Sean C. Capapruccia

Ash Wednesday – Feb. 18, 2026

Joel 2:12–13, 2 Corinthians 5:20–6:2, Matthew 6:1–6, 16–21

We live in a fast-paced world. Everything moves fast, at least it seems to move fast around me. I don’t particularly move all that fast, especially in the morning, but it seems I spend the whole day trying to catch up. Have you ever noticed that towns are spaced about 15-20 miles apart? That’s because that’s how about how far you could walk in a day. Back in the day, when our towns were being established, you’d leave early in the morning, walk or ride your horse to the next town, do your shopping, spend the night, and leave the next morning to come home. When I’m driving, I often think about that; how going from Richlands to Wallace or Rose Hill, or here, or Clinton – that would have been unheard of 150 years ago. Now it’s no thing at all. Life has gotten pretty fast. Cars go faster; Internet speeds get faster; food is getting faster; drugs are working faster, so we can go to sleep faster and then wake up faster; relationships are getting faster; even some churches pride themselves on getting in and out faster, unfortunately.

But there are certain moments in life that force you to slow down whether you want to or not.

-When you get sick everything can come to a halt. Then you go to the doctor for your 1 o’clock appointment and sit there for two hours questioning just how sick you really are.
  -Funerals. We got behind a super long funeral procession on Saturday and were forced to follow this train for 18 miles from Fountaintown to Wallace. I mean, you can’t very well pass them, so I put on my emergency flashers and went through the red lights with them.   
   -When the power goes out. That tends to make everything slow down.

Ash Wednesday is one of those moments. It is the Church gently grabbing us by the shoulders and saying, “Let’s be honest for a minute.”

Tonight is a quiet moment of looking at ourselves in the spiritual mirror. The excitements of Christmas and the New Year and Epiphany are over and the joy of Easter is a little way off yet. We’re now in the valley between the two Church festival mountains.  Just ashes. Just Scripture. Just the uncomfortable and beautiful truth that we are human beings who desperately need God. Which is sometimes, just the place we need to be.

When we place the ashes on our foreheads, we will hear these words:

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

By itself it’s a rather morbid thought, isn’t it? Not exactly what you’d put on a T-shirt. In fact, most of the time we live as though this isn’t the reality; as though this is not something that will happen to us. We like to ignore this grim truth and pretend we are in control. We act as though life is something under our direction instead of something that we have received.

But Ash Wednesday interrupts that illusion.

The Bible does not say we are superheroes. It doesn’t tell us that all things are under our feet. It says we are dust. Dust made by God; dust into which God’s Spirit breathed life; but dust nonetheless. We came from dust, and because of sin, to dust we shall return.

You see, Adam and Eve were created to be immortal but by his one sin, death entered the world, both physical and spiritual. Sin is not just the somethings we occasionally do wrong. Sin is something that has tangled itself into the human heart. It affects how we think, how we love, how we make decisions, and how we live.

But this simple though sad truth is not meant to shame us, it is meant to free us. By admitting our guilt before the Lord, He can heal us.

The prophet Joel gives us one of the most hopeful invitations in the entire Bible; he says:

“Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

Notice God does not say, “Go clean yourself up and then come back to Me.”

God says, “Return. Come now.”

I think sometimes people imagine repentance is like getting called to the principal’s office. You expect crossed arms. The cold hard stare. Disappointment. Maybe a lecture. But what we see in the Bible is that repentance looks more like coming home after drifting for a while.

        Lent is kind of like gardening. I’m sure I have told you more than once that I am a terrible gardener. And around here, in eastern Carolina, if you leave a garden alone for two weeks… it belongs to the weeds.

You can plant tomatoes, beans, squash — all the good things. But if you don’t stay after it, weeds will quietly sneak in. They don’t ask permission. They don’t send warning letters. They just show up and start choking the life out of everything else.

Sin often works like weeds. Most of the time, it doesn’t burst into our lives overnight with a bunch of noise and fanfare. It creeps in slowly. A little bitterness here. A little pride there. A little drifting from prayer. A little less patience.

Before long, things that once grew strong in our faith start struggling to breathe.

Lent is like spiritual weeding season. And if you’ve ever weeded a garden, you know something important — pulling weeds is not punishment. It is protection. It makes room for healthy growth.

God doesn’t call us to repentance because He wants to make life miserable. He calls us to repentance because He wants to make our life thrive.

Liturgically, we are getting ready for Easter; to be dressed in white and coming to the empty tomb fresh and washed.

So what are some ways in which we do that? We do that by:

Self-examination and repentance

Prayer and fasting

Works of mercy

Renewed devotion to the reading of God’s Word

Intentional pursuit of scriptural holiness

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus is speaking what to many might be some very uncomfortable words. He basically says, “Stop using religion as theater.”

He talks about giving. Praying. Fasting. All good things. All holy things. But Jesus warns that even spiritual practices can become performances if we are not careful.

And if we are honest, even churches can become places where people feel pressure to look spiritually impressive. Jesus is not interested in impressive. Jesus is interested in real.

He says, when you pray, go somewhere quiet. When you give, don’t announce it. When you fast, don’t make a show of it so that everyone asks what is wrong with you. “Oh, you look hungry, do you want to get something to eat?” “Actually, no, I’m fasting.”

Jesus is not speaking against doing these things, but He is rescuing them from the false idea that these things earn God’s favor. They are things we do in response to God’s favor. To draw nearer to Him.

During Lent, people often give something up. Chocolate. Television. Social media. Coffee. Although to be honest — for some people, giving up coffee might create more sin than it prevents.

But the goal of Lent is not punishment is not to punish yourself. It is a preparation. It’s like cleaning out a cluttered room. You are not throwing things away because you hate the room. You are making space because you love it the room. You want it to be more peaceful, a cleaner space to enjoy.

Prayer slows us down to listen to God; to listen to His leading.
Giving loosens our grip on things that we may be making too high a priority in our lives.
Fasting reminds us that our deepest hunger is spiritual, not physical.

John Wesley talked about these as “means of grace.” They are not ways we earn salvation. They are ways God shapes us so we can receive His transforming love more deeply.

Ash Wednesday can only make sense if we remember where this season is going. It is moving toward Calvary and an empty tomb three days later.

At the cross, Jesus does something amazing: He takes our sin, our shame, our brokenness, our dust-filled humanity… and He carries it all Himself. Christ takes our guilt and gives us His righteousness. Grace does not simply grant us forgiveness, it begins transforming us from the inside out.

Because of Jesus, ashes are not a symbol of hopelessness as they were in the Old Testament. They are a symbol of surrender that leads to resurrection.

An Invitation

Tonight is simple. God is inviting you to return; to re-center yourself on His Word and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Not just when life is less messy.
Not when faith feels easy.
Not when you have better answers to life’s problems.

But now.

Return to Him tired.
Return to Him doubtful.
Return to Him hopeful.
Return to Him confused.
Return to Him now just as you are.

The God who formed man from dust and breathed life into him is still in the business of breathing life into people who feel dried out, worn out, and spiritually exhausted.

So tonight, when you come forward and receive the ashes, remember:

We are but dust.
  But we are dust cherished by God for the sake of Jesus Christ.
We are fragile.
  But we are held together by His grace.
We are sinful.
But we are redeemable through Christ.

And this season of Lent is not about walking into darkness.

It is about walking honestly in the light.

Return to the Lord, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

Amen.