Yom Kippur
A Good Day for Christians Like Me to Fast and Pray
Christians around the world usually focus on fasting and repentance during the season of Lent (and Advent to a lesser extent). I submit, however, in agreement with many others, that today, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement; see Leviticus 161), is also a good day for Christians to fast and pray. In the New Testament book of Acts, we see Luke refer to “the fast” (27:9) of Yom Kippur to help explain the dangerous date of sea travel for Paul and others (probably including Luke himself) on their way to Rome. The NIV, a less literal translation, puts this idea together well: “Much time had been lost, and sailing had already become dangerous because by now it was after the Day of Atonement [the fast].” Yom Kippur had passed, meaning winter was fast approaching, which was bad news for sailors and their ships on the Mediterranean Sea.
But what would seem to be a fairly inconsequential reference to this holiest day of the Jewish calendar—one conceived of as a mere footstool to reach a greater objective, namely, to highlight the precarious and perilous sailing conditions for Paul—is actually indicative of much more. Easy-to-miss, subtle notes like this in the Bible can serve as crucial windows into the lives of the earliest followers of Jesus, pointing beyond what meets the mind at first thought. In this instance, we witness what Jaroslav Pelikan has called “the persistence of the Jewish liturgical calendar in this generation of the church.”2 In essence, the first Christians, who were Jewish, almost certainly continued to observe Yom Kippur (as seen at a glance in their temple-connectedness in Acts 2:46; 3:1; 5:20; 21:26).3 Such is the case even if there did happen to be (as is possible) a clear understanding shortly after Jesus’s death and resurrection of his theological status as the fulfillment of the Leviticus 16 atonement ritual in the temple among his disciples.4 Of course, one might suggest in modern times that their “observance” was more about retaining a cultural identity than spiritual significance, but it’s difficult to retain such a simple dichotomy when studying the first century Mediterranean world.
Where am I going with all this?
In short, part of the Christian’s “communion with the saints” is his union through the Holy Spirit with these early (and later) Jewish believers, with whom he can take seriously the call to fast, pray, and “afflict his soul” on Yom Kippur. More specifically, part of the Christian’s “communion with the saints” is his union through the Holy Spirit with the apostle Paul himself, whose burning love for his “kinsmen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3), is shared and embodied by him when he chooses to fast on Yom Kippur in grateful solidarity with all Jewish people and in longing for God’s abounding mercy to be revealed to them.5
Today, I chose to fast. And as I write this short post, one that cannot do justice to the importance of the content, I’m listening live to a Yom Kippur synagogue service, through which I’m blessing God’s name, being reminded by beautiful music “of the 6 million” (honoring the memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust), and mourning with the synagogue the victims of the October 7, 2023, massacres in Israel. And in these remembrances, we now sadly add to this list of mourning the two people killed in the terrorist attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, England, just today.
Periodically, I’ve been convicted by the lack of fasting in my own life. But Christians must fast (e.g., Matthew 6:16), and what better day to do so than Yom Kippur? In fasting, we find that connecting to God through prayer and being receptive to his voice and ways—genuine repentance—comes much more easily. Today, I’ve been earnestly praying that by God’s grace I would have a contrite heart and that I would more closely follow God’s plan for me in Christ, in whom I have received the ultimate blessing of atonement, divine forgiveness, and mercy. Perhaps next year, we can fast and pray together on Yom Kippur.
For general background on Yom Kippur, the superlative “Sabbath of Sabbaths,” the holiest day of the Jewish year (then and now), see the following: “The Torah (Lev. 16:31) describes Yom Kippur as a Shabbat shabbaton (Sabbath of solemn rest), on which all manner of work is forbidden. Jews are commanded to practice self-denial (literally, ‘afflict your souls,’ Lev. 16:29), ‘for on this day atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you of all your sins; you shall be clean before the Lord’ (Lev. 16:30)…In Temple times, Yom Kippur was a day of elaborate rituals to effect the atonement of the people. On this one day of the year, the Kohen Gadol [high priest] would enter the Holy of Holies…The sins of Israel were symbolically transferred to the scapegoat in the rite of Azazel. After the destruction of the Temple, the focus of the day shifted to the synagogue, where Jews spend almost the entire day in prayer seeking atonement. By abstaining from basic worldly needs, human beings demonstrate that they can conquer all physical cravings and overcome the bodily appetites that are the principal sources of sin. However, fasting is not sufficient in itself to secure atonement. To gain divine forgiveness, there must be sincere repentance combining contrite confession and a solemn resolve to abandon the ways of evil” (Ronald L. Eisenberg, The JPS Guide to Jewish Traditions, 1st ed. [Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2004], 206-7). Naturally, Christians teach that perfect and final atonement is made for them to cleanse them of all sin through Christ and his work as the great Kohen Gadol (Hebrews 9—10), and that Leviticus 16 anticipates this reality.
Jaroslav Pelikan, Acts, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005), 286.
It’s possible they even read the prophet Jonah in this observance, just like Jews do today on Yom Kippur (see especially James M. Beresford, “The Significance of the Fast in Acts 27:9,” Novum Testamentum 58.2 [2016]: 155–66; https://doi.org/10.1163/15685365-12341519). Regarding the reading of Jonah today: “The Book of Jonah is read on Yom Kippur to demonstrate God’s willingness to forgive those who, like the residents of the ancient city of Ninevah, are prepared to repent” (Ronald Tauber, The Little Book of Jewish Celebrations [San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC, 2014], 38).
For more on the Jewishness of Luke-Acts, see Isaac W. Oliver, Luke’s Jewish Eschatology: The National Restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts (New York: Oxford University Press), 2021. Regarding the early understanding of Jesus’s fulfillment of Leviticus 16//Yom Kippur, it’s possible that the biblical book of Hebrews (probably authored just before 70 AD) offered the first expression of this idea. However, some would say Paul suggested it earlier (see Romans 3:24-25). UBS5 (an edition of the Greek New Testament) doesn’t conclude in its indices that Paul alludes to Leviticus 16, whereas NA28 (another edition of the Greek New Testament) suggests he might. Cf. Paul’s possible use of Leviticus 16 in Nobuyoshi Kiuchi, “Living Like the Azazel Goat in Romans 12:1b,” Tyndale Bulletin 57.2 (2006); https://doi.org/10.53751/001c.29216. In my judgment, the ‘Hebrews option’ here is the safer bet, although it’s difficult to say what precisely was being promulgated “behind the texts” in the earliest Christian communities.
See also the Vatican II document from 1965, Nostra aetate (“in our time”), which says: “The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: ‘theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh’ (Rom. 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church’s main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ’s Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people…Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.