The Three Most Important Relationships
Imagine that you are sitting in a chapel and a memorial service has just started.[i] There are faces in the crowd you recognize. Coworkers. Former classmates. Friends. Family members. Neighbors. A minister strides to the podium and reads the eulogy. Suddenly you realize this isn’t just any funeral—it’s your funeral. The minister indicates that several will be sharing thoughts about you this morning: a family member, a close friend, a coworker, and someone you worshipped with. What would you want them to say about you? What would you have hoped to accomplish in life? It’s likely that your hopes, regrets, or thoughts will revolve around these three areas: the quality of your relationship with others, the depth and authenticity of your relationship with God, and a perspective on material things which enabled you to be generous toward others.
This is the triad on which our lives are built.
They are the three sides of the triangle of life.
They are the content of our most inspiring dreams, our deepest regrets, and our greatest accomplishments.
Life is rooted in our relationship with others, with God, and with things
Jesus on the Three Important Relationships
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount focuses on these same three relationships:
- First, Jesus examines our relationships with others. He takes up our anger management issues, feuds that take place between us and our family and friends, legal disputes we have with people in the marketplace, marital struggles, the way we lie to others, and the sticky problem of relating to the insensitive and abusive people in our lives (Matt. 5:21-48).
- Second, Jesus explores our relationship with God. He discusses the way that flashy and public religious acts cannot take the place of humble and private spiritual disciplines, the myths we mistakenly cling to when it comes to prayer, the fundamental role that prayer plays around the globe, and the ingredients of an authentic spiritual life (Matt. 6:1-18).
- Finally, Jesus examines our relationship with material things. He reveals the transient nature of the material possessions which claim so much of our devotion, the dark side of a life lived in pursuit of things, how to alleviate the anxiety which accompanies living in a culture of consumerism, and a perspective that puts everything from cash to cars to computers in their proper place (Matt. 6:19-34).
Just as Moses ascended a mount and delivered the Ten Commandments, so Jesus ascends the Mount to deliver his commandments.[ii] Just as the Ten Commandments focused on our relationship with God (you shall have no other gods before me…), our relationship with one another (you shall not murder…), and our relationship with things (you shall not covet your neighbor’s house…), so Jesus’ commandments here focused on the very same triad.
Attachment and Detachment
In Matt. 6 Jesus uses three “acts of righteousness” to further discuss these relationships: 1″Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. 2Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others…5And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others…16And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others.” (Matt. 6:1-16 ESV)
While Jesus cautions against the abuses of giving, praying, and fasting, he ultimately urges us to be characterized by the appropriate practice of all three. As Jesus encapsulates what we might call “the spiritual life,” he shows that it consists of three basic practices: praying, giving, and fasting.
The first two, praying and giving, are habits of attachment.
By praying, we focus on attaching ourselves to God. We gain intimacy with God. We connect with God. We take an active step to draw closer to God. Praying is an act of attachment to God.
By giving, we focus on attaching ourselves to others. We connect with others. We show love for others. We take an active step to draw closer to them. Giving is an act of attachment to other people.
But fasting is fundamentally different. While praying and giving are acts of attachment, fasting is an act of detachment. In its broadest sense, when we fast, we detach ourselves from material things that interfere with our increasing attachment to God and to others. We let go of material things, like food, but even of immaterial things, like goals and agendas, which compete with our attachment to God and to others.
Jesus, Detachment, and God
The role of fasting as detachment is seen in Jesus’ life: 1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'” (Matt. 4:1-4 ESV).
Mark Buchanan writes, “The forty days without food, far from weakening Him at the moment of encounter with the devil, actually strengthened Him for it. Jesus was in peak condition, a fighter who had been training hard for forty days straight.”[iii] Fasting was an essential way in which Jesus strengthened himself regarding his attachments to God and to others.
The devil tells Jesus to stop fasting: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” We are told that this is a test, a temptation. The real nature of the temptation becomes clearer by looking at Jesus’ response. Jesus quotes from the book of Deuteronomy. These words were spoken by Moses to the Israelites before they entered the Promised Land. The words were a reminder of the hunger they had experienced during their travel over the wilderness. The words were a reminder of the purpose of that hunger: 2And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deut. 8:2-3 ESV).
The Israelites involuntarily fasted as they crossed the wilderness. God forced them to fast in order to test their hearts, to humble them, and to teach them that people do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
For the same reason, Jesus voluntarily fasted. He gave up food for forty days and nights in order to test his heart, to humble himself, and to teach himself and us that people do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
The Devil wants Jesus and us to trust that life is about meeting our personal needs, about turning stones to bread. It’s about being comfortable. It’s about being free from pain.
Jesus, however, makes this claim—people do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. In other words, life comes from feeding on God. Jesus put it this way in Jn. 4:34: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me…” That’s living, Jesus says. To hunger and thirst after God.
Leon Morris writes, “The deep famine of the world is a famine, known or unknown, for the word of God . . . The human person has hidden hungers, deep cravings, a psychic yearning for more. What is this more? Every word that comes pouring out of God’s mouth.”[iv]
And it is fasting which best teaches us this. We realize, in the midst of fasting, that our spirit hungers and thirsts for God even more than our stomach hungers and thirsts for bread. Fasting reminds us that happiness and life only come by eating God’s word, by pursuing God himself.
Thus Jesus fasts, he detaches himself from something material, and that enables him to even better attach himself to God.
Jesus, Detachment and Others
But fasting not only improves attachment to God. In the rest of this text, we find fasting improving Jesus’ attachment to others. 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple 6and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.'” 7Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'” 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'” 11Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. (Matt. 4:5-11 ESV).
The first test is very private in nature: turning stones to bread. Only the devil would see. But the second and third tests are very public in nature. One takes place at the peak of the temple and its view of the public courts. The other takes place in the presence of all the kingdoms and nations of the world. And if the first encounter tests Jesus’ attachment to God, the second and third encounters test Jesus’ attachment to others. How does Jesus wish to posture himself in relationship to the Jewish people at the temple and to the inhabitants of the kingdoms of the world? Does Jesus wish to position himself as a spectacular worker of the astounding, amazing crowds by diving from the temple and being saved at the last second by God’s angels? Does Jesus wish to position himself as a dictator and tyrant who powerfully rules every human kingdom on earth? The second and third temptations have to do with the nature of Jesus’ attachment to others.
And as in the first encounter, so in these encounters, it is fasting which strengthens Jesus’ attachment. He not only lets go of food, but he lets go of any personal inclinations to be seen as spectacular or powerful. He not only removes food from his physical diet, but he removes selfishness from his relational diet. And this, in the end, helps ensure that his attachment to us remains strong.
Detachment
Seen in its broadest perspective, this is why Jesus points to the three practices of praying, giving, and fasting. It is not enough to engage in practices and habits of commission like praying and giving. We also need a discipline of omission like fasting. Through fasting we let go of anything and everything which may interfere with our attachment to God and to others.
Often this fasting focuses on material things, including food. But it can also focus on immaterial things. In detachment, we identify the appetites which compete with our attachment to God and to others, and we deny those appetites. We starve those appetites. We say “No” to them so that we might better say “Yes” to God and to others.
Fasting from food is an important form of detachment and the literal focus of Jesus’ teaching here. How do we get started in fasting? Start by fasting from one meal and spend that meal-time drawing near to God. Then, consider a 24 hour fast. Miss two meals. For instance, eat supper tonight, then skip breakfast and lunch tomorrow. That’s a 24 hour fast. Spend the time you would normally spend eating in intentional practices that build your connection with God or with others.
But detachment and fasting take other forms as well. Adele Calhoun writes this:[v] “Fasting is an opportunity to lay down an appetite—an appetite for food, for media, for shopping. This act of self-denial may not seem huge—it’s just a meal or a trip to the mall—but it brings us face to face with the hunger at the core of our being. Fasting exposes how we try to keep empty hunger at bay and gain a sense of well-being by devouring creature comforts. Through self-denial we begin to recognize what controls us.”
Thus we might practice a fast of one of several things in addition to food:
Shopping
TV
Music
Cell-phones and mobile devices
Elevators
Sports
Getting the last word in.
This kind of fasting or detachment ultimately strengthens our attachment to God and to others.
But detachment ultimately becomes a lifestyle. Adele Calhoun writes about how her mother once commented on how much she liked a tablecloth in a friend’s home.[vi] The friend whipped it off the table and gave it to her on the spot. This experience shaped Calhoun. She now, from time to time, gives away what is admired by others in her home just as practice of detachment. It’s a way of ensuring that things don’t interfere with her relationship with God or with others.
Jesus is telling us that the key to a healthy spiritual life is not to simply focus on prayer—attachment to God, or to simply focus on giving—attachment to others. We also need to practice forms of fasting—ways of detaching from things so that we might be freer to attach to God and to others.
[i] Adapted from Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Simon & Schuster, 1989), 96-97.
[ii] John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, The Bible Speaks Today (IVP, 1978), 2.
[iii] Mark Buchanan Your God is Too Safe (Multnomah 2001), 187.
[iv] Leon Morris The Gospel According to Matthew (Eerdmans, 1992), 107.
[v] Adele Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbooks (IVP, 2005), 220.
[vi] Calhoun, 97.
