Ash Wednesday – Homily (2025)
Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:12-18
Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 114 and 17 (3a)
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18
March 5, 2025
What brings you to church today?
One might come because you think you are supposed to come. You should come today but attendance today is not obligatory.
We have other Holy Days like Ascension Thursday and the Assumption of Mary that are Holy Days of Obligation. Yet, more people come on Ash Wednesday than those days.
I think it shows that there is faith deep within you. There is something in your heart that tells you that you need to be here today.
We will leave here with ashes on our foreheads. Others will see those ashes. I pray that you are not here so that others will see the ashes on your forehead.
This would go against Jesus’ words, “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them.” Of course, He doesn’t say don’t do righteous deeds. He just says don’t do them “in order that people may see them.”
We come here for ashes not to please other human beings. Our external action in coming here should be motivated by what is in our heart.
We do not fast so that others may see us. We do it because in our hearts, we recognize that we need to repent. We recognize that we need to “repent and believe in the gospel.”
We come here because God calls us here.
In our external actions God calls us here through the words of the prophet Joel, “proclaim a fast, call an assembly; gather the people,…assemble the elders, gather the children.”
Yet, God offers us a deeper and more important call. He calls us, “return to me with your whole heart.” We are to come weeping and mourning because we realize that we have sinned. We fast to show God our repentance.
Before Jesus, the people would rend their garments as an external action to signify repentance. Rending our garments means nothing to God if we do not rend our hearts.
To “return to the LORD” requires an action in our hearts. The external action merely serves as a sign of what should be in our hearts.
We come back weeping because we have sinned but all is not lost.
God is “slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.”
We come today because we have sinned. Knowing that “for our sake,” God made Jesus “to be sin who did not know sin.”
Knowing that Jesus died for our sins, we come to seek the Lord’s mercy, we plead for mercy. We ask God to wash us from our guilt and to cleanse us.
In our desire to change, we recognize that we can’t do it on our own. So, as we ask God to cleanse our hearts, we also ask him to renew a steadfast spirit within us.
As the Lord forgives us and renews a steadfast spirit within us, we proclaim our praise for him.
So, are you here today as an external action of receiving ashes or are you here because, in your heart, you know you need to repent?
God invites you to hand your sins over to him in this time of Lent.