Making Room

Ash Wednesday, Year A
18 February 2026

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 51:1-17
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Most of us who have been part of the church for a long time may not notice the things that set the church apart. This may be because we may still assume an affinity between our faith and the culture in which we live, and some remains. We regret when that affinity is waning yet without it it is easier to discern what it means to be a disciple, for we are more likely to know that our first loyalty is to God.

But we may simply not notice what sets the church apart because we have been part of the church for so many years. One of my jobs as a student was to work on the production line of a car manufacturing plant. On the first day the foreman welcomed me to his team, introduced me to those who would train me, and showed me the suggestion box. He said that I may notice possible improvements by virtue of being new, with a fresh set of eyes and ears. Sadly, I did not, at least not the kind of efficiency improvements the company had in mind.

And yet even for those of us who grew up in the church, Ash Wednesday is a day that must strike us as peculiar, for it is not only a day when we enter into the season of Lent but it is a day when the Church articulates what is avoided elsewhere.

For one, Ash Wednesday is a day on which we remember our mortality. The words we hear at the imposition of ashes, marking us with the cross of Christ, are the words spoken to Adam in Genesis 3,
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread
until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.’

Woody Allen is credited with having said that he doesn’t mind dying, but that he does not want to be there when it happens. It is funny because it articulates our general disposition which is one of avoidance. While we know that life is finite, saying that life is finite does not do it justice, for it is we who are finite, and knowing this opens us to God’s eternity.

The other thing we do today, during Lent, and every time we gather for worship is to confess our sins, another acknowledgement of limitations of sorts. This is unusual in a culture in which we prefer to speak about accomplishments and consider failures, let a lone sins, a sign of weakness.
Antonio Spadero, SJ, a Jesuit theologian and commentator, wrote last year that the current president of the United States “invokes God not to submit to him but to replace him.”¹ You don’t have to agree with the statement about the person to see that this is culturally true. And we are not immune to this just because we live north of the border.

In contrast to this, Christians believe in a God who was revealed in weakness, who took on our nature and our lot, who became in every way as we are (yet who did not sin), and who reigns from the cross. St Paul declares from his own experience that God’s power is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12)

And so the things we do in Lent are not about taking things but about giving things, because God’s way is to give. In this way, the things we do in Lent are the embodiment of weakness: We do not take but give. The life of Jesus is often described as self-emptying. When we engage in a life that does not take but gives, we not only emulate the example of Jesus, but we enter deeper into the mystery of God’s love for the world.

And that’s the rub. While Ash Wednesday in its starkness may bring us disillusionment, it does not do so to scare us but to lead us to a deeper trust in God. When it calls us to rend our hearts, it does not call us to moral superiority, only to greater love.

Jesus is our example for such trust and love. The Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being. (Hebrews 1) In John’s Gospel Jesus says, The Father and I are one. (John 10) And in John 14 Jesus says to Philip, Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
This means not only the obvious but that Jesus’s self-emptying allows the Father to dwell in him and him to dwell in the Father. Add the Holy Spirit and we speak of the mutual indwelling of the Holy Trinity.

When, during Lent, we engage in the discipline of Lent which is not about strength but about weakness, not about taking but about giving, then this makes room for God to be at work in us, enabling us both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure. And that is the peculiarity of the people of God and it is given not as a burden but as a gift.

Amen.