"Ashes Tell the Truth" Homily for Ash Wednesday 2026

 

"Ashes Tell the Truth" 

Homily for Ash Wednesday 2026

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Preached in Hamilton Chapel at Memphis Theological Seminary

Well, if you were hoping for a gentle flight into Lent, I got news for you, Ash Wednesday ain’t it.  It’s a turbulent jolt, the kind of rough air that keeps the seat belt sign on the whole way.  With a smudge on the forehead and words we cannot so easily spiritualize away: 

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  

Repent, and believe in the Gospel.

By themselves, these words would be too heavy to bear. 

And maybe that's the point.

Because the truth is, we already know we are dust. Aren’t we told that in Genesis?  Just animated dust into which God has breathed life. 

Our bodies know it, too. And the older we get, the more aware we are of it.

Long before theology names it, the body knows it.  We all carry wounds.  We bear the scars of traumas of many kinds; wounds lodged in muscle and memory, in breath and bone.  And history has demonstrated how trauma can be generational.  

As Bessel van der Kolk writes, "The body keeps the score."   

Boy, does it ever.  What we carry in our bodies is history.  

In experiential somatic therapy, when we check in, we are asked to name a feeling we are experiencing.  But more than that, we have to identify where in our bodies we feel it.  You see, feelings don’t merely exist. They take up residence.

You’re anxious?  Where do you feel it? 

In the chest? The gut? The jaw? The back? 

Where do those feelings that pop up in those "dark nights of the soul" reside? Where time meant for rest and renewal is spent spinning in worry or regret.  The tightened shoulders. Or when the fight, flight, or freeze response arrives unaware, leaving us to react out of survival rather than responding.

To be sure, our human frame is not the only thing that keeps the score. 

The Body of Christ does too. Jesus, the One whose way we follow, bears trauma's scars. 

Congregations bear scars. 

Institutions do, too. 

Maybe even a seminary? I have one in mind!  

Communities, like ours, absorb shock and sorrow, bearing the marks of grief and gratitude.  

Healing requires telling the truth about what we have carried together.  If the body keeps the score, then grace has to go where the score is kept.

That's what Ash Wednesday does.  

It doesn't reveal something new. 

It tells us what is true.  It dares to say out loud what all can see but will not acknowledge.

And it tells that truth in public.

Ash Wednesday brings with it familiar texts for the day: Psalm 51, Joel, 2nd Corinthians, and this reading from Matthew in the heart of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is forming a community learning to live faithfully under pressure from other influences to do certain things certain ways.

Disciplines like prayer, fasting, and generosity are all means of grace to draw us closer to making real what the “kingdom of heaven” looks like. But with them comes the warning:  “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.”

Turns out, being seen tends to shift something in us, and we start managing what we’re projecting rather than tending to what is happening within us. It’s the difference between being formed and letting performance stand in for the work of the heart.

I wonder if in the Matthew reading, Jesus is asking his own version of “what do you feel?” and “where do you feel it?” When you pray, when you fast, when you give,  where is your heart? Where is your attention?

Curious, isn’t it?  Given that we're about to line up and receive a mark visible to everyone, what are we to make of that?  And in this social media age, it has become common to post pictures of our ashes online; a forehead marked with dust, framed and filtered, offered to the world.

Maybe it's a witness. 

And maybe sometimes it is something else.

I suspect Jesus cares little about who sees the ashes. But Lent's question to us is: why do we want them to be seen? Are we bearing a sign of repentance, or are we curating an image of devotion?  

And maybe the most honest question is “Can it be both and that be ok?”

Look, being seen is not the same thing as being faithful, as we are reminded in Matthew that we are already seen by the One who knows our hearts. 

Faithfulness begins deeper than visibility. It begins in the quiet turning of the heart, in the body, in the mind, before anyone else notices.

Ashes help us tell the truth about that turning.

Ash Wednesday strips away the illusion that faith is about impressing God or one another. These ashes do not flatter or signal achievement or spiritual success.

They level us.

Ashes remind us that we are mortal, vulnerable, and we will never outgrow our need for mercy.

But ashes also proclaim, “You are still here.”

Still breathing. Still loved. Still called.

The church marks us with ashes as a sign of truth and mercy. They remind us that our bodies are fragile and deeply loved. 

Ash Wednesday starts Lent by calling us to repentance, turning, reorienting.  Telling the truth about where we have been living and where life is actually found.

Joel says, “Return to the Lord your God, for [God] is gracious and merciful.” Paul says, “Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”

Not later. Not once things are fixed. Not when we feel more certain.  Return. Now.

Ash Wednesday insists that the spiritual life happens in real time, in our bodies, and in community, carrying real grief and real hope.

And it matters in a particular way for us here, doesn't it?

Because Lent does not arrive in a vacuum at MTS this year. It comes to us in a season where endings, discernment, gratitude, and grief are braided together, and loss, uncertainty, and the ache of unfinished stories feel so heavy.

Ashes have a way of honoring that.

They tell us we do not have to pretend that everything is fine in order to be faithful. Ashes mark our lament as a necessary part of faith's journey. They tell us that fear, anger, and sadness may be the very places where God meets us most truthfully if we have the courage to stay.

Lent pulls us back to what is most true with the words:

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Ash Wednesday asks us, gently but firmly, What have you been treasuring? What have you been clinging to as if it could save you? What has been asking too much of you?

And what, quietly, has been waiting to be tended, healed?  What in our lives is it time to let go of and put down?

Ashes do not answer those questions for us. They simply give us space to sit with them over these forty days to make meaning of them as we pray, fast, give, and listen together in the disciplines of the faith.

We live at a pace that pushes us to hurry, to produce, to perform. Ash Wednesday says, 

Stop.

We are shaped by voices that measure our value by success and visibility. Ash Wednesday says, 

Remember.  

In the words of William Sloane Coffin,  

"We are not loved because we have value, we have value because we are loved."

And when we are tempted to numb ourselves or rush toward resolution, Ash Wednesday says, 

Stay.

So do not rush past the ashes. Let them tell the truth.  Your truth.  Our truth.   Let them soften what has hardened. Let them help you notice what you have been holding most tightly, what is worth putting down, and what is worth picking up instead. 

Let these ashes remind you that your life, finite and wondrous, still matters, and what you do with it still does, too. 

Amen.

Maundy Thursday 2013 - "No Greater Love: A Life Made Sacred (Sacrum Facere)"

So....a funny thing happened on the way to "standing down."

Ahhh, so I'm not going to do it. Can't.

But I am only going to post when I have something to say, not when I think I need to say something because everybody else under the sun is posting every single thought that sparks.... Enough of that....here we go.

Below is the current iteration of my homily for Maundy Thursday. I've lived with this for many, many years.

Simple search of the blog will bring forward other versions and the contextual prefaces that will put those versions in perspective.

We who proclaim Gospel have a predilection toward certain aspects of it. Parts of the story of Jesus come from us more easily. Others cause us more struggle to find paths to proclamation.

This is not quite to the magnitude of "Here I stand, I can do no other," historically speaking, but this one strikes close, at least for me.

It's in me.

There are moments in life when the actions we take, the engagement of our lives with the world around us reveal something about us, whether we’re conscious of it or not. We can talk all day about who we are and what we believe – but there’s nothing more revealing or indicting than action or inaction.

Conscious awareness of our role, place and motivation in life, and the ebb and flow of relationships in the slipstream of our existence is “mindfulness.” Taken from wisdom of the eastern religions, it is that capacity for us to know that "wherever we go, there we are" - -and thanks to John Kabat Zinn, the western world is the beneficiary of understanding a spiritual state that belongs to people of all faiths.

Jesus put it this way, "Don't worry about tomorrow. It will take care of itself. You have enough to worry about today." (Mt. 6.34 CEV)

In times of greatest moment – to act or not to act - - “to be or not to be - that is the question.”

Act with haste, that is, without prayerful discernment seeking guidance from trusted voices, and action becomes an end in itself. Those who yearn to be seen as the hero sweeping in to save the day act hastily.

Ask anyone who has been caught up in the aftermath of one’s lustful, egocentric pursuit of hero worship and they will tell you that such action may look good on the surface, but there is collateral damage aplenty.

"Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette," after all.

But is there compassion or consideration in the face of collateral damage, when in your pursuit to do something you think is a major thing that someone being hurt, ignored or marginalized is a minor thing? Or, is there a willingness to put aside being the hero for the common good?

No.

Inevitably, collateral damage, in whatever form it comes, is considered an acceptable loss, and the price of doing business. The end always justifies the means.

Still others live with perpetual inaction.

Able to articulate and argue relevant points of whatever their issue is with passion – they fail to act. They feed so much on the energy generated by the problem itself so that their motivation to enact a remedy, is muted by the fear that if the problem is solved, the “stuff” that feeds their lives is gone.

They know the issue.
They know the problem.
But they are crippled to do anything about it.

A vicious cycle, that. Indeed, it is pitiful.

Those who refuse to forgive a wrong choose perpetual inaction. Even church folks who know the language of forgiveness won’t enact it. Why? Because our pain and our anger is what we know, and being liberated from it scares us to death. We love our chains more than being free.

“Repent, and believe in the Gospel,” Jesus would say.
"Repent." "Believe."
"Take" up your cross and "follow."
Action words.

It’s the difference between saying you’re a Christian and actually being a follower of Jesus wherever that leads.  Action and inaction. The transcendent truth of either approach to life is self defining and a prophecy perpetually self-fulfilling.

Maundy Thursday is one of those days when the abstract and absolute, the flesh and the spirit, the universal and the particular collide. It is one of those occasions where “the rubber hits the road.” Here, at the end of Lent and the start of the Triduum, the Great Three Days, it reveals through action the character of the One who draws us into this worship space tonight. It confronts us with the real life, real time implications of what a life made sacred looks like. It makes us look at Jesus’ life and consider what we’re doing with our own.

Is life made sacred because it just is…or is life made sacred by what one does with it?

So, action, these actions give meaning to what Jesus has taught. They give meaning to what we believe. They make all this Jesus business real – incarnate.

On this night we focus on an action of Jesus found only in the 4th gospel. The Synoptics don’t have it. John, historically considered the last of the canonical gospels written, has a particular agenda – the writer has a bias, and his bias is always for Jesus (as he understands him and propagates a narrative to give that understanding credence) – his life, his teaching, and the nature of the Christ that has always been.

Only John has this text – Jesus, at Passover, after sharing table fellowship, takes upon himself an action that will be self-defining hereon, as it will be for all of us who carry his name.

He, the one called, Rabbi, Teacher, Lord, Messiah, Christ – comes now to assume the role of the menial laborer – literal dirty work is not beneath him – he embraces it...he love us in it. It defines him. He takes a towel, a basin and a pitcher – and washes his disciples feet.

And at first, it was more than they could have stomached.

"My Jesus don't do stuff like that."

Far too many of us spend way too much time "lifting his name on high," when if he's to be found it will be at our feet.  Failure to honor that, to embrace that is failure to really know anything about him at all. What is it he says to an obstinate Peter? "If you refuse me this you have no part of me."

But why?

Rarely in our observance of Christian liturgy do you find something so profoundly intimate as the washing of feet. Maybe that’s why it’s not a sacrament (which it should be), there’s really no way to observe this liturgy with integrity without touching someone, literally touching someone.

It’s too close, too intimate. It’s not “churchy.”  Getting on our knees and taking off shoes, using water, towels and basins, it’s beneath the dignity of our erudite gathering.

To which I say, “right.” It is.  But it is supremely of Christ.

That Francis I makes this act a loving expression of service today toward juvenile detainees is no small thing. The first Pope of the Church was slow to come around, the current Rock on which the Church is built deserves our notice.

And if we are going to be “of Christ,” with integrity, then tonight, our action or inaction is, guess what? Dare I say it again? Self-Defining.

And maybe that’s what all this dramatic fuss is about this Holy Thursday night and there following into the Great Three Days. If nothing else, we observe integrity at work. That’s an awe inspiring thing. For to live with integrity is joyful, because in it we are complete. We are fully what we’ve been created to become.

Don’t forget, though, that just because we live with integrity does not mean our work is easy. The faithful pursuit of Christ takes us to places we’d never before imagine, and that joyful pursuit is an act of thank-full praise in itself.

William Sloane Coffin said, “Joy is the most important Christian emotion. Duty calls only when gratitude fails to prompt.”

To do this thing…to wash his disciples’ feet, was not a choice absent other options. Think of those options presented to Jesus in the wilderness temptations…to be relevant, spectacular, powerful (as Henri Nouwen would teach us). No, this was a matter of integrity. He did this thing, both in the upper room with his disciples, as well as walk the Via Dolorosa precisely because that's who he is.

To have done anything other than to be a servant, than to identify with the suffering of humankind by embracing the cross, would have been to have missed his moment – the moment when action defined who he was.  This is what a life made sacred looks like:

12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. John 15.12-17

Another way of seeing this night might be this. Jesus did not miss his moment and he’s imploring us not to miss ours. Our lives are gifts, to be sure, but they are only made sacred when we enact self-giving love as every moment's measure.

Look. Ministry is hard.
Giving yourself away is hard. Following Jesus to where ministry leads you is hard.

It is counter intuitive to everything innately part of our being that cries out for self interest and self protection.

Placing yourself in the role of servant and not hero is tough. Doing ultimate good without desiring credit for it is extraordinarily difficult.

If it were easy, wouldn’t more folks be doing it?

Instead, too many of us play at Church, play at following Jesus, use our religious pursuits as a contrivance of convenience rather than a covenantal commitment.

Listen, people. To live with integrity or not is far more in our control that we'd care to admit.

It’s in your grasp, sisters and brothers – right here, right now. And that thought burdens us because we are so used to claiming it is our weakness of character, or faith, of prophetic passion that prevents us from being what we’re made to be. We've become accustomed to being able to saying "no," "can't," "that's not my gift."

Bill Coffin again, “We want God to be strong, so that we can be weak. But He wants to be weak so that we can be strong. We want God to prove herself. But she answers, “Do you want proof or freedom?”

Or consider the words of David Whyte:

The Opening of Eyes

That day I saw beneath dark clouds

the passing light over the water

and I heard the voice of the world speak out,

I knew then, as I had before

life is no passing memory of what has been

nor the remaining pages in a great book

waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.

It is the vision of far off things

seen for the silence they hold.

It is the heart after years

of secret conversing

speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert

fallen to his knees before the lit bush.

It is the man throwing away his shoes

as if to enter heaven

and finding himself astonished,

opened at last,

fallen in love with solid ground.

-- David Whyte

from Songs for Coming Home

©1984 Many Rivers Press

Jesus gathers with us in this room, as he has done with his companions for millennia and says, “Here’s who I am, here’s what I’m prepared to do, here are the depths I’m prepared to plunge – for you.”

How far are you willing to go? Could it be that tonight it is at least to declare that “no greater love have I” than to give myself away, even sacrificially, because of love?

What we do tonight, through bread and cup, is a liturgy you have repeated many, many times. May it be, however, that tonight you see beyond your own action of getting up and coming down here and partaking Eucharist, or sitting in this chair to have your feet washed or washing another's.

Consider and embrace the life made sacred because of what he did…made his life sacred, for you, so that your life is sacred in the love you make carried out in His name. Amen.