A Biblical Case for Lenten Sacrifice

Something I often see on social media during this time of year are posts about people “giving up lent for lent.” There’s a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) mockery of Lent as unBiblical, unbeneficial, and a mere man-made tradition. I believe this demonstrates more of a lack of familiarity with both the history of the Church and the nature of scripture than it does a modern transcendence over and above our past.

I believe that this lack of comprehension as to why such a season is important actually begins with a lack of appreciation for the purpose of fasting. Fasting is seen by many modern Christians as being a way of drawing near to God. We may only fast when something has gone wrong or we have some crisis that we desire an immediate answer to. Biblically, however, fasting is an acknowledgement that one is far off from God. The manner in which one drew near to God, Biblically speaking, was via the burnt offering. According to Strong’s Hebrew Concordance, the feminine noun עֹלָה has to do with “that which goes up.” We may consider here the bowls of incense that rise up to God in Rev. 5:8. A sacrifice is must be set ablaze with fire as warmth corresponds to intimacy. Consider why St. Peter in his denial of our Lord went to a firepit when leaving the Lord’s Supper; he was pursuing his own warmth/intimacy apart from the Memorial sacrifice that was the Supper.

I must thus assess the Nazirite vow, a time of fasting associated with sacrifice (worship). Numbers 6 informs us that the Nazirite “shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skin” (Num. 6:4), “All the days of their Nazirite vow no razor shall come upon the head” (Num. 6:5), and that when the time of their vow is over, “Then the nazirites shall shave the consecrated head at the entrance of the tent of meeting and shall take the hair from the consecrated head and put it on the fire under the sacrifice of well-being.” (Num. 6:18). They actually make a number of sacrifices at the end of the vow, but what’s evident here is that their drawing near to God is a result of the fast rather than part of it. They avoid wine and the cutting of their hair in order to acknowledge how far they are from Him.

We see a number of Nazirites throughout Holy Scripture; Samson, Samuel, Elijah, John the Baptist, and our Lord Himself. This is why Christ says “I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” (Matt. 26:29). He fasted from the fruit of the vine because He was to to be the sin offering (2 Cor. 5:21). Through His sacrifice, He became the burnt offering that ascended to the Heavens. He came into this world as was mistook for a monster, a terror, as alien to us. We mistook him for the marginal and banished Him to death for it. But Christ is the tree of life at the center of reality, at the peak of the mountain. This is precisely why Lent has been practiced for nearly 2,000 years. In Lent, we confess that we were the marginal, the gargoyle, the terror, and the monster. We fast in order to ultimately feast with Him. We are sharing in his fast prior to the cross, because “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5). We are re-centering Him in our lives by associating our annual cycle with Him, by conforming our calendar to Him, and by shaping how we approach food and our bodies according to Him. To paraphrase theologian Christopher West, the yes of a man who cannot say no to himself means nothing. We learn to say no to our stomach in order to learn how to say no to sin. Lent is bodily and seasonal training for how to not only fast, but to feast with reverential awe.

The culmination of the Lenten season thus finds itself in Easter Sunday, now allowing us to partake in His resurrection bodily ourselves right now, as He brings us from glory to glory. We enter into a period of penance, fasting, and mourning in anticipation of the coming resurrection, glory, and splendour.