cross as that which reconciles us to God in Christ. The standard account of the cross, then, raises doubts about God and salvation.

We need to reorient our thinking about the cross. The cross of Christ, Paul says, is at once the disclosure of God’s justice, the demonstration of God’s faithfulness, and the dispensation of God’s grace (Rom 3:21-26). Our interpretation of the cross must avoid pitting God’s justice against God’s grace or God’s faithfulness. To put it another way, we need to understand how it is that God is “for us” in Christ at the cross without diminishing the truth that God is “with us” in Christ throughout the incarnation, even and especially at the cross. After all, as Paul says, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19).

Let’s look at the cross from another perspective, that of Christ himself. “Christ suffered for [us],” Peter says, “leaving [us] an example, so that [we] should follow in his steps” (1 Pet 2:21). What was Christ’s example? In the face of hostile powers, Christ did not return evil for evil, “but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly” (1 Pet 2:23). How could Christ, innocently suffering and facing death, renounce retaliation against his enemies and instead entrust himself to God’s justice? Because God did not break solidarity with Christ. Because God did not forsake his own. Because God is faithful.

The faith of Christ at the cross, vindicated by God through the resurrection, demonstrates that God is trustworthy. The good news of the cross is that we, too, can entrust ourselves to God. The cross and resurrection declare, Paul says so powerfully, not that God abandoned Christ to save sinners, but rather that God is with us and for us in Christ no matter who or what might be against us — and that nothing, not even the greatest evil, can separate us from God in Christ (Rom 8:31-38). With unshakable assurance of God’s salvation, we can follow Christ’s example of ultimate trust in God’s justice — and so, like Christ, we can love our enemies and leave vengeance to God.

Thanks be to God!

Click here to order Darrin W. Snyder Belousek’s Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church. 

Terrorism and Wolterstorff’s “Justice in Love”

Justice in Love

Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University, Nicholas Wolterstorff is a respected Christian philosopher who has spent a great deal of time thinking about justice and love. His most recent work offers thoughts on how love and justice can relate harmoniously, even though they often seem to be at odds with each other. This is especially important for us to consider as we deal with such high-level moral dilemmas as those surrounding the war on terror and the bringing of terrorists like Osama bin Laden to justice.

In light of these thorny issues, we need to ask ourselves a number of questions: How do we show love even as we carry out justice? How do we deal with memories of the injustices we have suffered? Does forgiveness violate justice? Should we use injustice to bring about a great good; i.e., should we use torture in order to find terrorists? In Justice in Love Wolterstorff wrestles with difficult and complex questions like these and explains how we can carry out justice in love without compromising either one.

We recommend his book as a timely resource for thinking critically about current events and our personal and national response to them. Visit our website to order Justice in Love, and click here to read the introduction.

We also recommend these books about responding to terrorism and violence:

The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World
by Miroslav Volf

The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God
by Lee Griffith

Finally, we recommend these books in light of the need for Muslims and Christians to pursue love and justice jointly in a world so often divided along the lines of faith:

A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on Loving God and Neighbor
by Miroslav Volf, Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, Melissa Yarrington

Islam: A Short Guide to the Faith
by Roger Allen and Shawkat M. Toorawa

Living the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Debbie Head

Debbie Head works in the marketing department at Eerdmans and handles many things Web-related. When playing Two Truths and a Lie, she declares her love for snorkeling, confesses her weakness for Indian food, and pretends she can sleep in until noon.

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Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday. Today, thousands of volunteers around the United States will take a “day on, not a day off” to serve their neighborhood and nation in memory of the great civil rights leader who dreamed of a better society. This service is a fitting response to the incredible legacy left by Martin Luther King Jr.

When I visited the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit for the first time last summer, I was reminded of just how long and difficult the African American struggle for freedom and justice in the United States has been, and how I have benefited from it. The exhibit’s opening film documented much of this painful history including the abysmal journey from African to American soil and the formative changes that shaped them into a new and distinct people.

As an American who was raised in postcolonial Africa and has since lived there as an adult, I have wrestled with my identity when living in cultures that were not my own. I have also listened to young African friends wrestle with theirs as urban, westernized Africans. And so, I was struck by the film’s portrayal of the deep, personal loss experienced by the people who arrived in the slave ships—they lost the freedom to retain who they were. As I watched the film, I sensed the magnitude of that crisis in a new way and felt a greater level of respect for their accomplishment as a people. Together, they created and held on to a new cultural identity, and their struggle through the civil rights movement to secure equal dignity and justice for that identity secured my freedom to value and hold on to my own.

The Beatitudes

So much more than the freedom to be ourselves and to be friends with those who differ from us came from the hard work and service of people who lived before Dr. King. He followed in their footsteps with his sacrificial dedication to bring liberty and justice for all.

Who else, then, should we remember and honor through service today? Who else gave their lives for the dream that Dr. King expressed? Carol Boston Weatherford and Tim Ladwig’s beautiful children’s book, The Beatitudes: From Slavery to Civil Rights, illustrates the Sermon on the Mount with images of some of those heroes whom we should also remember alongside Dr. King today.

	Richard Allen organized the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first black denomination.
	Harriet Tubman led countless slaves out of bondage.
	The U.S. Colored Troops gave their lives in the Civil War.
	Mary McLeod Bethune founded Bethune-Cookman college.
	Rosa Parks made a public statement.
	Ruby Bridges had the courage to be the change.
	Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned freedom and justice in America.

These men and women gave more than a day of service for freedom and justice. They gave up their comfort, their security, their energy — even, sometimes, their lives — for a cause that still needs to be served.

As an average citizen, I have often wondered how I can ever contribute to a cause as grand as that of “freedom and justice.” I am not a civil rights activist or a lawyer. I am not a dynamic speaker or a famous author. I may never start a college or lead a demonstration. In fact, I probably never will.

Over time, I have come to realize that I can only play a part in any cause, and that although my role may be small, that’s okay — as long as I play it. So, today, I can tell you about this little book that teaches children about justice, care, beauty, and the long, courageous struggle for racial equality in America. Tomorrow, I can give people who are different from me the freedom to be themselves. I can even be their friend. And every day thereafter I can live with less so that I have more left over to share with those who play their own role. In any case, I am daily given the opportunity to shoulder my God-given responsibility to serve.

Martin Luther King Jr. and many others served in memorable ways. Hopefully you and I will follow their example. My own goal is not to let myself become discouraged when I fail or my efforts appear insignificant (or I feel complacent), but each day to make the small choices to serve that together could add up to a lifetime of service. Perhaps today is a day for you to remember your goals as well and to renew your commitment to serve as one of the thousands across the United States.

On Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church, and World

Nicholas Wolterstorff

Nicholas Wolterstorff is professor emeritus of philosophical theology at Yale University and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. His many books include Lament for a Son, Justice in Love (coming May 2011), and Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church, and World (to be released this month). Nicholas reflects here on what led him to write about liturgy, justice, church, and world and how attending to these concerns shows respect to God and persons.

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I have never been a thinker and writer of the classical German sort who, at the age of twenty-five, has the vision of a “system” that will take thirteen volumes to complete; he hopes that the completion of the last volume will roughly coincide with his death. (Of course, I caricature a bit!) Issues have always come to me.

Issues of justice and injustice came to me when, in 1975, I attended a conference in South Africa, and when, in 1978, I attended a conference on Palestinian rights; I found myself forced to think and write about justice. Issues of liturgy came to me when, in the 1960s, I was asked to serve on the Liturgical Revision Committee of my denomination; I found myself forced to think and write about liturgy. Issues of church came to me when, for example, I found myself asking, in the turbulent ’60s, just why it was that women could not be ordained; I found myself forced to think and write about the church. Issues of world came to me when, for example, I became acquainted with various Christian businessmen who were asking whether it was still possible to infuse faith into business; I found myself forced to think and write about economic and political matters in the world.

Hearing the Call

Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church, and World is a collection of the popular and semipopular essays that emerged over the years as I responded to these challenges that came to me. It’s not a collection of all of them, by any means, only of those that remain relevant.

The collection would not exist were it not for the work of the two editors, Mark Gornik and Greg Thompson. For some six years they had been nudging and urging me to put together such a collection. Finally I said, “OK, you give me suggestions as to which essays you think remain relevant and suggestions as to how to organize them.” The book is the result of their prodding and of their suggestions.

Along the way readers will find explanations of how these areas of concern fit together. It really is one book with four topics rather than four books bound together. In each case, I was responding to a call; and in each case, that call was, at bottom, the call to pay due respect to God or human beings for their worth. Celebrating the liturgy is a way of paying due respect to God for God’s worth. Treating our fellow human beings justly is a way of paying due respect to them for their worth. Ordaining women is a way of paying due respect to them for their gifts and commitment. Seeing to it that one’s employees have a decent place in which to work is a way of paying them due respect. In turn, paying due respect to God and human beings for their worth is an indispensable component of shalom. This book is about honoring God and persons for what is good and worthy in them, and about the contribution that such honoring makes to shalom.