Scripture: Joel 2:12-13; Matthew 6:16-21 Series: Lent
An Ash Wednesday homily reframing Lent not as a season of manufactured sadness but as a penitential time to slow down, reset, and confess. Drawing on Joel’s call to return to a gracious God and Jesus’ teaching on secret fasting and heavenly treasure, the pastor argues modern Christianity has failed to honor the full breadth of human emotion (you are not a bad Christian when sad, worried, or aimless). Using the sunk cost fallacy as a central metaphor, he shows how invested experiences distort our hearts and relationships, and commends fasting and all-encompassing prayer as ways to discern what we truly need, cut our losses, and embrace freedom and renewal in Christ as we prepare for Easter.
Illustrations: true-crime-podcast-confession, priest-confession-movies, failing-pizza-shop, dead-end-relationship, giving-300-percent-at-work
February 18, 2026
Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:12-13 Matthew 6:16-21
Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. - Joel 2:12-13
“And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:16-21
Ash Wednesday happens every year. Lent happens every year. Sometimes Lent is presented as the season of sorrow—intentionally being sad and bitter. That’s not what Lent is. Lent means to slow down. It is a penitential season, a time of reflection and preparation for the coming of Easter. Ash Wednesday is a day of confession. Now, sometimes we think about confession as what happens after you did something bad—like on a true crime podcast when they catch the killer and the killer confesses. Or if you grew up Catholic or have seen any movie with a priest, when someone goes to confession and confesses their sins.
Sometimes Protestants have issues with confession because we think, “Oh gosh, we don’t need to be talking about all that stuff,” or “I don’t need an intermediary between me and God.”
With Lent and Holy Week, some people want to skip those parts and jump right Easter. I don’t watch sad movies. I don’t want to read sad scriptures.
What we have, though, in the Bible is the full gamut of human emotions. We have joy beyond belief. We have sorrow too deep for words. And modern Christianity, in my opinion, has not been very good about honoring the breadth of human emotion. People have been trained to feel guilty if they are not happy.
You are not a bad Christian when you are sad. You are not a bad Christian when you are aimless. You’re not a bad Christian when you are worried. That does not offer value or devalue you.
Ash Wednesday offers us an opportunity to reset our lives—as does Lent. And it is a wise Christian understanding that we are in almost constant need of a reset. Most of our lives fall under the sunk cost fallacy. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a business concept that’s applied in a lot of different areas. Basically, let’s say I own a pizza shop, and it’s not doing well. I put more money into it, and it’s still not doing well. I put more money into it, and it’s still not doing well. I really should close it—cut my losses, move on. But I don’t, because I’ve already put so much money into it. I’ve sunk that cost into the business.
It happens with relationships. You’re with a person for a long time, and you realize it’s not going to work. But you don’t want to break it off because you’ve already spent so much time with them, and it would seem like breaking it off would devalue all that time. It would make it a waste. We’re blinded sometimes by our own experiences. That’s what the sunk cost fallacy is about—being confused because of our experiences, our experiences giving us stimuli that is unhelpful.
We can look at the sunk cost fallacy in how it connects to our moral life: we can distort our hearts and our lives so that we no longer act as children of God, as redeemed children of God. So we no longer love. So we see other people in our lives for what they can do for us instead of who they are. We see our relationships for what we have put into them, not for what they are. Ash Wednesday offers us a chance to repent. To confess. To reset. To cut our losses.
Now, all of us may not be in a dead-end relationship—hopefully that is not the case. But there are things, there are some losses we need to cut in our lives. There are some things that we need to move on from, some habits that we don’t need.
Fasting is a great way for us to understand that. Fasting helps us to understand what we need in our life. Prayer helps us to do this—not praying as a devotional or before meals or fitting it in, but prayer in an all-encompassing sense.
Our world struggles with attention. Prayer offers a countervailing notion. You don’t always have to do the most important thing. You don’t always have to go to the best restaurant or give 300% at work. You can just be with God, wherever you are. And sometimes, stopping and praying and opening ourselves up to God is so much harder than giving 300% at work. It’s easier to exhaust ourselves in external things than to take a moment with ourselves.
Lent and Ash Wednesday offer us, again, an opportunity for this—to be extra mindful of who God is for us, of who we are in God, of where our value lies and our worth lies in this world. So I encourage you, in the season of Lent, to take up an act of holy devotion. An act of more prayer. An act of fasting. It’s one thing to fast from an item—to fast from chocolate or alcohol. It’s another thing to just fast for a meal, maybe once a week. Notice the reactions of your body. Respond to it. Realize what you need and what you don’t need. Our judgments of ourselves often fall into the sunk cost fallacy. We’ve always done this; therefore, we always should.
Look afresh. You’re free. You’re free in Christ. You don’t have to be the person you always were. You are someone new. Someone redeemed. As we await the great day of resurrection, let us prepare our hearts.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.