Fast Break (Mark 2:18-22)

“We shake our heads at the Pharisees – and rightly so – but it will serve us to recognize how difficult this issue was not only for them, but even for the Twelve. Not just the issue of fasting, but of ritual versus relationship. Look at the book of Acts. The Christians struggled with this.

The problem persisted after the Apostles. The Didache is an important book. It’s one of the earliest treatises that collected the teaching of the Apostles telling the church how to be the church.

On the issue of fasting it commands that Christians must not do what the hypocrite Pharisees do, fasting Mondays and Thursdays. No, don’t do that! Instead, you need to fast Wednesdays and Fridays! And don’t pray like the hypocrites do. Instead pray the Lord’s prayer…but you must pray it three times a day! Already there was a ceremonial rigidness trying to take hold.”