I Lent

 

February 22, 2026

 Gen. 2.15-17; 3.1-7; Matthew 4.1-11

 

+ Since we’re now well into Lent, let’s do a little Lenten discipline exercise, shall we?

 

I want you to think about something for a moment.

 

I want you to take a moment, right now, and think about something I imagine none of us want to think about.

 

Things like sin and repentance and temptation.

 

But, hey, it’s Lent.

 

This whole season is about thinking about things we don’t normally want to think about.

 

This morning, right now, I want you to think about someone in your life you knew to be a bully.

 

Now I know.

 

You’re immediately probably going to think instantly of a certain someone who kind of dominates our lives right now.

 

But I want you to think about someone in your own life who you viewed or currently view as a bully.

 

Someone maybe in junior high or high school.

 

Maybe a sibling.

 

Or a spouse. Or ex-spouse.

 

Maybe a parent.

 

Or a boss.

 

Or just a neighbor or a guy at the bar or a Karen on the street or at a restaurant.

 

Or maybe it was a priest.

 

Or a Bishop.

 

Think about that person.

 

And think about not only what emotions thinking about that person causes in you right now, but also think about how you responded to that person.

 

How did you respond?

 

Did you respond in anger?

 

Did you ignore them?

 

Did you avoid them?

 

Did you give into your fear?

 

Or did you stand up to them?

 

There’s no right or wrong way to respond.

 

But it is interesting what emotions thinking about such things cause within us.

 

Bullies are a part of our lives, whether we want them to be or not.

 

They are manipulative.

 

They are thuggish.

 

They can often be violent—not only in deeds, but also in words.

 

They wreak havoc.

 

They disrupt and cause upheaval.

 

They are chaos personified.

 

In our Gospel for today, we find a big bully.

 

Satan.

 

He’s being manipulative.

 

He’s being smooth.

 

And he’s being a bully.

 

Or trying to anyway.

 

And he’s trying to bully Jesus.

 

He’s trying to coerce and manipulate Jesus, to make him give up his Messiahship, to give up his tole as God’s Son.

 

When Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness, he tries to appeal to Jesus’ pride.

 

He knows that Jesus knows he is exactly who is.

 

Satan knows that Jesus truly does have the power to reign and rule, that he has all the power in the world, given to him by God.

 

And Satan further knows that if he could harness that power for himself—for evil—then he will have that power as well.

 

I think what’s really interesting about this story is not so much what it says about Jesus, but what it reveals about Satan.

 Let’s be clear, the Devil in this story is a bully, plain and simple.

 And bullies don’t care about others.

 Satan sure does not care about Jesus.

 In fact, Satan resents Jesus.

 He despises him.

 He’s jealous of him.

 Bullies only care about themselves---about who they are and who they are in relation to others.

 Maybe that’s not right either.

 I don’t think they even care who they are in relation to others.

 Because others don’t matter.

 Others are simply things.

 They’re not people.

Others are there simply to fulfill what the bully needs.

And what is it the bully needs?

The bully needs to show and to prove that they are someone.

That they are important.

That they are in control.

And let’s face it, that’s never going to be satisfied.

Which is why bullies bully again and again.

Bullies are experts in aggression, intimidation and deceit.

And they do so to gain power.

And in doing so they become tyrants.

When bullies reign, oppression becomes the norm.

You know who isn’t a bully in our story?

Jesus.

And Jesus shows us how to stand up to bullies.

He does so with a strength Satan the Bully only wishes he could have.

Jesus stands up to Satan the bully with self-confidence and self-assurance.

Jesus knows who he is.

He knows he is the Son of God—the Messiah.

He is loved by God. 

And God loves him.

Jesus doesn’t allow himself to be manipulated and or coerced into something.

In responding to Satan in the wilderness, Jesus models how to stand up to bullies and tyrants.

Because we are followers of Jesus, this is important to us.

Because Jesus shows us the way forward, this is the way for us to deal with bullies as well.

We should always stand up to the bullies in our life with self-assurance.

 With confidence.

 With the holy self-assurance of confidence that we, too, are children of God.

 That we too are loved by God.

 That we too are anointed.

 That we too don’t need to bully in return.

 After all, you can’t follow Jesus and be a bully too.

 So, this Lenten season, let’s truly join Jesus and stand up to the bullies and tyrants in our lives.

 This Lent, let's give up giving in to bullying and tyranny.

 Let Jesus’ example of standing up to the powers of this world be the way for us to move through not only the wasteland of Lent, but also the wasteland of our world and our society right now.

 

Let us do so, like Jesus, with confidence and strength.

 

Let us remind ourselves that are beloved and anointed children of our loving God.

 

If we do so, we will prevail over the powers of bullies and despots.

 

We will rise above the dark forces that tempt us and threaten to hurt us and bring us down.

 

What better way to make this season of Lent a time of holy renewal in our lives?

 

Ash Wednesday

 

February 18, 2026

 Joel  2.1-2,12-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6.1-6,16-21

+ One of the things someone who preaches regularly must deal with is the fact that, on occasionally, people are going to critique my sermons.

 I usually don’t mind.

 Though I also warn people who do so that they will be invited to give the sermon the next Sunday.

 And to be prepared for a critique in return.

 But one critique I received was one several years.

 This is one that is often common among Progressive Christians.

 I had a parishioner tell me that they were not appreciative of me preaching to them about sin during Lent.

 I responded to this person the only way I knew how to.

 I said, “I preach about sin during Lent because  I am a sinner too, right?”

 And that’s the truth.

 But the fact is, we all are sinners.

 Sin—falling short of what we are meant of what God created us to be—is something we all deal with.

 It is a common experience in our lives.

 And for, me, that’s what Ash Wednesday is all about.

 This is our time to admit God and to one another,

 “I am a sinner too.”

 We’re all in this boat together.

 It might be different for you as opposed to someone else who is here tonight.

 But each of our dealing with our own sins, in our own ways.

 That doesn’t mean we say that so we can then whip ourselves, or bash ourselves or be self-deprecating.

 We say it as a simple acknowledgment of our humanity before God, our imperfection.

 That is exactly what we do tonight and for these next 40 days.

 During Lent, we will be hearing about sin.

 We will be hearing about repentance.

 We will be reminded of the fact that, yes, we have fallen short in our lives.

 And tonight especially, we will be reminded that one day, each of here tonight will one day stop breathing and die.

 We are reminded tonight in very harsh terms that we are, ultimately, dust.

 And that we will, one day, return to dust.

 Yup.

 Unpleasant.

 But…

 …sometimes we need to be reminded of these things.

 Because, let’s face it.

 We spend most of our lives avoiding these things.

 We spend a good portion of our lives avoiding hearing these things.

 We go about for the most part with our fingers in our ears.

 We go about pretending we are going to live forever.

 We go about thinking we’re not really like everyone else.

 We think: I’m just a little bit more special than everyone else.

 Maybe…maybe…I’m the exception.

 Of course we do that.

 Because, for each of us, the mighty ME is the center of our universe.

 We as individuals are the center of our own personal universe.

 So, when we are confronted during Lent with the fact that, ultimately, the mighty ME is not the center of the universe, is not even the center of the universe of maybe the person who is closest to me, it can be sobering.

 And there we go.

 Lent is about sobering up.

 It is about being sober.

 About looking long and hard at the might ME and being realistic about ME.

 And my relationship with the God who is, actually, the center of the universe and creation and everything that is.

 It’s hard, I know, to come to that realization.

 It’s hard to hear these things.

 It’s hard to have hear the words we hear tonight as those ashes are placed on our foreheads,

 “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

 You are dust.

 I am dust.

 We are dust.

 We are ashes.

 And we are going to return to dust.

 Yes.

 It’s hard.

 But…

 Lent is also about moving forward.

 It is about living our lives fully and completely within the limitations of the fact that are dust.

 Our lives are like jazz to some extent.

 For people who do not know jazz, they think it is just free-form music.

 There are no limits to it.

 But that’s not true.

 There is a framework for jazz.

 Very clearly defined boundaries.

 But, within that framework there is freedom.

 Our lives are like that as well.

 Our mortality is the framework of our lives.

 We have boundaries.

 We have limits.

 And I am going to talk about those limits during this season of Lent.

 I am going to be talking throughout these forty days about a term one of my heroes coined.

 That hero, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the great Jesuit priest and paleontologist, talked about something like passive diminishments.

 Passive diminishments, according to Chardin, are simply those sufferings in this life that we cannot avoid.

 They are the limits in our lives—the hard boundaries of our existence that we cannot avoid.

 I’m not going to go into them too deeply tonight.

 But I will during the Sundays of this season.

 Tonight, though I will say this:

 Within those limits, within the boundaries of those passive diminishments, we have lots of freedom.

 And we have the potential to do a lot of good and a lot of bad.

 Lent is the time for us to stop doing the bad and start doing the good.

 It is time for us to store up for ourselves treasure in heaven, as we hear Jesus tell us tonight in our Gospel reading.

 It is time for work on improving ourselves.

 And sometimes, to do that, we need to shed some things.

 It is good to give up things for Lent.

 The reality however is this:

 Yes, we can give up sugar or caffeine or meat or tangible things that might not do us good.

 But let me just say this about that.

 If we give up something for Lent, let it be something that changes us for the better.

 Let it be things that improve us.

 Let us not only give up things in ourselves, but also things around us.

 Yes, we can give up nagging, but maybe we should also give up those voices around us that nag.

 Or maybe confront those voices that nag too much at us.

 Yes, we can give up being controlling and trying to change things we can’t.

 But we maybe also try hard to push back and speak out against those unreasonably controlling forces in our own lives.

 Maybe Lent should be a time to give up not only anger in ourselves, but those angry voices around us.

 Lent is a time to look at the big picture of our lives and ask: what is my legacy?

 How am I going to be remembered?

 Are people going to say of our legacies what we heard this evening from the prophet Joel?

 “Do not make your heritage a mockery…”

 Am I going to be known as the nag? As that angry, bitter person?

 Am I going to be known as a controlling, manipulative person who always had to get my way?

 Am I going to be known as a gossip, as a backbiter, as a person who professed my faith in a loving and accepting God on my lips, but certainly did not live it out in my life?

 If so, then there is no better time than Lent to change our legacy.

 That is our rallying cry during Lent as well.

 Let us choose to be a good, compassionate, humble, love-filled follower of Jesus.

 That is the legacy we should choose during this season, and from now on.

 After all, we ARE ashes.

 We are dust.

 We are temporary.

 We are not immortal.

 We are bound by our passive diminishments.

 But our legacies will outlive us.

 In fact, in many ways, they are, outside of our salvation, ultimately, the most important thing about our future.

 Let us live in to the legacy that will outlive us.

 This is probably the best Lenten discipline we can do.

 Most importantly, let this holy season of Lent be a time of reflection and self-assessment.

Let it be a time of growth—both in our self-awareness and in our awareness of God’s presence in the goodness in our life.

As St. Paul says in our reading from this evening: “Now is the acceptable time.”

“Now is the day of salvation.”

It is the acceptable time.

It is the day of salvation.

It is time for us to take full advantage of it.