Sermon for Ash Wednesday (February 18, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and edited for clarity.
May only truth be spoken here, and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.
“For you yourself know whereof we are made. You remember that we are but dust.” This is what the psalmist says to God. You yourself know — remember — whereof we are made, what it is we are made of. You remember that we are but dust.
These are the words we hear as, in that same place where at our baptism we were marked with the sign of the cross — do you remember? — and sealed as Christ’s own forever, in that same place we are marked with ashes. And we hear the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
I’ve been through a few Ash Wednesdays now. My first one was in my twenties. There was a secretary at my office, and one day she came in to work — she was always very presentable — but she had something on her head. And I said, “Jinnie, you have a little…” She explained to me what Ash Wednesday was.
These words — remember you are dust and to dust you shall return — I’ve heard them in different ways. They’ve meant different things to me over the years.
Sometimes it’s to hear the words, life is short. So how are we going to use this one precious life that we have? You are but dust, and to dust you will return.
Other times I’ve thought this is about humility. The root word for humility is the same as the root word for humus — soil, earth. And I’ve thought this is about being who we are, knowing who we are, knowing who God is.
I think all these things are true about being dust. But there’s something different that is showing up for me this year. And this is part of the joy of what we do in this church — coming to a prayer, to a liturgy, to a set of scriptures year after year, as the headlines in the newspapers change and the things happening in our own lives change. The scriptures and the prayers are revealed in new ways.
What I hear this year in these words — remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return — can be summed up in one word: solidarity.
Solidarity. To stand together. To know and to see our connection to one another.
In the burial service we hear the words, “All of us go down to the grave.” We are all made of the same stuff — the earth. We are all brought out of dust and given the gift of life by God. We are all sustained and accompanied by God through our whole lives. And at the end of this life, we will all return to dust, and we will all be welcomed home by God.
But you wouldn’t know it from the way we treat one another sometimes, right? We forget that we’re all made of the same stuff. We all came from the same place, and we are all going home together.
There’s a beautiful prayer in our prayer book that speaks to God and says, “All our works are begun, continued, and ended in thee.” This is true of every work in our life — every prayer we say, everything we share with a neighbor — begun, continued, and ended in God.
And it’s true of our lives as a whole. As St. Paul says, it is in God that we live and move and have our being.
We’re all made of the same stuff. We all have life by the same grace of the same Creator. But we forget.
And I think this year Ash Wednesday is to remind us. As God says through Isaiah, “The fast that I choose — it’s not about lying around in rags and ashes. It’s about recognizing and reawakening to what we have in common: our creation by God, our redemption by God, our sustenance by God, and our belonging to God from one end of this life to the next.”
Isaiah says what God wants is that you recognize this — and act accordingly. That we are all made of the same thing and called to take care of one another in the name of God. To set free whoever is oppressed, to feed whoever is hungry, to clothe whoever is naked, to accompany whoever is lonely, to house whoever is outside in the cold.
This, God says, is the fast that I choose. This is what I would have you do.
Not to hide yourself from your own kin. Not to miss that what we have in common — being lifted from the dust by God, being carried through this life by God, and our return to God — makes us sisters, brothers, siblings on this planet, called to care for one another.
You can fill in your own blanks for the ways we don’t do that. But I want you to know that your church — and by that I mean this place, this community, and also the church universal across this nation and across this world, the church of history, the church of the saints in heaven, and the church of the future — at its heart stands for and does what God calls us to do: to reawaken us, to help us remember that we are siblings who belong to one another and to God.
Today in our diocese, our bishop and other faith leaders — rabbis, imams, Episcopal and Lutheran and Catholic clergy, and many members of our communities — went down to 26 Federal Plaza, the detention center for immigrants in Manhattan. There were enough people to surround the entire block. For an hour they prayed and sang. And here at St. James, about fifteen of us prayed and sang in solidarity with them.
The prayers we say and the songs we sing are not songs of condemnation, because God tells us through the scriptures, “Remove the pointing of the finger from among you.” Rather, they are songs of God’s love and invitation — prayers that the people imprisoned within those walls would know the love of God, have their hope sustained, and know they are not forgotten.
And prayers and songs that invite the people working within those walls to reawaken to the reality that they are in the presence of their own kin — their brothers and sisters and siblings — and that there is still hope that we might change and care for one another.
God’s hand is always open to us. It is never too late for us to care for one another.
This is what the church can do, and I’m so grateful to be part of it with you.
Remember this: we are all made of the same stuff. Children of the same God, given the gift of life so that we might care for one another.
Hold in your heart the certainty that God’s grace never ceases to be at work, reconciling us to one another, bringing us home to one another.
We are but dust. We are also blessed and filled with the grace and love of God — and the power of God that transforms our lives.
And so we offer this night all the prayers of our hearts for the lonely, the imprisoned, the hungry, the sick, the poor. We offer our brothers and sisters and siblings to God, in thanks for creating us to love one another.
Amen.