Ash Wednesday 2026

The one and only time I have ever anointed someone with oil or blessed someone with oil, have ever made the sign of the cross on someone’s forehead with that slick, fragrant, church-like-smell of oil, was in seminary in the first class I took.

 The professor gathered us together in a small room, a sitting room, maybe a small chapel—I can’t remember, but it was dark.  We stood in a circle, and the professor handed the oil to one of the students who then dabbed it on their thumb, turned to the person to their left and made the sign of the cross on that student’s forehead while saying a blessing.  

Then that student took the oil, turned to the person to their left, dabbed the oil on their thumb and then made the sign of the cross on their forehead and said a blessing. 

Again and again, the person to your right said the blessing. 

The person to your left received the blessing.

I remember when it was my turn, when I dabbed the oil on my thumb and turned to the woman to my left—she was taller than me and so I had to reach up slightly.  I remember making the mark on her forehead.

For the life of me, I don’t remember the words I said. 

You know why? 

Because the words didn’t matter.  

Years later, when I was volunteering at the hospital as a chaplain, I was asked to go visit a woman who had asked for a chaplain.  For some reason, the chaplain who was assigned that floor was not available. 

When I entered the patient’s room, I found a woman who was clearly very sick, but also in amazing spirits.  When I told her I was a chaplain, she was thrilled.  She told me that a chaplain had been by the day before and that he had blessed her and anointed her.  

She pointed to her forehead.  “Can you still see it?” she asked me. 

I could not, but I didn’t expect to.  Oil is clear.  Perhaps there would have been a sheen.  I was focused on the fact that, as far as I had been told, I was the first chaplain to visit her.  I couldn’t imagine who the chaplain was that might have visited her. 

She wanted me to anoint her again. 

I explained to her that I did not have oil with me, but I told her what I could do for her.  Basically, I would do all the things the chaplain had done the day before, make the sign of the cross on her forehead, say a few verses along the lines of, “May the Lord bless you and keep you.  Make the Lord make His face to shine upon you …” and then then I would, if she wanted say another prayer for her, one unique and special to her. 

She nodded.  She wanted that. 

I always, before entering a hospital room, used hand sanitizer, but because I was actually going to touch her and because I wanted her to know how sacred a moment this was, I went to the sink in the room and cleaned my hands again.  The hand sanitizer had that typical smell, a sweet awkward perfume combined with the tang of rubbing alcohol.  It’s a smell I think all of us associate with hospitals, or the Covid years, or of our own illnesses or attempts to avoid illness. 

For me that smell always reminds me of the road trips my family took when I was a kid and the smell of the alcohol wipes my parents gave me whenever we stopped somewhere to eat. 

And now, after hundreds of visits to hospital patients, I also associate that smell with prayer and holiness. 

When my hands dried, I walked over to the woman’s bed and began, just as I told her I would, with a dry thumb making the sign of the cross on her forehead, with the words of the benediction prayer spilling from my lips. 

Her eyes were closed.  She breathed deeply, each breath a sigh of contentment.  

And then, I took her hands, apologizing for how cold my hands were. 

“You know what they say,” I began, “cold hands ….” 

“Warm heart,” she finished in a whisper. 

And then I prayed. 

I have no memory of what I said in the prayer. 

The words didn’t matter. 

The lack of oil didn’t matter. 

What mattered was the presence of the Holy Spirit filling the room. 

What mattered was the breath of the spirit that nourished and enriched not just the woman, but me as well. 

When you pray for someone, when you pray over them, it’s like sitting in the splash zone at Sea World.  The person being prayed for may be the one swimming in the Holy Spirit, but you, the one who prays, you’re going to get splashed with that same spirit. 

Today is Ash Wednesday and though the ashes—mixed with a little bit of oil perhaps—the priest puts on foreheads in the sign of the cross are technically neither an anointing nor a blessing like what I just described in the previous two stories, the ashes and the words that go with them—“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”—are something uniquely special. 

Receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday is a uniquely sensory experience in the church, involving at least four of the five senses—if you have ever experienced taste on Ash Wednesday, please let me know.  But beginning first, visually, you see the ash mixture in the bowl.  You watch as the priest spreads her thumb through the ashes.  If olive oil was used in the mixture, you might even catch a whiff of it, that subtle sweetness.  

And then two things happen at once, the priest traces a cross-like pattern across your forehead.  It may be cool or slightly warmed by the priest’s thumb.  It will probably be a little gritty.  Depending on how dry the mixture is, you may see tiny flecks of ash falling from your forehead in front of your eyes.  And as this is happening, the priest will speak those holy words to you. 

You might find, during this time, that receiving ashes touches another sense—no not taste, and not that sixth sense we all associate with ESP or psychic abilities, but an unnamed spiritual sense. 

It’s the sense that gives you goosebumps when you feel the Holy Spirit moving within you and around you. 

It’s the sense that makes you weak-kneed, makes you tremble in reverence and humility. 

It’s the sense that tells you just how loved you are and God required nothing of you to deserve His love. 

It’s what that woman in the hospital felt, the day after the chaplain had anointed her with oil.  She could still feel it, not the oil but the power and love of God. 

It’s what my fellow seminarians felt as we blessed each other that day, that we were all equal, that we were all children of God. 

In today’s reading from Luke 18:9-14, Jesus stresses the importance of being humble.  Humility should never become a contest either.  We should never compare ourselves to others.  True humility is realizing that everyone is special and that nothing we do can make us more special in God’s eyes. 

God does not hold back His love. 

Rather He imparts it, bestows it, lavishes us with it unconditionally.  

We get the most from God every day. 

And the “most of God” has a name. 

Jesus. 

If you get ashes today, that’s what I want you to focus on, that unnamed spiritual sense that makes your heart quiver and your breath catch because you know that God is present. 

And one last thing … that woman in the hospital … I never did find out who the chaplain was that visited her.  Hospitals are surprisingly very good at keeping spiritual records of visits.  They actually go on your chart.  But there was no record of anyone visiting her before I saw her. 

Think about that for a minute. 

Amen.

My Grandma, What Big Ears You Have

Last Friday, I was at physical therapy, this despite the fact that I knew there was snow on the way.  But the weather apps and people all said what little snow we got would melt on the streets and it was safe to drive. 

And the drive to the physical therapist’s office was fine. It was lightly snowing and as a Florida transplant, I was proud of myself driving in the falling snow. 

But as the physical therapist worked on me and put me through the paces, exercise wise, I noticed that the snow was falling harder, almost blizzard-like.  Still I told myself it would be fine to drive, the snow would melt on the road just as it had the other day. 

The physical therapist noted that the snow was now filling the cracks in the pavement.  And some minutes later, we noticed the cars were covered in a fine, gauzy veil of white. 

And still I told myself that it would be fine to drive—they hadn’t even canceled school. 

When I walked out to my car a short time later, there was easily an inch or two of snow on the pavement.  It was not melting.  It was still snowing. 

I told myself it was fine. 

Five minutes later I slid through the intersection on the first left turn I had to make. 

Fortunately there were no cars in the way, but let me say the journey home was fraught.  At one point the snow turned to sleet and my windshield wipers trembled and shook as the ice built up on each one. 

Adrenaline flooded my system.  All I wanted was to do was get home—in one piece preferably. 

I did make it home, eventually, and safely.  But driving in that was a mistake.  My senses had not betrayed me.  What I saw visually said “Don’t drive in this!”  But my own heart, my brain overwrote that in a failure of discernment. 

What we see in today’s reading from what I will call Part 5 in our “Awkward Stories of Genesis” series, is a failure of the senses and discernment. 

Isaac has had a rough life beginning with his father Abraham nearly sacrificing him when he was a kid to now, in today’s reading, his wife and son attempting and succeeding at conning him while he is on his deathbed.  Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, wants Jacob and not Esau to get Isaac’s blessing, so while Esau is away, she both literally and figuratively cooks up a plan.  She makes a big meal and then has Jacob put some goatskins on his arms and neck. 

Then Jacob takes the meal to Isaac, hoping to deceive his father’s senses.  Isaac is blind, but the smell of the food—he had asked Esau to prepare a meal—and the feel of Jacob’s arms covered in goatskin—Esau was, apparently a very hairy man, are almost enough to fool Isaac. 

But Isaac’s gut tells him that something is off.  The voice he hears is not Esau’s but Jacob’s, so finally Isaac asks Jacob to come closer.  He smells his son and concluding that the man standing before him smells of the earth, of nature, of the field, he believes that this is indeed Esau.

 The whole scene is reminiscent of one of our most well-known fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood.  “My grandma,” Little Red Riding Hood says to the wolf who is masquerading as her grandmother, “what big ears you have … what big eyes you have,” and the wolf has an answer for everything. 

When you are a child hearing Little Red Riding Hood for the first time, you might be thinking, “Come on, who mistakes a wolf for a little old lady?”  But that’s the point of the story. 

It’s the same with Isaac.  Even blind and dying, Isaac should not have been fooled.  After all, at least one of his senses—sound—tells him flat out this is not Esau.  Something else, his gut perhaps—tells him Esau has not been gone long enough hunting.  He has come back too soon.  Something is not right.  But, like the wolf, Jacob has an answer to each of Isaac’s questions. 

Last week, I suggested the story of Abraham nearly killing Isaac is not a story of blind obedience to God but might instead be a lesson on discernment that Abraham fails.  God would never ask a parent to kill their child.

And this week’s story of how Rebekah and Jacob fool Isaac is also a story about discernment.  Isaac knows something is off in the story he is being told that Esau returned early from the hunt, that his voice sounds suspiciously like Jacob’s.  But Isaac is basically told he cannot trust what he hears.  He cannot trust this stirring inside of him that questions what he’s being told. 

And Isaac, blind and weary and tired and close to death, perhaps doesn’t have the internal strength, the cognitive energy, to fight the story Rebekah and Jacob have written for him. 

Also last week, I pointed out that in the book of Genesis, post-Eden, God still talks directly to people and yet they still mess up.  What hope to do we have in discerning God’s will in this day when all of our senses are bombarded with AI deepfakes and algorithms that flood our online life with advertisements for things we didn’t even know we wanted but now feel like we absolutely need. 

We are left like Isaac, blind to the world and without enough faith in our gut to stand up and fight back against the lies and manipulations we are being told. 

I’ve used that word “gut” a couple of times now.  Trusting our gut.  My mom used to refer to those gut feelings as “uh oh” feelings, meaning you know something is not quite right, perhaps even dangerous—but you can’t pinpoint what exactly is making you feel that way. 

I would argue those gut feelings, those “uh oh” feelings are the prodding of the Holy Spirit inside of you, saying, “Hey, let’s step back a moment and think about this.” 

When you think about it that way, you suddenly realize that it’s possible you have been trying to silence the Holy Spirit a lot. 

So, what do we do?  How do we listen for that still, small voice?  How do we separate God’s voice from all the mimics? 

It starts with intentionality.  It starts with daily prayer.  It starts with spiritual exercise that you take seriously, not New Year’s resolutions that we abandon by the end of January, but with daily, sustained conversation with God. 

It starts with making the effort to identify where God is in your life and what He trying to tell you. 

I mentioned that last Friday, I ignored my senses—I could see the snow was bad—and I ignored my gut—after sliding through the intersection, I should have just parked somewhere and waited it out.  That was a failure of listening to God. 

But then Saturday came.  It was frigid outside but the sky was just as blue as anything you could imagine.  The sky was saturated in blue, dripping with blue, or maybe I was just hearing the sound of the melting snow cascading down my roof and then pouring, a steady stream, down the gutter spout. 

But there was another noise that day.  It was birdsong.  Even in Cincinnati there are birds that don’t fly south for the winter, but what I noticed the other day was that those birds had been silent and now it was as if something had woken them up, because they were clearly singing, in particular the House Finch and the cardinal.  

They were singing as if it were spring even though snow still blanketed the ground and icicles as thick as my waist still hung from the eaves of the church across the street. 

The snow and the cold air may have screamed winter, but the birds discerned something else entirely.  The days were longer and the sun seemed brighter.  

Spring is coming and so the birds sing. 

As for me, I sat curled up under a heavy blanket in my recliner and despite what I saw and what I felt, when I heard the birds singing, I too discerned that spring was coming. 

No offense to the forecasting abilities of a certain ground hog, but I expect to see the crocus soon and not sometime in mid-March. 

Notice that when I made the wrong decision on Friday to keep driving, that not only did I ignore my senses and my gut, but that the decision was partly based on fear.  I wanted to get home.  I was afraid if I stopped in a parking lot somewhere, I might get snowed in, so fear drove my decision to keep going. 

But the next day, my discerning of spring came from a different place.  I listened to birdsong.  I felt the sun.  My prediction that spring was on its way was made from a place of hope and peace and steadiness. 

This is how we discern God’s presence in our lives.  God does not amplify our fear.  He knows that we are afraid—we’re only human—but He asks that we trust Him in those times. 

We make such better decisions when we act from a place of hope and love than when we act from fear.  

Choose love or choose fear. 

Only one can bring us peace. 

So begin here—love God, love your neighbor, unconditionally and without exception. 

Listen to the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

 

 

You Will Be Called a Peacemaker

 Saturday morning, I was up around 5 am and I happened to be looking out the front window when I noticed that the moon was particularly large and bright in the western sky.  And right underneath the moon was this other light, this bright pinprick of light. 

It wasn’t twinkling, so it wasn’t a star. 

It wasn’t moving, so it wasn’t a plane. 

And I remembered that I had read recently that Jupiter was supposed be prominent that night. 

When I was in Florida, I tried to use my superzoom camera to get pictures of Saturn and Jupiter.  I had a tripod but even with a tripod I only managed to get a picture of Jupiter and its moons, once, with Jupiter as a larger light and its moons slightly smaller lights, cast out like a light beam from their mother planet. 

Once, for a second, I saw Saturn’s rings, but I didn’t get a picture worth sharing.  Real astrophotographers have methods that include stacking of picture frames to get clear shots.  I don’t know the first thing about how to do that, but for a moment, for a second, for a blink of the eye, I saw Saturn’s rings. 

But this past Saturday, after I verified online that the light in the sky under the moon was, in fact, Jupiter, I sat in my recliner wondering if I should try and get a picture.  I had two problems, though.  I no longer had a tripod and it was 1 degree outside.  There was no way I was risking frostbite for Jupiter, but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. 

So, I thought to myself, I wonder if I can get a clear view through the window. 

I grabbed my camera, turned off the lights in the house and pulled back the curtains.  I rested the lens on the window frame and I began to zoom in.

I couldn’t quite get a good angle.  There were tree branches in the way, but I zoomed in farther and farther, holding my breath, trying not flinch. 

Like with Saturn, years ago, there was a moment, half a second, when the bright blurry light of Jupiter, coalesced into something instantly recognizable as Jupiter, a yellow-brownish color with deep brown belts, bands that girdled the top and the bottom of the planet.  

For that briefest of seconds, it was like seeing the face of God, in that it is something we are all told exists, but rarely have a moment to see and experience for ourselves. 

For a second, seeing Jupiter from my kitchen window, was perfect … realized … faith. 

Today’s reading is part four in our series of “Horrible Stories from Genesis.”  And once again we are treated to a story about how woefully imperfect our heroes in Genesis are. 

The story of Abraham and his almost sacrifice of his son, Isaac, is objectively a horrible story.  To recap.  God decides to test Abraham, his loyalty, his obedience and tells Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, (not his only son, hello Ishmael) as a burnt offering.  God doesn’t explain why and Abraham doesn’t ask any clarifying questions like the most obvious which is … “You God, gave me Isaac.  He is a miracle.  From him, whole nations will rise.  Did I hear you wrong when you made that promise?” 

Perhaps you are thinking that God’s will should not be questioned, that we should blindly follow what we are told to do. 

But I would then remind you that even Mary, in the gospels, asks a clarifying question when she is told she is to become pregnant.  Remember?  She asks how that is possible given that she is a virgin. 

Abraham, though, asks no questions.  He takes Isaac off into the middle of nowhere, far away from anyone who might witness what he’s about to do.  He builds an altar.  He sets the wood beneath the altar.  He is ready to make his sacrifice.  

At this point, you get the sense that even Isaac is starting to notice that something is off.  And he asks Abraham what they will be sacrificing.  Abraham answers only that God will provide.

Abraham is going to kill Isaac.  I always read this passage as Abraham holding the knife high, maybe in the very act of swinging down on his son when God intervenes and commands Abraham to stop. 

Abraham passed the test.  He was willing to sacrifice his son, his precious son in obedience to God. 

Again, this is such an awful story—that God would ask Abraham to kill Isaac, that Abraham would be willing to do it, without question.  I’m trying to imagine what the walk home was like for Isaac and Abraham.  Did Abraham warn Isaac not to say anything to Sarah?  Did Isaac spend the rest of his life wondering if his dad was going to murder him? 

A couple of months ago, I read a book which I highly recommend called Canticle.  It is a fictionalized telling of the religious orders of women that popped up during the Middle Ages.  The main character, a woman, is a mystic and in one scene, she is teaching another woman this story of Abraham and Isaac.  

She tells the woman that Abraham passed the test.  He proved his loyalty to God.  He showed he cared more for God than his son. 

But the woman disagrees.  She says that Abraham failed the test.  He failed the test because God would never ask a parent to kill their child.  The test was not one of obedience but one of discernment. 

And I can tell you that if the story of Abraham and Isaac is a test of discernment rather than blind obedience to God, it is a test the human race has been failing since the dawn of time. 

How many awful horrible things have human beings committed in the name of God from the Crusades to the Inquisition?  

Even today, there is such a divide among Christians in this country that no matter what side you are on, you may wonder if you are all worshipping the same God. 

How do we discern what God is telling us in our own lives? 

One of the interesting things about these readings from Genesis that we have looked at over the last month is that even though these are post Eden stories, God still plays a very important and active role in the lives of His human creation.  He may not walk with Noah or Hagar the same way He walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden, but He does speak to people.  He speaks to Cain, “Where is your brother?”  He speaks to Hagar, “Turn around and go back.”  He speaks to Abraham.  And still the human race at the time struggles to understand God, even when He is talking to them directly.  

What hope do we have in this day and age, when God can sometimes feel very distant? 

What hope do we have to do the right thing, the Godly thing? 

Where do we even begin? 

We must look for God everywhere, not just in the planets in the night sky, but in each other. We must see that compassion and empathy, that justice, mercy and humility are not weaknesses but signs of strength, the strength given to each of us through the Holy Spirit. 

When we see the face of God in each other, then we can fully live out the blessings in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. 

When we see the face of God in each other, we dare not turn away from the poor, from the grieving, from the meek. 

Instead we will be filled by a hunger for righteousness that can only be sated by the bread of live. 

We will thirst for a righteousness that can only be quenched by the living water of Jesus Christ. 

We will be called peacemakers for we are all children of God. 

We will love our neighbor, unconditionally, without exception. 

Amen.