Sermon For Ash Wednesday

Return To Me With All Your Heart

A Homily For Ash Wednesday

There is a question that follows us into this place tonight, and it is not a comfortable one. It is the kind of question that the liturgy of this evening is designed to surface, not to shame us, but to set us free. The question is simply this: Where have you actually been? Not where have you been on Sunday mornings, not where have you been in the eyes of your neighbors or your colleagues, but where have you been in the secret places of your life, in the quiet rooms of your heart, in the hours when no one is watching and no performance is required?

That is the question Ash Wednesday asks. And it is the question that both of our appointed readings press upon us tonight with great urgency and with even greater tenderness.

We have gathered at the beginning of Lent, that ancient season of the Church in which the people of God are invited to slow down, to examine themselves honestly, and to return. Not to begin for the first time, necessarily, but to return. To come back. To find again what may have been quietly, gradually lost. The collect of the day asks that we might be given grace to observe this holy season with such fasting and self-examination that we may be brought to true repentance. That word true matters. Not performed repentance. Not seasonal repentance that evaporates by Easter. True repentance. The kind that goes all the way down.

Let us hear the word of the Lord through the prophet Joel.

The Lord speaks in Joel chapter two, beginning at verse twelve: "Even now, this is the Lord's declaration, turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God. For he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and he relents from sending disaster."

And then the prophet continues in verse fifteen: "Blow the trumpet in Zion! Announce a sacred fast; proclaim an assembly. Gather the people; sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his bedroom, and the bride her honeymoon chamber. Let the priests, the Lord's ministers, weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, 'Have pity on your people, Lord, and do not make your inheritance a disgrace, an object of scorn among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, Where is their God?'"

And then our Lord himself speaks in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter six: "Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. Otherwise, you have no reward with your Father in heaven."

These two texts, one from the Hebrew prophets and one from the lips of Jesus, belong together on this night. They are not in tension with each other. They are, in fact, saying the same thing from two different directions. Joel calls us to return to God with genuine, visible, communal sorrow. Jesus calls us to ensure that our devotion is genuinely directed toward God and not toward the watching eyes of other people. Both passages are guarding the same thing: the reality of your inner life before God.

So here is the central claim of this homily. Ash Wednesday is not a ritual of religious performance. It is an invitation to honest, hidden, costly return to the living God, who is gracious and compassionate and who is waiting.

Let us stay with Joel for a moment, because what the prophet says is remarkable in its structure. He begins with the words even now. That phrase deserves our full attention. The people of Judah were in serious trouble. The land had been devastated. The locusts had come, the armies were gathering, and the day of the Lord was near. And yet God does not say it is too late. God says even now. Even in this condition. Even after this much distance. Even after this much neglect and wandering and half-heartedness. Even now, turn to me.

That is the character of the God we worship. He is not a God who waits for us to clean ourselves up before we return. He is a God who calls us back in the very middle of our mess and says even now, this is still possible, this door is still open, come back.

But notice what he asks for. He asks us to tear our hearts, not just our clothes. In the ancient world, tearing one's garments was a sign of grief and mourning. It was visible, public, dramatic. And God says that is not what I am after. I am after the interior thing. I am after the actual condition of your heart. Outward gestures of repentance that are not matched by inward reality are, in God's eyes, simply theater. And God is not interested in theater.

This is precisely where Joel and Jesus meet. When Jesus teaches his disciples about fasting, about prayer, about giving, he returns again and again to the same warning. Do not do these things to be seen by others. Do not arrange your devotion so that it earns you admiration. Do not fast with a gloomy face so that people will notice how spiritual you are. If that is your motive, says Jesus, you have already received your reward in full. The applause of other people is all you will get. Your Father in heaven, who sees what is done in secret, will reward what is done in secret.

Now here is something important to hold in both hands at once. We are about to receive ashes on our foreheads. That is a visible, public act. People will see it. They will see it when we leave this building and go about our evening. And so we must ask ourselves honestly: what is this for? What is the ash for?

The ash is not a badge of piety. It is not a signal to the world that we are serious Christians. It is a reminder to us. It is the Church speaking to each of us in the most direct language available: you are dust, and to dust you shall return. That is not cruelty. That is mercy. Because one of the great spiritual dangers of our time is the persistent, comfortable illusion that we have unlimited time, that we can always return to God later, that there will always be another season, another Lent, another opportunity to deal honestly with the condition of our hearts.

The ash on the forehead says: do not count on that. The time is now. Even now, turn to me with all your heart.

And so the question this evening is not whether you will wear the ash. The question is whether you will allow it to mean something. Whether you will carry it not as a public credential but as a private reckoning. Whether you will let this night be the beginning of something real.

What does real repentance look like? Joel gives us the shape of it. It involves fasting, which is the physical discipline of denying the body something it wants in order to remind the soul of what it actually needs. It involves weeping, which is the honest acknowledgment that we have done wrong and that it has cost something. It involves returning, which is the active, directional movement back toward God, not merely feeling sorry but actually turning around and walking toward him.

And then Joel gives us the ground on which we dare to do any of this. He says: return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love. That is not a vague religious sentiment. That is a precise theological claim about the character of God. We do not return to an angry judge who is waiting to condemn us. We return to a Father who is gracious, who is compassionate, who is slow to anger, who abounds in faithful love.

This is the gospel that undergirds Ash Wednesday. The cross of Jesus Christ is the ultimate demonstration of that faithful love. The One who had no sin became sin for us, as Paul writes to the Corinthians in the passage appointed for this day, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. The ashes we receive point forward, even as they point backward. They point backward to our mortality and our failure. They point forward to the resurrection, to the mercy that is new every morning, to the life that death cannot hold.

Lent is not a season of despair. It is a season of honest hope. It is the season in which we stop pretending that everything is fine and start telling the truth, because telling the truth to God is the beginning of healing.

So let me ask you directly, as a pastor who stands under the same word you do. What is it that you have been carrying quietly, privately, that you have not yet brought before God? What is the thing you have been meaning to address, the habit you have been meaning to break, the relationship you have been meaning to repair, the prayer you have been meaning to pray? What is the hidden room in your life that you have kept closed, even from yourself?

Jesus says your Father sees in secret. That is not a threat. That is an invitation. He already knows. He has already seen. And he is saying to you tonight, even now, come back. Come back with all your heart. Not with a performance. Not with a gesture designed to impress anyone. Come back honestly, quietly, completely.

The season of Lent gives us forty days. Not forty days to earn God's favor, but forty days to practice returning. Forty days of prayer, of Scripture, of fasting in whatever form is honest and sustainable for you, of giving, of silence, of letting God search the hidden places and bring his light to bear on them.

We will receive ashes in a moment. And when the minister marks your forehead and says those ancient words, let them land. Let them be true. You are dust. And to dust you shall return. But you are also beloved. And the God who made you from dust has not abandoned you to it.

Even now, return to him with all your heart.

Let us pray.

Lord God, we come to you tonight not with polished words but with honest hearts. We confess that we have wandered, that we have been half-hearted, that we have kept you at a comfortable distance. Forgive us, for you are gracious and compassionate. Receive us, for Christ has made the way. Guide us through this holy season of Lent into deeper honesty, deeper trust, and deeper love. And when Easter comes, may we greet it not as a date on the calendar but as a reality in our bones. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. Joel 2:12-17; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:2.

The Book of Common Prayer. Church Publishing, 1979. Ash Wednesday liturgy, Collect for Ash Wednesday, and the Proper Liturgy for Ash Wednesday.

Cranfield, C. E. B. The Gospel According to Saint Mark. Cambridge University Press, 1959. Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount and the nature of hidden devotion.

Motyer, J. Alec. The Message of Joel. In The Bible Speaks Today series, InterVarsity Press, 1974. Exposition of Joel 2 and the call to genuine repentance.

Wright, N. T. Matthew for Everyone, Part One. Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. Commentary on Matthew 6 and the Sermon on the Mount.