Hearts Laid Bare: Ash Wednesday 2026 (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21)

February 18, 2026, Year A, Ash Wednesday, First Day of Lent, Days of Discipline, Denial, and Special Prayer, Season of Lent

Matthew 6:1–6, 16–21, Psalm 103, 2 Corinthians 5:20–6:10

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Lent is a forty-day season of preparation for Easter, echoing our Lord’s forty days of fasting in the wilderness. It is a penitential season, not because God delights in our misery, but because honest reckoning with our sin prepares us to receive anew the joy of the Resurrection. The Prayer Book invites us to observe a holy Lent through self-examination and repentance, prayer, fasting and alms-giving, and reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word. We undertake these disciplines so that we might turn from our false securities and turn toward Christ afresh.

Our Gospel reading is from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:1–6, 16–21, and it will serve as our primary text this morning. As we work through it, we will also draw upon Psalm 103 and 2 Corinthians because the three readings belong together beautifully on this day. In Matthew 6, Jesus addresses giving, prayer, and fasting. But his concern is not simply whether his disciples practice these disciplines. His concern is why.

Jesus begins in verse 1: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1, ESV) Notice the phrase “in order to be seen.” Jesus assumes that his disciples will practice righteousness. The question is whether that righteousness is directed toward God or performed for an audience. That is a question worth carrying with us through the whole of Lent.

Jesus then moves through these practices with remarkable consistency. When we give to the needy, we are not to announce it like the hypocrites. When we pray, we are not to perform for those who might be watching. When we fast, we are not to arrange our appearance so that everyone knows how much we are sacrificing. In each case Jesus says essentially the same thing: “They have received their reward.” (Matthew 6:2, 5, 16, ESV) They sought human approval, and they received it. If applause was the object, applause is the reward.

But Jesus is reaching deeper than outward hypocrisy. He is exposing the orientation of the heart. Whose approval are we seeking? Whose eyes matter most? Are we cultivating a life before God, or merely the appearance of one before other people?

That raises an obvious question on Ash Wednesday. In a few moments many of us will come forward and receive ashes on our foreheads, a very public and visible mark, and we will hear the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” If Jesus has just warned us against practicing righteousness in order to be seen, are visible ashes not exactly the sort of thing he condemns?

The answer turns on those words, “in order to be seen.” Jesus is not condemning public worship or every visible act of devotion. He worshiped publicly in the synagogue. He prayed with others. He celebrated the Passover with his disciples. The earliest Christians gathered visibly and corporately for prayer, teaching, fellowship, and the breaking of bread.

What Jesus condemns is devotion performed for the purpose of cultivating a reputation for holiness. The ashes we receive today are not a badge of superior devotion. The Prayer Book calls them a symbol of our mortality and a sign of our penitence. They acknowledge a truth shared by every one of us: we are creatures of dust, mortal sinners in need of mercy.

The ash cross therefore should not say, “Look how holy I am.” It says almost the opposite. It says, “I am mortal. I am a sinner. I need a Savior.” There is humility in standing before God and one another and allowing the sentence pronounced upon Adam to be spoken over us again: “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The ashes are also for us. If later today we catch a glimpse of that mark in a mirror or a car window, it can remind us of something we spend much of our lives trying not to remember. Our lives are brief. Our bodies are mortal. The things we accumulate will eventually belong to someone else, and the reputation we guard so carefully will pass from memory. We are dust.

But that is not the whole Christian confession, and the Prayer Book refuses to let it be. It reminds us that we are marked with ashes in the same manner in which we were signed with the Cross in Baptism. The dust belongs to Adam, but the Cross belongs to Christ, the second Adam, and in him we have the hope of Resurrection. The ashes tell the truth about our mortality, but they tell that truth beneath the sign of the one who entered the grave and came out again.

So if someone sees the ashes and asks what they mean, we do not need to boast about our religiosity or become embarrassed by the question. We can simply tell the truth. We are mortal. We are sinners. We need mercy. And Jesus Christ has come for sinners.

Lent is a season in which we stop pretending and allow our hearts to be laid bare before God. That can be uncomfortable work because we are remarkably skilled at explaining our motives to ourselves. We tell ourselves we give because we care about others, and perhaps we do, but we may also enjoy being known as generous. We pray faithfully, but perhaps we also like being thought of as prayerful. We undertake disciplines for holiness, but perhaps part of us enjoys being admired for our discipline.

Jesus answers that temptation in verses 3 and 4: “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”(Matthew 6:3–4, ESV) The same pattern follows in prayer and fasting. The act is hidden, the Father sees, and the reward does not depend upon human recognition.

That is profoundly countercultural in an age when almost every experience can become content. A good deed can be photographed. A spiritual milestone can be posted. An act of service can become part of a personal brand. Jesus offers a simpler freedom: our Father already sees.

And that brings us naturally to Psalm 103. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6 that the Father sees in secret, while the Psalm tells us what kind of Father sees us: “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”(Psalm 103:8, ESV)

This is one of the great truths of Ash Wednesday. We come to acknowledge our sin, and we receive ashes as a reminder of our mortality, but we do not come groveling before a reluctant deity whom we must somehow persuade to become merciful. We come to the God who is already “merciful and gracious.”

Psalm 103 continues: “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.” (Psalm 103:10–11, ESV) Then comes the verse that seems almost written for this day: “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:13–14, ESV)

God remembers that we are dust. He knows our frailty more completely than we do. He knows the sins we have successfully hidden from others and the sins we have hidden from ourselves. He knows the weakness beneath our performance. Yet Psalm 103 does not say that he looks upon our dust with disgust. It says that, as a father has compassion upon his children, so the Lord has compassion upon those who fear him.

That is why Lent is not a forty-day program of religious self-improvement designed to earn God’s favor. It is a season in which our pretenses are stripped away so that we may learn again to receive what we could never manufacture for ourselves.

The Collect for Ash Wednesday makes exactly that point. We pray, “Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.”Notice what we are asking. We do not arrive at Lent possessing the heart God requires and then present our contrition to him as evidence that we deserve mercy. We ask God to create in us what we lack. Even our repentance depends upon grace.

The same Collect calls him “the God of all mercy.” That order matters. Mercy does not appear after we have performed Lent successfully. Grace is present at the beginning, awakening repentance, sustaining obedience, and drawing sinners back to God.

Our Epistle makes the Gospel even more explicit. Paul says, “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”Then he tells us how reconciliation is possible: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:20–21, ESV)

Be reconciled to God. Not through spectacular acts of devotion, and not by constructing a better religious version of ourselves, but through Jesus Christ. He is the sinless one who bore our sin so that we might stand before God clothed in a righteousness that is not our own achievement. This is the great exchange: our sin laid upon Christ, his righteousness given to us; our death answered by his risen life.

So how should we enter Lent? Jesus gives us three concrete disciplines in this passage, and the first is giving.

In verses 2 through 4, Jesus assumes that his disciples will give to those in need. This Lent, perhaps we can undertake a deliberate act of generosity and keep it quiet. Maybe someone in our church or community is facing financial hardship. Perhaps we could help without attaching our name to the gift. We could also give more intentionally to those doing Gospel work, including the Alenski or Omar missionary families. There are ways to contribute to them in the narthex. The point is not the amount or whether anyone else knows. The question Jesus presses upon us is whether we can give simply because our Father sees.

Then Jesus turns to prayer. In verse 6 he says, “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” (Matthew 6:6, ESV) This Lent, perhaps we should establish or renew a daily pattern of private prayer. It may be early in the morning before anyone else is awake, during a quiet part of the day, or before bed. The Daily Office in our Prayer Book can give us structure. We can pray the Psalms, confess our sins, give thanks, intercede for others, and learn to spend time before God without needing anyone else to know.

Then, beginning in verse 16, Jesus turns to fasting: “And when you fast…” (Matthew 6:16, ESV) Again, notice the assumption. Jesus does not say if his disciples fast.

Christian fasting, properly speaking, concerns food. It is a voluntary bodily abstinence undertaken for the sake of prayer, repentance, and greater dependence upon God. Other forms of self-denial may accompany fasting and can be spiritually useful, but they are not identical with it. Giving up social media, television, shopping, alcohol, or some other comfort may expose habits that have gained too much control and create room for prayer, but we should not allow the historic Christian meaning of fasting to disappear.

For some of us, an appropriate Lenten discipline might mean fasting from a meal on Fridays and using that time for prayer. For others, age, health, medication, physical work, or other circumstances may require a different practice. The point is not severity. We are not trying to prove how much discomfort we can endure. Fasting should teach dependence, reminding us in our bodies that life is a gift and that we do not live by bread alone.

And when we fast, Jesus says, do not advertise it. “Anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret.” (Matthew 6:17–18, ESV) In other words, go about the day normally. We do not need to complain about how hungry we are or make sure everyone knows what we have given up. The Father sees.

Having addressed giving, prayer, and fasting, Jesus now reaches the heart beneath all three. In verses 19 through 21 he asks where our treasure actually is: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19–21, ESV)

That is the deeper question of Lent: where is our treasure? Is it in the approval of others, in being thought faithful, generous, knowledgeable, successful, or respectable? Is it in money, possessions, comfort, health, or control? Those things may be good gifts in their proper place, but they make terrible gods because every earthly treasure eventually passes away.

Ash Wednesday makes that impossible to avoid. The person whose forehead bears the words “to dust you shall return”cannot pretend that earthly treasure is permanent. Lent therefore gives us an opportunity to audit our hearts. Where have we been living for earthly applause? Where have we substituted religious performance for fellowship with God? What possession, habit, reputation, resentment, comfort, or ambition has begun to occupy a place in our hearts that belongs to Christ?

And here is the grace: we ask those questions in the presence of the God whom Psalm 103 calls merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. And through Jesus Christ he has acted to reconcile sinners to himself.

In a few moments, many of us will come forward and feel the grit of ashes on our foreheads. We will hear the ancient words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Receive them as truth. We are dust, but we are dust into which God has breathed life, dust loved by our Creator, dust for whose redemption the Son of God gave himself.

The ashes tell us where Adam’s road ends. The Cross tells us what God has done about it. And the empty tomb tells us that death will not have the final word. That is why Ash Wednesday can be severe without becoming hopeless, and why Lent can be penitential without becoming despairing.

So may this Lent be a season of honest reckoning, but not despair. May God expose the darkness in our hearts so that we may bring it into the light of Christ. May we give, pray, fast, and practice self-denial not to construct an image of holiness but to seek the Father who already sees us. May we give alms with open hands, hear the Word with open hearts, and ask God to “create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” And may we hear Paul’s appeal as personally as though he were standing before us this morning: “Be reconciled to God.”

The ashes are not the destination. Easter is. We begin in dust, but we walk toward the Cross and the empty tomb.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.