Date: February 18, 2026

Readings: Joel 2:1-2; 12-17; Matthew 6:1-6; 16-21

Preacher: Sermon by Fr. Travis O'Brian 

PREPARING FOR RESURRECTION

            We are now entering upon the season of Lent.  The forty days of Lent – forty-six if you include the Sundays – is the time the church sets aside as a season of preparation; a season of learning and discernment, a time to ready our hearts and our lives for Easter, the eternal day, the day of resurrection.  Lent is a season of repentance – meaning a season we turn our inner life more conscientiously toward the Light of that day.  Lent is a season of discipline.  Because we are incarnate creatures, our outer life reflects and shapes the inner turn of our hearts.  That is why the Letter of James encourages us to “be doers of the word, and not merely hearers.”  For although we are warned against judging our neighbour’s heart by his works alone; and although Jesus makes clear that to focus on works that can be seen rather than on the spirit which cannot be seen, is to lose the good that the works may have contained; even so, to kneel when we pray is to practise humility before God; to fast is to practise mindfulness of the giver of all good things; to receive a cross of ashes upon the forehead is to practise letting go of ourselves, trusting that the God who leads us into life holds us even in death.  So although we are not to equate the outer work with the inner spirit, nevertheless in a human being, the inner and the outer life are intended for each other.  When we find tension between them, and no one is ever fully freed from that tension, it is the work of repentance – the work, that is, of placing our whole life before God, of fasting and prayer, of generous self-giving and of Eucharist – to bring them together so that the secret spirit might be expressed perfectly in the visible body of our works. 

            When we say that Lent is a season of repentance, do not understand this to mean of increasing our sense of guilt, or even of our inadequacy.  Repentance, we must never tire of saying, is metanoia, is the life of turning – or better, of constantly re-turning – our lives to the God who opens his hand and gives us to be.  In the words of the Baptismal examination, to repent is to turn the face of our hearts away from “All spiritual forces of wickedness,” away from “the evil powers of this world,” away from our own “sinful desires” – and toward the light of Jesus Christ: thus to put “our whole trust in his grace and love.”  To repent is to trust our life and our death ever-more perfectly to the Love that is God.

            What would I say to those wanting, seeking, to trust God more?  (And who, gathered here tonight, would that not include?)  To those yearning to love God more entirely, I would say, first of all, that you don’t need to prove your heart, your holiness, your faith, to anyone.  Not to other people.  Certainly not to God.  Not even to yourself.  Perhaps that sounds a little paradoxical.  After all, I just said that Lent is a season of conscious preparation.  One certainly does need to cultivate a discipline of self-giving, worship, and prayer.  But when you kneel down to pray, and then when you rise, do not worry, let go of your concern, over whether your faith is adequate.  If you have summoned your heart to your prayer, the rest is God’s concern.  If you constantly worry whether your faith is sufficient, let God be the judge.  For to begin with, the answer is always “no” – no, it’s not sufficient.  Who among us is able to move mountains with a word?  Yet the Father accepts the faith we have, even the little we are able to lift up to him.  He accepts our offering as sufficient, as perfect and beautiful, in the perfect offering of Christ.  But since, on its own, our faith will never be sufficient enough, our love never complete or perfect enough – the first step of trusting our life to God is to stop measuring.  Summon the yearning of your heart to the discipline, then let God be the judge.  As Kierkegaard once wrote, there is an infinitely long way for us to go to come to God.  No matter how far along the road to him we have travelled, therefore, in truth we are always only just starting out.  We are all, in God’s eyes, always still at the beginning – and yet his word to us is, “follow me.”

            Then secondly, to those yearning to love God more fully, I would say trust that the faith you are seeking, the love you are yearning for, lives already within you.  No one, not one of God’s creatures, is cut off from the Holy Spirit – at least, not from God’s side.  God is waiting for us always, beckoning, inviting our repentance.  Even when the Psalmist cries out, “Cast me not away from your presence; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me!” – it is the Spirit crying out in his cry.  Even when Jesus cries out from the cross, “My God! Why has thou forsaken me?” – it is God’s own cry, God’s cry for us, for the world, crying in his.

What does it mean to trust our life – to trust our death and therefore our whole life – to God?  It means to trust that He is present even when and where we cannot see him.  It means to trust his presence even in the places of his absence, where we experience his absence.  Even in the absences, the voids of our inmost heart, he is there. 

Remember that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

To kneel down, to receive the cross of ashes, to say in our secret heart, “Here I am, Lord” – is to practise trusting our life, giving our life and our death to his care.  It is to prepare ourselves for the resurrection – God’s future, for which we can never fully prepare ourselves.  It is to practise faith that God gathers our dust, even our cry of desolation, into His eternal life.

                                                                                                                                    AMEN