Lent and Ramadan overlap this year — a coincidence that happens only once every few decades. Millions of people around the world are fasting, practising a discipline of restraint in pursuit of closeness to God. A practice of emptying, of humbling, of confessing errors. Of acknowledging that we are not self-sufficient — that we are reliant on God. Of asking, honestly, where we have fallen short, and how we might love God and our neighbours more faithfully.
In those same days, the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran. The Americans named the operation Epic Fury, while the Israelis named it Roaring Lion. The White House website described the strikes as "unleashing overwhelming force… delivering crushing, devastating hits to eliminate the threat of the Iranian regime once and for all… highlighting the sheer dominance of America's military."
I have been sitting with those two things side by side: fasting and war. Fury and humbling. Dominance and emptying. Unleashing and restraint.
Meanwhile, images arrive on the news. An Iranian girls’ school bombed in Minab, fresh graves dug for the victims. Families fleeing their homes at night in Lebanon. Parents unable to feed their children in Gaza as the siege tightens. Teenage siblings killed by a strike in Beit Shemesh.
What does it mean to fast in a moment such as this?
Jesus, who himself fasted for forty days in the wilderness, embodied a power that moves in the opposite direction to the one we see on display in the names of these operations. His was not a power that accumulates or violently dominates. It was a power that emptied itself. As it is described in Philippians 2:7: He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. The Greek word is kenosis — a pouring out, a voluntary relinquishing (John 10:18).
This is the logic at the heart of the Christian faith, and it is the logic at the heart of fasting. We fast because we follow a Lord who did not grasp. Who did not unleash overwhelming force to secure his own survival. Whose power was made perfect in weakness, whose victory came through a cross rather than a sword (Matthew 26:52).
Fasting, then, is a confession of allegiance to Christ. It is practising, in small and bodily ways, the kenosis logic of Christ — choosing restraint over consumption, humility over dominance, dependence over self-sufficiency, love over control.
The prophet Isaiah describes the fast God requires of us:
Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to break the chains of injustice, to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your home — and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? (Isaiah 58:6-7)
This is fasting as the love of neighbour made concrete. The self-examination that fasting invites is not simply private introspection — it is the question of whether we have turned away from our own flesh and blood. Whether our emptying before God has made us more open to others, or whether we have kept ourselves isolated and secluded, undisturbed by the suffering of those around us.
Our flesh and blood. The children in Minab are our flesh and blood. The displaced in Lebanon are our flesh and blood. The people of Gaza are our flesh and blood. The families in Beit Shemesh are our flesh and blood. Isaiah makes it clear: to fast and not care for our neighbours makes our fast obsolete.
May this season of fasting form us in the image of Christ — who emptied himself, who served rather than dominated, who gave rather than grasped.
May it deepen our reliance on God, sharpen our self-examination, and deepen our love for our neighbours.
And may the God who hears the cry of the hungry and the oppressed hear the cries rising from our region — and bring an end to the bloodshed.
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