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.

February 15, 2026

"We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. I speak to you this morning in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

These moments of great clarity, of a sense of power and a sense of awareness of God's presence in our life are incredibly profound when we have them. And they're often moments that in some ways are unexpected. Even when we seek them out to sort of set ourselves up for this moment, this mountaintop experience, we can very often find ourselves surprised or caught off guard by the ways in which they manifest in our lives. I had just this past week an example of that for myself.

As you all may be aware, there has been a group of Buddhist monks on a 108-day journey from their monastery in Fort Worth, Texas to Washington, D.C. And right at the very end of that journey, as they entered into Washington, they were invited to stop by the National Cathedral. We had a group of members of the Episcopal clergy delegation, our bishop, the dean of the cathedral, and actually a gathering of about 300 interfaith clergy leaders from around Washington, D.C., who all gathered to welcome them. And it was this moment of clarity and insight for me.

As I've shared previously with you all, part of my journey many years ago now—as I realized early on in my college career that I was not the Christian that I had grown up to be, that I did not affirm or connect to the tradition of Christianity that I was raised in—I spent several years in a kind of interlude period practicing a form of Japanese Zen Buddhism. And it was actually through that experience that I came back into my Christian faith. But not only that, I learned in the course of those years the multiplicity of Buddhist experiences that exist around the world. Just like we have all of our different proclivities, denominations, uniquenesses, the Buddhist world too has a number of different lineages and traditions and denominations.

And not only were we gathered this past week at the National Cathedral as a group of interfaith clergy, but the monks had been joined in these final stages of their walk by other Buddhist monastics, other venerable monks from around the D.C. region. There were about a hundred of them from all different traditions, all different lineages. The closest parallel that I can offer to you all this morning would be to suggest that we join with a walking pilgrimage led by, say, Southern Baptists or Presbyterians or other evangelicals that we might have deep theological differences with—and yet we find this moment of commonality in what they are offering, what they are giving to the world.

There was something profound about this message of peace that these monks have been bringing, a message of peace that has resonated with almost every sector of society. The lead monk, Bhikkhu Panakkara, had on his stole or his sash that he was wearing a number of law enforcement emblems—I'm blanking on the term at the moment, but badges that he had been given by sheriff's departments, by other law enforcement agencies—and then a number of other pins representing a variety of different communities and groups. It was this incredible image of recognizing how all sectors of society have been touched by this proclamation of peace that they are offering.

As a Christian, as someone firmly and solidly rooted in my own Christian faith, I saw in their message of peace the reflection of the Prince of Peace, our God, who manifests in Jesus Christ, who is the sole salvific presence in the world, but who expresses that truth throughout all people and in all cultures. As we elevate the Prince of Peace, we see even in brothers and sisters of other faith traditions the permeation of that peace. It is, in a way, a mountaintop experience that helps clarify and enlighten the image of who God is in the world around us.

These mountaintop experiences are complex, though, often because they can be so very fleeting. You know, it's instructive for us not only to hear what we hear in our reading today, but to be reminded in all experiences of this light—this light coming among us, this transforming and transfiguring light. Every human who has ever experienced it has nevertheless, eventually, inevitably, fallen short at some point again in the future.

Our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters talk about this transfiguring experience as the uncreated light of God, the uncreated light that is the source of everything. It is the light that was in the beginning that brought forth all other elements of created order. It was the light that permeated the journey of Moses in his life from the burning bush through the experience that we hear referenced in our Old Testament reading today, that cloud of witness on Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb. It was the light that the disciples see in the Transfiguration. It is the light that transforms and radically alters the life of the persecutor Saul who becomes the evangelist Paul. It is the light that permeates us every time we have this great clarity in our own mind, our own being, our own lived experience of God's presence among us.

And then, inevitably, we have that place where that light begins to flicker a little bit, where we start to wane in our attention, our centeredness, where we fall and stumble yet again. We don't live into the fullness of what God is inviting us into. I think it's instructive for us to have this moment of reminder of the Transfiguration at this outset of Lent. This is a reading we have every single year of the lectionary cycle in which we hear the story of the Transfiguration. We are reminded anew that we start on this place of highness, this place of intimacy with God in the fullness of God's light.

So many of us so often live into our Lenten disciplines with a vigor, with a commitment to this kind of transforming life, whatever it is that we feel called to take on in disciplines and in new practices. And yet, without fail, I dare say each and every one of us will slip. We'll have a moment where we didn't quite hit the mark, where whatever it is that we intend to do doesn't quite come to fruition in the way we want it to. And yet, on that great night of the Easter Vigil, at the very end of our Lenten journey, as we hear that ancient homily from St. John Chrysostom, we are reminded that the light continues. No matter how well we have been able to maintain it in our lives, or how poorly we've maintained it, we nevertheless are still invited into the great banquet feast of Christ. The redeeming, transforming, renewing presence of God abounds even when we fail to do exactly what we have set out to do, failed to maintain that mountaintop experience in the depths of the valleys, sorrows, and struggles that we encounter in the world and in our lives living in a world of brokenness.

Today, too, is Scout Sunday. Every February, we honor our connection to the scouts and to the tradition of scouting in the United States. We have, as I think many of you know, both a Boy Scout troop and a Cub Scout pack that we charter here at the church. And so we honor and lift up the experience of scouting every year at this time of year. Scouting, at least in the United States and since the 1970s, has also had a connection to light. At the very end of a young child's journey in Cub Scouts, they go through a ceremony called the Arrow of Light, this passage into the larger scouting tradition that moves into Scouting America and into the different activities and ways in which you continue to grow and nurture your mind, your body, your soul.

I think there's a beauty in recognizing the importance of light playing into that transition, into that movement forward. The great scout oath that every scout, myself included, memorized in our heart, begins: 'I will do my best to do my duty.' There's an honesty in that. There's an honesty in recognizing that even when we have this moment of insight, this great moment of light in our lives, we are only ever capable of doing the best that we can do, recognizing that many times we're going to fall short of that ideal.

But there's another precept in scouting: the motto of Scouting, 'Be Prepared.' It reminds me of our journey back at the beginning of the liturgical year in Advent, where the very first thing we hear every year is 'Stay awake, be alert, be prepared.' This experience of these mountaintop moments so often shape and form us in these deep, rich, transforming ways. But they're so often very fleeting, so very momentary. In the grand scheme and course of our lives, our call so very often is to work on that experience, that practice of alertness, of preparation, of return and renewal when we haven't quite hit the mark. All of that is of a piece. All of that is part of our larger journey as human beings.

So today, as we encounter this great story of the Transfiguration, as we have this moment of mountaintop clarity of Christ's divinity and of God's presence in the world around us, and as we prepare to enter this season of Lent in which we will acknowledge our places of shortcoming and brokenness and commit to working on them, transforming them and renewing them—may we come to that moment of light with a recognition of what it is. A recognition of it being that place of centeredness, that flame that we continue to cultivate and kindle. And inevitably, in those moments where it flickers, where it wanes, where we lose focus, may we come back to it again. May we find in it a source of renewal in this season and time of renewal that we are about to enter.

Bhikkhu Panakkara ended his commentary on each and every stop along the way as they journeyed from Fort Worth to Washington with an invitation for those listening to take on an affirmational practice every morning of getting up and saying to ourselves: 'This is going to be my peaceful day.' As Christians who worship the God who is the Prince of Peace, as we seek peacefulness not only in the world around us but within our very selves, as we enter this time of preparation to acknowledge and receive the world-altering, world-shattering gift of salvation that Christ accomplishes on the cross—may we see in that the in-breaking of peace that is at the very heart of the light of God that comes among us.

In a world that is so chaotic and uncertain right now, may this transforming light be that light of peace that we continue to embrace and feel. And in the times where we forget it, may we be reminded anew of the invitation we have to turn again, to re-embrace it, and to recenter ourselves on the presence of God in this place and in every place, at every time. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."