Sermon: Ash Wednesday | Wedensday 18 Fenruary 2026

Preacher:

Chris Hollingshurst

Date:

Wednesday 18th February 2026

Venue:

Guildford Cathedral

Service:

7pm Ash Wednesday Eucharist

Here we are at another Ash Wednesday. I’m always struck by the fact that the sorts of churches I grew up in weren’t accustomed to making much of the day. The season of Lent was quietly acknowledged, but on Ash Wednesday, whilst there might be a quiet service of prayer, the imposition of ashes wasn’t something we did. We left that to the Roman Catholics – or so I thought.

I have long since come to see that the season of Lent invites us to confront our vulnerability and to embrace our brokenness – and that it all begins with marking Ash Wednesday well.

To be fair, the day rarely seems uplifting. We receive ashes on our foreheads and are reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Our mortality isn’t something we like to think about, much less celebrate in liturgy and prayer.

Except that the message of Ash Wednesday has more to do with life than with death, because it is about what it means to be human. Our perspective is rightly shaped by mortality, but mortality also encourages us to live this human life to the full.

Experience says that being human entails being both blessed and broken - and Ash Wednesday offers a special invitation to look at our own brokenness in a way that can bring healing, strength, and courage.

Of course, we don’t seek brokenness, even if we encounter God in it. We don’t set out to come up short, to make mistakes, or feel “less than.” But sometimes it happens, and when it does, we are often incomplete and often alone.

These days, we might say that we are vulnerable, meaning that we are exposed, that we are wide open. Being vulnerable means that the parts of ourselves that are not strong and not beautiful are visible to others. As one writer has said, vulnerability is “having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome.”

When might we feel vulnerable? When we have tried something new where failure is a real possibility? When we have risked our weaknesses being exposed by asking for help? When we have loved without any guarantee that it is reciprocated? When we have forgiven someone who betrayed us, risking being hurt again?

Life affords us many opportunities to choose to accept vulnerability, although we aren’t always able to choose the kinds of vulnerability we experience.

Life sometimes forces us into brokenness, into terrible, frightening vulnerability entirely against our will, for example: when our closest friend or relative moves far away, when we are made redundant, when our child drops out of school, when we learn about the affair, when the biopsy results come back positive, and many others. All challenges we would never choose.

Suffering has a way of taking away much or all that we hold on to in human terms, but mostly it strips us of our false notion of self-sufficiency. In accepting our faults, challenges, and pain, we create a space for God’s grace to work in our lives.

Being vulnerable is the door through which we walk to become the truest versions of ourselves; and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable is how we accept our brokenness.

And on Ash Wednesday this simple act of ashing, this reminder that are dust and to dust we shall return, is a powerful symbol of our spiritual DNA as mortal human beings with an eternal home.

So far so good?  

Yet if Ash Wednesday really is less about death and more about the mystery of vulnerability in life, how does that fit with does the traditional focus on repentance?

Some think of repentance as the card we play to avoid eternal damnation. But there is an interpretation of repentance that’s more consistent with the God of love and mercy, that is less about warning and more about promise.

You see, the call to repent is an invitation to be genuinely vulnerable; a call to make room in our hearts and lives for a God who wants to fill up our empty spaces and who, in love, doesn’t take no for an answer.

Repentance isn’t all about feeling guilt and shame for our shortcomings, although there is an essential place for right acknowledgment of our sins, including corporate human sin. Indeed, there will always be personal sins we wish to confess to God, privately or in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and to know that we can be – we are – forgiven.

But repentance is more broadly about how we respond to a sense of “lacking.” Repenting (or re-thinking) accepts the fact that we do not hold all the cards, that we are not “enough” all on our own.

Put another way, it’s a way of embracing our vulnerability and brokenness. The dust of Ash Wednesday reminds us that life is larger than our individual experiences of it. We are not in control, and we need to turn afresh to God.

In the words of the prophet Joel: ‘Return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.’

What might that look like in practice?

Here’s where the traditional Ash Wednesday gospel reading from Matthew’s gospel is key. Being broken means that healing is needed, so the age-old Lenten practices of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer are not only relevant today but also perhaps more needed than ever. Whilst we usually only hear this passage once a year, its relevance and applicability are of course for every day of the year.

For it’s in giving to those in greater need than us, in giving in to God’s presence in our lives and in giving up our reliance on those things we don’t absolutely need, that we are able to look our own “lacking” straight in the eye.

It’s how we become aware of both the blessing and the brokenness of our human condition.  And that’s not simply an annual event.

Did you notice what Matthew quotes Jesus as saying? Not if you give alms, if you pray, and if you fast, but whenever you give alms, whenever you pray, and whenever you fast. Optional? It doesn’t look like it.

So not only are we not to store up treasure for ourselves, but we are to give it away to others, financially. As well as meeting others’ needs out of compassion, almsgiving recognizes that the world is full of others just like us in our lacking. By reaching out to others in need, we bear witness to their pain. By standing in solidarity with their brokenness, we take steps toward being healed of our own.

We are also to give ourselves to prayer. By lifting our own broken pieces and those of others in prayer, we attest to—rather than run from—the vulnerable parts of our lives. Prayer connects us with each other and with God. This sacred unity connects our individual broken pieces with those of others, creating a beautiful new kind of wholeness.

And we are to give up what we don’t need. Fasting, a spiritual practice that has declined in popularity over the years, has made a comeback in a less-than-spiritual way, for reasons to do with nutrition and weight loss. But when fasting is understood as letting go of our reliance on things we don’t actually need, it can be a powerful form of prayer itself.

It’s fine to give up desserts for Lent if that helps us reflect on the things we can do without. Perhaps it can be more powerful, though, to “fast” from gossip or unnecessary spending or an insistence on having the last word. Fasting is a way to experience our own “lacking” in a transformative way.

So almsgiving, prayer and fasting…. and all with one crucial proviso. When we do these things, we don’t play to the gallery of public approval. We don’t practise piety in public. God is the only One we aim to please here.

So Ash Wednesday can feel like a day of liturgical doom and gloom. Perhaps that’s why it is sometimes given insufficient status as a holy day of obligation. But let’s not miss out.

This year let’s get Ash Wednesday right, for it offers a beautiful invitation to claim our brokenness, embrace our vulnerability, and to stand in solidarity with all those who do the same.

God is ready to heal our woundedness, to make us more whole than ever before. Let’s turn again to the Lord this evening. Let’s be vulnerable enough to make room for the Holy Spirit’s work in us and let’s undertake the pilgrimage of the next forty days to Holy Week and Easter…

… for in this we will see Jesus.

 In the words of an old Italian saint: ‘The Lord restores you. God does not push you away. The Lord comes to meet you.’    Amen.