Epiphany V

Epiphany V – Isaiah 58:1-9a

Church of the Atonement

The Rev’d Charles Everson

February 8, 2026

No one wakes up one morning and decides, on a whim, to run a marathon. No sane person rolls out of bed, laces up their shoes, and says, “Today feels like a good day to run 26 miles.” Marathon runners train. They stretch. They build endurance gradually, preparing their bodies over time for what lies ahead. To do otherwise would be foolish, even dangerous.

And yet, that is often how we experience the season of Lent. One Sunday we are singing Alleluia with gusto, and a few days later, we find ourselves with ashes on our foreheads, being told to fast, repent, and remember that we are dust. It can feel abrupt. Jarring. Almost like spiritual whiplash.

The Church once had a way of easing us into this. Until 1969 in the Roman Catholic Church, and until 1979 in The Episcopal Church, there was a three-week pre-Lenten season known as Septuagesima. In the liturgy, the Gloria and the alleluias disappeared. Purple vestments were worn.  The tone grew quieter. The Church began to slow us down. It wasn’t Lent yet, but it was preparation – a kind of spiritual stretching before the long fast began.

That instinct was wise, because the Church understood something we easily forget – that fasting is not something we can simply decide to do successfully on our own. Without preparation, fasting quickly becomes an exercise in self-reliance, shaped more by modern ideas of discipline and achievement than by conversion of heart. How strong is my resolve? How much can I give up? Lent becomes a spiritual self-improvement program, a religious endurance contest. If I can just white-knuckle my way through forty days, then I’ve somehow done Lent “right.”

And that misunderstanding is precisely what the prophet Isaiah is confronting in our first reading.

God addresses a people who are fasting – and fasting seriously. They are doing all the right religious things. They are humbling themselves. They are observing the ritual. And yet God is unmoved.

“Why do we fast, but you do not see?” they ask. “Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

Well, on the very days they fast, they continue to exploit their workers. They quarrel. They fight. Their fasting has turned inward. It has become self-referential, disconnected from love of neighbor. Their discipline has not led to conversion.

In this reading, God does not reject fasting. God tells the ancient Israelites what kind of fast God chooses. “Is not this the fast that I choose,” God says, “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”

This is not a fast that makes us feel pious. This is a fast that costs us something. It is concrete. It is social. It reaches into systems, habits, and relationships. God’s chosen fast is not about withdrawal from the world, it is about a deeper engagement with it.

Notice what follows. “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?” Not someone else’s bread. Your bread. Not a program, not a donation that costs you nothing, but an interruption of your comfort. A rearranging of priorities. A loosening of the grip we keep on what we think is ours.

This is where fasting becomes dangerous – and transformative.

Because fasting exposes hunger. And the question is not whether we hunger, but what we allow that hunger to teach us. When we fast, we discover how quickly we reach for distraction, control, and comfort. We discover what we cling to when we are unsettled. And we begin to see how easily we ignore the hunger of others because we are so busy managing our own.

The Church does not ask us to fast because eating is bad. The Church asks us to fast because at least some of our desires are disordered. We fast so that we might learn to hunger for what actually gives us life.

And that is why fasting, in Scripture, is never far from justice. If fasting does not lead us outward – toward the poor, the hungry, the oppressed – then it has missed the point entirely. A fast that leaves the world unchanged has not yet touched the heart. When the fast God chooses is practiced, then light breaks forth like the dawn. Then healing springs up quickly. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. God will say, “Here I am.”

God draws near to a people whose fasting opens space for compassion, justice, and generosity.

And here is the good news for us, as we stand on the threshold of Lent. We are not being asked to run the marathon yet. We are being invited to warm up. To learn what fasting is actually for. To begin to imagine not only what we might give up for Lent, but what we might loosen, share, or release.

Friends, as we thoughtfully and prayerfully prepare for the intense season of Lent, this is the time to examine our attachments. To notice where we have grown numb. To ask whose suffering we have learned to live with. Because true fasting always leads us back to shared food – food given to those who are hungry, and the holy food and drink given freely to us from this altar.

May we learn the fast God chooses now, so that when Lent comes, our fasting is not merely disciplined, but life-giving to us and the world around us. And may our prayer, our fasting, and our almsgiving allow us to hear God say to us with clarity in the depths of our hearts: “Here I am.” Amen.