The First Day of Lent
Jonah 3.1-10 + Joel 2:12-19 + Matthew 6:16-21
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
As the season of Lent begins, we hear three texts of Scripture, and all three mention fasting. In the first lesson, Jonah preaches God’s threat of punishment to the heathen of Nineveh. “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Because of their evil ways and violence, the Lord would destroy the city. But within this threat of punishment in a glimmer of the gospel. He could have destroyed Nineveh on that same day, but the fact that the Lord gave them forty days’ notice indicated that He wanted them to repent. In a move that Jonah did not expect, that’s exactly what the Ninevites do. They believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least. They believed God’s word spoken by the prophet. To show that heartfelt belief and demonstrate it outwardly, they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth. Fasting—the abstaining from food for a fixed period—and wearing itchy sackcloth were outward signs that they were sorry for their sins, that they believed they had aroused God’s wrath, and that they were pleading with Him for forgiveness.
In today’s epistle—which, yes, isn’t from a New Testament epistle, but occupies the epistle’s spot in the Divine Service—the prophet Joel speaks the word of the LORD to Israel. The Lord had punished Israel by sending an army of locusts among them. Joel described the destruction in the first chapter of his prophecy. “What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten; And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten” (Joel 1:4). God sent this punishment upon Israel so that they would, like Nineveh, acknowledge their evil ways, turn from them, and turn to God. He says, “Now therefore,’ says the LORD, ‘Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” The Lord commanded them to fast, to weep, and mourn their sins, all of which are outward manifestations of what He commanded first when He said, “Turn to me with all your heart.” His command is to repent, as if He were saying, “Admit your sin. Acknowledge that your sins deserve My wrath. Then turn to Me for grace, mercy, and forgiveness.”
In both cases, fasting was an outward, physical way of showing what was going on in the heart. You don’t eat when you mourn the death of a loved one because grief occupies your heart. How much more would true contrition—grief over one’s sins and what your sins deserve—occupy the heart and drive out any thought of food? For the Ninevites who hear Jonah’s preaching and the Israelites who heard Joel’s, fasting showed the state of their hearts as contrite, humble, and believing.
But the hearts weren’t just contrite over their sins and fearful of God’s just judgment. Their hearts also hoped in the Lord’s mercy. The king of Nineveh says in his proclamation, “Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?” Joel tells Israel, “So rend your hearts and not your garments; Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm. Who knows if He will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him—a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God?” The Ninevites and Israelites humble themselves on account of their sins and in expectation that God would be merciful. There is contrition over their sins and there is faith that God forgives sins.
It may not sound like to our ears, though. The king of Nineveh says, “Who can tell if God will turn and relent?” and Joel says, “Who knows if He will turn and relent?” They are uncertain, but not of forgiveness. How often does God promise throughout Holy Scripture to forgive the one who confesses his sins? David writes in the fifty-first psalm, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart—These, O God, You will not despise” (51:17). The Lord says in Isaiah 66:2, “But on this one will I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, And who trembles at My word.” He says in Ezekiel 18[:32], “I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,’ says the Lord God. ‘Therefore turn and live!” The Ninevites and Joel do not doubt that God is merciful and will forgive their sins. They express hope that God, in His great mercy, will also turn away the temporal punishments He was sending on them. He did that for the Ninevites. “God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented of the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.” The Lord relented and removed the locusts from Israel, sending them grain and new wine and oil. God doesn’t always remove the temporal punishments for sin. When He lets them remain, it is to exercise of the faithful, as when David and Bathsheba’s son conceived in adultery died. But in these two cases, God relented and turned the worldly punishment aside. Nineveh was not destroyed at the time. Neither was Israel.
For the Ninevites and the Israelites of Joel’s day, the proclaimed fasts were public. The entire people had to participate. In the gospel lesson, Jesus speaks of fasting, but He isn’t speaking of public, mandatory fast. He speaks of private fasting, which is done for the sake of discipling the flesh. In Jesus’ day, the customary fasts had been publicized. Men would disfigure their faces. They render their faces unrecognizable so that others will recognize that they’re fasting. Their fasting is not to God, not to put aside the flesh for the sake of meditating on God’s Word. It’s a dog and pony show. Jesus says, “they have their reward.” They fast to gain recognition, and the recognition of man is all they get. But the disciples, when they fast, are to fast to God, denying themselves food for a period so that they might discipline the sinful flesh and concentrate on contemplating God’s word. God sees this fast because He sees the heart and will openly reward the one who fasts in such a way, not with riches or recognition, but with the spiritual blessings of Christ.
With all this in mind, today we begin the Lenten fast. It is public in that the church calls us to fast during these forty days, but it is private in that the outward signs of fasting are not required. The Lent fast is to “Rend your hearts and not your garments; Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm.” It is not required that you abstain from certain foods, drinks, or pleasures. That can be done, of course, because the bodily exercise of fasting disciplines the flesh, tell it ‘No,’ and strengthens us to reign it in better. St. Paul tells Timothy, “Bodily exercise profits a little,” so if you are moved to discipline the flesh to devote more time to reading God’s word, prayer, and the like, do it. Christ says your Father in heaven will reward you. But Paul goes on, “but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come” (1 Ti 4:8). The outward fasting should only be done to God, for the sake of disciplining the flesh, not to gain the recognition of others, nor to earn anything from God.
While fasting and other bodily disciplines can be beneficial, the Lenten fast should chiefly be a fast of the heart, in which we are more conscientious to exercise ourselves in God’s word. We do this by mediating on God’s commandments, to see how we have done what He forbids and fallen short of the perfect love that He requires of us. Our meditation on God’s law shows us our sins—of deed, word, and thought—so that we admit our sins, acknowledge that we deserve God’s wrath on account of our sins, and then trust the mercy He promises us for Jesus’ sake. We mediate on God’s law so that we may drink more deeply from His gospel that He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. It is not possible to recognize the benefits of Christ unless we understand our evils (Ap II:50). Such meditation on the commandments also shows us how we can amend our lives, while in the meditation on the gospel God strengthens our faith, raises us up as new men, and gives us His Holy Spirit so that we can joyfully and dauntlessly fight against sin and be victorious over it.
Bodily exercises such as fasting profit a little in this. But the fast of the heart, which is contrition and faith, sorrow over our sins followed by the joy of the gospel, and the newness of life which fights against sin by the power of the gospel, this is the fast we embark upon once again. Amen.
May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
