“Then come to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?”

When it comes to fasting, Americans can afford to give up the top ten sources of our caloric intake. According to Tufts University, the leading source of calories in our diet is soda and sweet drinks followed by white bread and rolls, cookies, donuts, cake, sugar, whole milk, french fries and alcoholic drinks. Our consuming passion is junk food. We love to eat.

Cooking shows are a staple of our television fare with celebrity chefs like Rachel Ray, Emeril LaGasse and Sandra Lee all competing to be the next Betty Crocker or Ann Pillsbury.

During this Lenten season, Pillsbury will promote its semiannual baking contest. Now in its 60th year, the Pillsbury Bake-off has drawn more than 4,000 finalists, each contestant hoping to win the Grand Prize of one million dollars. If you figure the average recipe has only two hundred words, that works out to five thousand dollars a word, which is far higher than the going rate-per-word for Stephen King, John Grisham and Tom Clancy, each of them a best-selling author.

Pillsbury is willing to spend that kind of money because they expect the Bake-off to generate over thirty-three million dollars in sales. And that’s just for one product line, on one shelf of supermarkets that carry hundreds of food items.

In our culture, we have an abundance of foods to satisfy every appetite and the availability of these foods has led to a phenomenon that social scientists call “grazing” - - instead of eating when we’re hungry, we snack all day long.

It’s against this backdrop that we read in Matthew 9:14-15 of the role that fasting played in Jewish spiritual life. The Day of Atonement was the only fast day proscribed by Mosaic Law. But four other fast days were instituted after the captivity and Jews were encouraged to fast at least twenty-five other times during the year. These voluntary fasts were to commemorate certain historic events or as a form of penance or petition.

The customary days for voluntary fasting were Monday and Thursday, which were also the market days. The Pharisees would parade their piety through the marketplace on those days by wearing torn and tattered clothing and whitened faces as a sign that they were fasting. A sign for all to see. Their fasting was the spiritual equivalent of consuming empty calories - - it did not nourish their soul.

Christ, too, believed in fasting. He began this ministry with a forty day fast. But He fasted in the desert, far from the crowded marketplace. Fasting is a desert experience. Father Henri Nouwen believed the secret of Christ’s ministry lay hidden in the quiet out-of-the way places where He went to pray and fast.

Fasting has never been easy, especially now, given all the food advertising we’re exposed to in our culture.

Some time ago, my wife received a new cookbook, which her sister had made for her as a birthday present. In it, she had compiled a list of “Mom’s favorite Recipes," interwoven with photos of family feasts - - much like the feast I imagine Christ had in mind in Matthew 9: 14–15. There’s Aunt Jeanette’s potato dumplings; Shirley’s potluck church chicken supper; and a whole section called "The Big D" for desserts. There’s Aunt Nell's chocolate cake, mom’s chocolate cake, grandma’s chocolate cake and something called, “Another chocolate cake.” They really like their chocolate. But don't we all? We all have some dish we find irresistible. Maybe that’s why fasting is such a powerful form of prayer.

Pillsbury's cookbooks claim that, “Nothing says lovin' like something from the oven.”  My sister-in-law's cookbook certainly speaks of  "lovin." In a sense, those traditional family recipes not only promise to nourish body, but also the soul.

At the end of her cookbook, my sister-in-law added a phrase that, indirectly, speaks to the need we all have for spiritual nourishment. It says simply: "Remember, there is life after tossed salads." I think Christ would agree.