Wednesday, February 18
Dear friends,
Happy Ash Wednesday and a Holy Lent to you! Welcome. Most of the devotionals will be my (Pastor David’s) reflections on the daily reading in our Bible In A Year reading plan. Click here to view the full reading plan.
However, today is Ash Wednesday, and the occasion calls for something special. Below is the full text of the Ash Wednesday homily that I will deliver in our worship service tonight at 7pm at Faith. Ash Wednesday is hitting me different this year, as you can tell from the homily, a result of the combination of the often overwhelming darkness of the world and my reflection on my fumbles and fulfillment as a parent, spouse, leader, and Christian over the past year. I share this with you in hope that you will join me in observing a holy Lent.
Ash Wednesday Homily 2026
One day, the sun will rise over the earth, but I won’t be here because I will have gone on. On that day, some people will hear the news of my demise and rejoice. Others will be so gripped by the closed clenched fist of grief that they will struggle to breathe. Others will feel a slight twinge of sadness when they hear the news of my passing but will quickly move on to the easy work of forgetting about me. Most people won’t feel any different because they never knew I existed.
On Ash Wednesday, it’s my job to remind you that you’re going to die. Dying is part of living, and the sooner you accept it, the better.
The ash in Ash Wednesday represents our mortality. The ash stands in for the part of the circle of life where you die.
Our ashes tonight used to be the palm branches our children waved on Palm Sunday. Once upon a time, there was a palm tree. The palm tree gave us the palm branch. The palm branch became ash, and the ash, once you wash it off, will decompose into microscopic dirt and rest at the bottom of the ocean. The dirt will make its home in the earth until what used to be palm tree becomes something else. The ash symbolizes the page in the organic lifeform’s story where the living thing stops living and the thing begins to become something else.
On Ash Wednesday, we say the quiet part out loud: we’re not above the circle of life, we’re part of it, and all of us, every single one, including Jesus, must encounter that part of the circle where living stops. On that day, what was “us” will be split in two: part of us will go on to be with God, and the other part will return to the earth. Not only did we come from the earth, we are earth. As God told Adam, “Dust you are, and to dust you’re going back.”
Ash Wednesday is a reminder that we are fragile, flawed, and finite.
I’m fragile. I like to think I’m a resilient person, but my resiliency won’t stop my beard hair from turning grey at an alarming rate, and my resiliency won’t put the pinky finger I broke last year back the way it was when the finger had full flexibility, and my resiliency didn’t stop my gallbladder from dying on me seven years ago, nor will it stop by heart from stopping one day. I’m fragile.
And I’m flawed. I like to think I’m a good person, but I cast shadows only I can see, and the David who visits the sick and gives to charity and brings home roses on Valentine’s Day is the same David who can keep a grudge alive for years, the same David who can ignore my children when they want to play with me, the same David who keeps making excuses for checking email when I should be checking on people. I’m flawed.
And I’m finite. I’m a healthy person, but healthy people die every day, and no matter how much kale and butternut squash I eat, there’s no changing the truth that my body is perishable as produce. I have an expiration date, and so do you.
Mortality, instead of being a source of fear, is supposed to be the starting place of wisdom. Mortality helps you to appreciate that life has a beginning and an end and there’s only so many minutes between the bookends, so choose wisely how you will spend your precious time. Psalm 90 says, “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” A wise heart comes from knowing our days are countable.
If I live to be 80 years old, I only have 2,340 Fridays left. That’s not a lot considering I’ve already spent 1,820 of them, and most of them I squandered. I get a haircut every six weeks. If I live to be 80, I only have 303 haircuts left. If I work until I’m 72, I only have 37 more Easters. I only have 520 Saturday mornings until my eight-year-old goes to college. That’s not enough. A wise heart begins will telling the truth about how few, how precious, and how unrepeatable are the days we are given. As the poet Mary Oliver says, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Asking the question is the beginning of wisdom.
Ash Wednesday begins the 40-day season of Lent. Why 40 days?
Because 40 is the symbolic number of incubation. The ancient Hebrews knew the average human pregnancy lasted 40 weeks, so they assigned the number 40 to represent the seasons of the human journey where we are being incubated, grown and made ready to become something else. The earth was incubated for 40 days under the flood waters, made ready for a soggy fresh start while Noah and the animals sailed on top. The Israelites were incubated for 40 years in the wilderness, made ready for life with God in the Promised Land. Jesus was incubated for 40 days in the wilderness, made ready for the grind of preaching love to the powerful, showing love to the unlovely, dying with love for his killers.
What is Lent incubating us for? Easter. And what happens on Easter? Resurrection. Where does resurrection come from? Death. Easter doesn’t happen to Jesus until he’s already dead.
We do Lent so that we take seriously where we are already dead. We practice radical acceptance - we tell the plain truth – about the places in our souls that are either on their way to dead or are dead on arrival.
Dur Lent, we give things up: chocolate, alcohol, meat, swearing, social media (I wish). More important than what you give up is why you give it up. You give things up because those things are root causes behind why you’re dying or already dead. Easter hits different when you enter Easter Sunday having already examined where you are already dead, because then it will be clear to you where you are dying for new life.
One of our Faith members is named Tom. Tom gave a devotional at our men’s ministry last week where he compared Lent to professional athletes watching film. A pro athlete spends hours of their work week in front of a screen watching high-resolution recordings of their mistakes. The practice is called film study; it’s one of the disciplines that separates good athletes from the great ones. A great athlete will spend an entire day’s worth of time a week watching film, and the film won’t show the athlete where they got the game right. The film will show their failures, their game-losing blunders, the moments where they let the whole team down. They will dissect the film in search for the exact places where they messed up. “Here’s the linebacker I should have seen coming. Here’s where I blew the play and ran the wrong route. Here’s where the wide receiver outran me. I have no excuse.” Professional teams usually watch the highlight reel together so that teammates can congregate their teammates and pass on the kudos. But great athletes will go off my themselves, take time for solitude, and examine themselves in search for where their peak performance died. Only then can a better player arise.
Jesus says, “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” Why the secret? Because then you’ll have the time and space to watch the film of your life with total transparency, no one to judge you, no one to praise you, no one to rate you, only clarity about where you missed. “I lost my patience with my child here. I thought I was more important than my spouse here. I chose greed over generosity here. I let my fear get the best of me here.” You examine yourself in search for where you’re already dead, because then and only then can a better you arise.
In a word, I invite you to remorse. Remorse is feeling bad about what happened, leading to examining my responsibility for what happened, leading to doing better in what happens next. Remorse is a better word than “shame.” Remorse is a more helpful word than regret. Regret means I would make a different decision if I had a do-over, but even though there are many decisions I wish I had back, there’s no going back; I have no choice but to move forward. Regret traps you in the past; remorse unleashes you for the future.
Remorse is what you feel when you watch the film of your life searching for mistakes. You feel bad about those plays where you let the team down. You take responsibility for what is yours to take and let the rest go. Then, you commit to doing better. It’s sounds simple, but it hurts. Watching the film for your worst moments hurts. That’s why we fingerpaint the ashes in the sign of a cross. The cross hurts. But remorse is a cross that is always worth it, if you will take it up. One day, you won’t have the chance.