Lent Musings (5 of 5)

Fasting

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s I write, it is the morning of Good Friday. This Lenten season has been incredibly eventful, with so many meaningful activities and situations that have been anything but coincidental. This past Holy Week has been rich with meaning for me as I’ve followed Jesus’ march towards the cross.

But yesterday, Maundy Thursday, was the most powerfully significant of them all for me. As a refresher, this day which is also known as Holy Thursday is the day when Jesus and His friends gather together to celebrate the Passover meal and Jesus reveals that He is about to die, demonstrates His servanthood by washing His follower’s feet, shares the bread and the wine as symbols of His body and blood, declares that he will be betrayed by one of His closest allies, asks His followers to stay up all night with Him and pray, and later gets arrested by the powers and authorities. His buddies can’t quite figure out why He’s so solemn that night as Passover is a time of celebration and partying. It’s a time for the people of Israel to remember their delivery from slavery and they partied hard in remembrance of this. So when Jesus was all heavy and serious with them, it really threw them off. He wanted them to stay awake with Him all night and watch and pray but they were so bloated from their feasting and tired from celebrating that they couldn’t keep their eyes opened and kept falling asleep on Him.

So today we Christians often find ourselves trying to re-create something like these events on Holy Thursday by meeting for Seder suppers, taking communion, washing each other’s feet, and praying all night.

This year I participated in those recreations amongst my family and my friends on the street. At Gateway we served a huge meal and even had to do two sittings due to the size of the crowds. At each sitting I did a very short devotional and a grace before we ate. I said to the crowd that today was Holy Thursday; the day when Jesus was betrayed by one of His closest friends who He was supposed to be able to trust. And that betrayal led to His arrest and His murder. I acknowledged that I suspected everyone in the room knew what it was like to be betrayed by someone whom they should have been able to trust. And that this betrayal has probably led to a lifetime of pain for many folks in the room. But I was able to remind them that Jesus didn’t just die and the story ends there, but that on Easter Sunday He rose again and conquered death and pain. And I said that we too, while we’re on our own journey through pain and towards our own death, have been given this gift of being able to overcome death and suffering and live eternally with God in perfect peace where there is no sickness, betrayal, addiction, or pain.

But here’s where the providential part of the story begins. I then sat with one of my long time street friends, Khan, from Pakistan. I hadn’t seen him in a while and he wasn’t eating much so I asked him why. He proceeded to tell me that he had changed his eating habits because he had just had a heart attack and was in hospital for 3 days and was told that one of his arteries was constricted by 85% and he needed an angioplasty to overcome it.

Well on a personal note, if you’ve been following the news about MS these days, a disease that I have lived with for close to 13 years now, you will know that there is a theory that an angioplasty of particular veins that transport blood in and out of the brain may in fact alleviate the symptoms of MS and vastly improve the quality for life of a person with MS. As an update, during this Lenten season, I have secured a date to be tested as to if I am a candidate for this surgery, and I’ve been freaking out with anxiety as to if the surgery is risky or dangerous or painful. So here I was, sitting in our drop-in with a friend who had just had the surgery, and he was telling me that he was awake during the surgery and it was pain free and he watched TV during the procedure and was up and walking the very next day. When I told him of my own story and possible surgery and the anxiety that I was having over it, he reached out is hand and touched my arm and said, “don’t worry; it’ll be just fine” .This to me was very much God’s way of speaking to me and telling me that he was with me and not to worry. God is so good.

Then I went to another drop-in where my wife works and we did a more traditional Seder supper where we ate traditional Passover foods and did a foot washing ceremony. This was so very moving and again, I felt the presence of God. But we couldn’t stay for the whole program as it was getting late and my 7-yar old daughter was with us and she needed to go to bed.  So she and I left and my wife stayed behind. On the way home my daughter was lamenting not being able to do the foot washing so we decided to wash each other’s feet before she went to sleep.

So we filled a bowl full of warm water, added fragrant soap, and washed each other’s feet. She knelt and massaged my feet with her little hands and took great care in drying them. Then I did the same for her. The intimacy that comes from washing another person’s feet, and having your own feet washed, especially when that person is your own daughter, is indescribable. I was overcome with emotion and again, felt God’s presence near to us.

But later, once she was asleep, reality came crashing down around me. I had tried to stay up late to pray but I too was so full of food and groggy from the pace of the day that I went to sleep even earlier than usual; waking up today and remembering that I too am one of the people who would have let Jesus down that night and possibly even denied Him if I were in that position.

Fasting (Matt.6:16-18)

So what does this last ‘act of righteousness’ of Lent, fasting, have to do with anything? Well, it is yet another thing we can do through Lent to purify ourselves from the bits of junk that get caught up in our systems. Saying no to a food or a habit helps us stay focused on the things that are important. For me, the concept is that every time I go to reach for that particular food or participate in that habit, that I abstain from that and focus on speaking to God instead.

And again, while I was a miserable failure in most of the things that I tried to fast from, I managed to stay true to 2 things. One was my fast from facebook, which sounds pathetic I know, but is something I can spend a significant amount of time at. The other was a fast from shaving; also pathetic sounding I know.

The shaving concept came about out of a conversation amongst the guys who work at Gateway. We decided to fast from shaving for several reasons;

1.    We’d be in solidarity with each other during Lent

2.    we’d be in solidarity with our friends on the street who, while many do in fact shave, they do not have the accessible conveniences of life that the rest of us have

3.    It would be an act of non-conformity.

4.    We’d be always conscious of the beard that is hard to ignore on our faces which would hopefully remind us of the season and the purpose of it all.

5.    We’d be able to shed ourselves of the weight of the beard in a symbolic way on Easter Sunday.

6.    We’d look cool with beards (Though for me, cool has been left behind and I currently look like I live in the woods somewhere)

For the most part, the shaving experiment has actually been a successful one for all of those reasons; especially that of now here on Good Friday, desperately wanting to shave and longing for Easter as a result.

As a final word on Lent, not that this reminder is necessary at this time, this season is a very long and sluggish time. The journey towards Easter is a struggle to leave behind the things that don’t matter and to focus on the things that do.

So when Easter does come, and it’s just around the corner, let us not forget that it is not just a one day celebration. Jesus is alive and is with us and reigns as the King of Kings. Let us, as Christians, dance and party and celebrate for the next 50 days of Easter as we journey towards Pentecost Sunday in 7 weeks. Let us not forget Easter for a very long time. He is risen!!!

Until then, I cannot wait for Easter Sunday.

Dion

 

Writer: The Concise Oxford is written by Dion Oxford who, along with his wife, Erinn, and daughter, Cate, live in Toronto, Canada and are committed to journeying alongside people in the margins of society. He and Erinn have spent a combined 30 years working amongst folks who are living on the streets of Toronto. Dion is a recovering Salvationist who currently worships at an evangelical Anglican church but still works for The Salvation Army at the Gateway, a shelter for men experiencing homelessness. He and his wife see the solution to homelessness as the church taking seriously the two great commandments of loving God and loving our neighbour. He likes to read, write, fly kites, cycle long distances, watch TV, play in his band and hang out with his friends.

2 Comments to Lent Musings (5 of 5)

1. I’ve been away from The Rubicon for sometime now. You’ve reminded me in a powerful way why I desperately need community, this is an amazing and very moving post. Thanks my friend.

   Peter E.
Peter Eason on July 22nd, 2010

2. Hey Peter,
   As always, it’s really great to hear from you. Thanks for taking the time to read this and then pass on your encouragement. It means a lot to me.
   I really hope you’re well.
   For others out there who have read this series or have an interest in my journey with MS, I have just returned from having the surgery in Costa Rica that I mentioned in this piece and have blogged my entire experience here at http://www.msliberationtheology.blogspot.com
   Peace

   Dion
Dion Oxford on July 23rd, 2010

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