Year A: Ash Wednesday | Isaiah 58:1-12
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
February 18, 2026
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
There is no audio or video available from this service.
“Is not this the fast that [God] choose[s]…” – Isaiah 58:6[1]
What is a fast?
In our society, fasting is generally seen as a form of self-discipline. You restrain yourself from indulging in something you know is bad for you or something you may like but don’t necessarily need. The idea is to alter habits and improve health, sort of like an off-season New Year’s resolution. Along with this comes the alternating influence of success and failure—shame pushing you to keep going, and pride in yourself should you stick to the plan.
Many people—particularly during Lent—combine their fast with religious devotion, replacing the time they might spend on another activity, like doom-scrolling, with Bible reading and prayer. This adds a spiritual dimension to this time of personal growth, wherein you aren’t simply altering certain habits but attempting to draw closer to God.
In ancient Israel, fasting may have involved those things we think about, but the primary focus seems to have been solidarity—attempting to experience life as one of that era’s poor people. In doing so, a person might better appreciate the good things God had given them—and prepare themselves should those things disappear for some reason.
Then along comes Isaiah, rebuking the Hebrew people for their fasts. It isn’t that the people aren’t sincere; the problem is, the fasting is functionally fake. Yes, they deprive themselves for a few days or hours, whining all the while about how God never responds with the “blessings” they deserve for their devotion. But the prophet points out that at the same time they’re making their show, they continue to place demands upon or even oppress those same poor people with whom they’re claiming solidarity. Through the prophet, the Lord tells Israel that if they actually want any blessings, they need to forget about depriving themselves. Instead they need to feed—and free—the poor, treating them with the dignity and deference they expect for themselves.
Thinking about this recently has upended my understanding of how a fast is supposed to function. As Americans, we’re trained to think in terms of “self”—the importance of whatever I may happen to do lies in its effect on me. If I succeed in my fast, kudos to the victor, and I get to share the good news so everyone will celebrate and honor my discipline and/or devotion. If I fail, yes, I’m disappointed, but it isn’t really all that big of a deal, as I’m the only one who had been keeping tabs on the resolution in the first place.
But what if fasting isn’t about the self—or even about furthering my relationship with God? What if the point of fasting is, in truth, other people? What if the benefits have little to do with my own spirituality and self-worth but come, in fact, by improving the lives of those around me?
The people of Judea were “unsuccessful” in their fasting because all their deprivation was focused on their own self-interest: how can I get God to do what I want? Isaiah’s solution involves not simply self-deprecation but almost a level of self-forgetfulness! He says, don’t just “show solidarity”—do what you can to liberate others from their burdens and labor, even if that involves more work for yourself. Share the food you already have; provide housing for those without; clothe the naked; don’t hoard away the gifts God’s given you or restrict them only to personal use or enjoyment. Those are the kinds of things Isaiah tells us the Lord wants in a fast.
So on a practical level, what might that look like for us today? The stereotypical Lenten fast involves chocolate, but how does avoiding a piece of candy for forty days actually help other people? Maybe an upgrade to tradition could show us a little more clearly.
Say you buy a Starbucks every day. You spend 5-ish dollars on yourself for something that’s admittedly nice to have, but you don’t necessarily need. You can fast from coffee for a while and (once the headaches stop) maybe even find some personal benefit from it, if nothing more than the $35 savings each week. But what if you used the money you normally spend on coffee to support an organization that serves people in your community? You aren’t really depriving yourself; you’re just reallocating your resources. What if you used those few dollars a day as gifts for people reduced to begging? True, you can’t guarantee they’ll use it for anything you consider to be positive, but God asks us to give, not to control other people’s actions. In the course of Lent’s forty days, you would be able to benefit others to the tune of $200![2] Even if you switched to homebrew at $1 a day, that still leaves an extra $160. What might Community of Hope or the Roadrunner Food Bank or Episcopal Relief and Development[3] be able to do with that money? And what if that new habit of giving sticks? $5 a day over the course of a year is more than $1,800! What kind of good might that accomplish in the right hands?
So this year I’d like us to rethink our Lenten fast—for good. Yes, this seasonal fast is about self-discipline, to some extent, and that’s always a good thing. But what if we can reframe our fasting into concern and care for others? What if Lent can be about more than self-deprivation or simply giving up a bad habit or two? What if we can transform Lent into offering our selves and sharing our resources with those in need—of drawing closer to God by benefitting our neighbor? What might God be able to do among us if we were to harness our practice of restraint not simply to better the self but to further the Reign of the Heavens? What kind of life, light, and restoration might we all then receive?
“Is not this the fast that [God] choose[s]?”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[2] $240, should one include the Sundays during Lent in their giving.