Ash Wednesday, February 18, 2026
/Ash Wednesday Sermon
Fourteen years ago, I began seminary at Virginia Seminary down in Alexandria. And about a week or two after starting, I was invited out for drinks with a cohort of students who had come from similar contexts that Julie and I had moved from. One of the seminarians was from Arkansas, another one from Mississippi, another one from Alabama, and they got all of us who were new seminarians together and they said, "You know, you are technically south of the Mason-Dixon line, but you need to kind of know the landscape of the culture around here. It's not what you've come from. It's not what you're probably expecting."
We talked through how one kind of goes about the process of getting into seminary, getting settled, finding a parish to serve as a field education site and as a seminarium. And one of the comments they made was that this region, and especially the churches in D.C., the churches in Northern Virginia, they are unique among Episcopal churches in the United States. Older seminarians said, "It's very likely that over the course of your time here, over the course of your ministry, you're going to preach to generals, to Supreme Court justices, sometimes maybe even the president." There are very powerful, very influential people that you're going to meet and interact with in the regular course of your experience. And there's some thought that should be put into how to approach those engagements.
Some of that was a little bit humorous. One lesson we were taught is that as you get to know people, it's entirely appropriate and acceptable to ask what someone does. But if they respond that they work for the government, you don't ask anything else. If they can tell you what they do, they're going to give you a specific detailed answer. But if they can't tell you what they do, they'll just simply say, "I work for the government." And as I reflected on that, I was brought back into mind of my experience many years before studying in Shanghai and the Chinese concept of guangxi, of relationship building. Because at the end of the day, there's a similar dynamic at play there too. You often find yourself in these kind of complicated and intricate dances of relationship building.
Ultimately, the more I sat with that, the more I experienced it, especially in this context, I began to see that the fundamental character of all of that—the fundamental character of these complicated dynamics and relationships that we often dance around or dance through—is fundamentally about identity. Who we see ourselves as being, how we understand ourselves as being present in the world around us, what it means to belong, and what it means to have a sense of belonging.
There's a real importance and a real goodness often to identity. Identity has a place of nurturing support, often of solace, of sanctuary, when we are feeling bereft of connection. I see this almost on a weekly basis with my work with Fixing Fences, our veteran equine therapy group that we have had a parish relationship with for several years now. And I see the power that veterans have in supporting one another. I've seen this too when I was, after I graduated seminary and was working for my seminary in the connectivity that law enforcement officers have with one another. And this goes beyond just these kind of structured relationships—military personnel, law enforcement officers. I see it too in the diversity of identities we have in the world around us. Julie's man of honor in our wedding in Arkansas was part of the drag community in Arkansas, which you would probably not be surprised to know was relatively small, but it was a very intimate and supportive community for a lot of the LGBTQ folks in a state where there was not a whole lot of support, not a whole lot of opportunity to publicly acknowledge and be present to the authentic lived experience of who those folks were.
But there's a kind of complicated shadow side of identity too. Because so often our identities, if we're not careful, silo us. They limit us in our perspectives. We begin to only see things in echo chambers. We lose sight of our opposing sides—their humanity, their goodness, their fundamental identity as people created in the image of God. We simply see them as some kind of objectified other.
And so, when we come to this night, when we hear these readings, when we are invited each year into this period of return and renewal, I want to offer this year especially an invitation to step back. To consider our own locations, our own identities, the ways that they certainly support us and help us live as better and more caring people in the world, but the ways too that they can silo us, that they can create these echo chambers, that they can limit our perspectives and alienate us from one another. Because even in the best of circumstances, all of our human identities, whatever they may be, that diverse tapestry of identities that we live with, they are but fleeting and momentary realities in the greater reality of God.
We will hear in just a moment those words as ashes are imposed on our foreheads: "From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return." All of this, even our human bodies, have an impermanence. The thing of lasting substance, the thing of true and lasting identity, is our location—our communal identity as people of the kingdom. People of a world that is not of this place. Of a reality that transcends all of our brokenness, all of our shortcomings, all of the places where we simply do not hit the mark. And in that, we have a great gift: the great gift of belonging to a thing of eternal reality. A truth of eternal significance. A joy in the ultimate grace of God's loving kindness to us.
We hear at the very beginning of the service in the collect that we prayed that God hates nothing that he has made. All of created order has an inherent goodness within it. But no matter who we are, no matter how diligent we are about living just and upright and righteous lives, there are times where we simply do not do what we need to do. Where we fall short. Where we err. Where we stumble. And every year we have this opportunity to give voice to that. To recognize it. To accept it. And to spend this season returning and renewing our commitment to living in the light of God.
We have at the end of this great journey the empty tomb on Easter Day. The glory of the salvation that is offered to us through the work that Jesus will do, has done, and is doing in every eternal present on the cross—that eternal work of salvation that will be the outworking of all things and the completion of time. There's a beautiful symmetry to our liturgical year. We began in Advent with the incarnate Word, the light of God coming into the world. But in the shadow of that light is always the crucifixion. And we begin this journey this night into that 40-day season of preparation. Of journeying with our Lord ultimately to that moment of deepest sorrow. But in the depths of that despair is the conquering of the grave. The conquering of all the brokennesses that we bring into this night, all of the places of shortcoming that we acknowledge as we move forward with our commitments, our opportunities to return, to renew, to reorient.
And so whatever that looks like for you this season, however it manifests in your life with your myriad identities, I invite you this season to reflect on the deepest identity of your life, that of kingdom membership in the kingdom of God. To discern the places where your sense of that connection has frayed, has been broken, and the places where you can renew and rejuvenate it through prayer, through penance, through practices of compassion and care. And if you need help discerning that, feel free to reach out, and I'd be happy to have a conversation with you.
But tonight, tonight at this inauguration of our 40-day season of Lent, let us be put in mind of the places where our identity—our identity as members of the kingdom of God—needs some work, needs some upkeep, needs some rehabilitation. And may we find in this 40-day season the opportunity to rejuvenate that identity, rejuvenate our own sense of spiritual belonging, and ultimately prepare ourselves fully to embrace the light that will come among us yet again. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.