Remember That You Are Dust...

 Thoughts on Ash Wednesday 2026 (Glanvilles Wootton 11am & Thornford 7pm)

Isaiah 58.1–12; 2 Corinthians 5.20b – 6.10; Matthew 6.1–6, 16–21

...and your Father who sees in secret will reward you...

Like many of you I have been ‘doing this Christian thing’ for a while now – it’s been going on for more than 4 decades in my case. I’m sure some of you have been at it for longer than that.

I wonder if you ever get people asking you why you choose to keep going with your Christian faith. I do, especially in the wake of difficulties. People often assume that when we hit hard times one of the first things at stake will be a Christian faith. The slogan often goes something like this: How can you still believe in a God who allows x, y or z terrible thing to happen? 

I don’t know about you but I don’t think I could have survived some of the difficult things that have happened to me without my Christian faith, so it seems to work the opposite way for me. When terrible things happen I find myself more in need of God than ever.

I occasionally surprise people if they press me on my faith by saying something like this: What people don’t understand about Christianity is that it’s not primarily a moral path – it’s not a code of conduct or a set of rules to turn you into someone ‘good’, whatever that might mean. At its heart the Christian faith is a love affair.

If you ever want to experience an awkward silence at a social occasion try saying that!

You know, when Jesus was asked which of the Commandments was the greatest he didn’t say, ‘thou shalt do no murder’, or ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’ or even ‘thou shalt not steal’; he said that the Greatest Commandment was this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 23:37-40)

In other words, it’s all about love.

Now why would Jesus say that if it wasn’t a fact that God is supremely loveable? It would be deeply unfair to command us to love that which is unworthy of love, and God is not unfair.

Love for God is not something we have to grit our teeth and manufacture. God is not some mean spirited ancient relative we have to pretend to love, because we are secretly playing a long game in the hope of securing an inheritance! God is the most loveable ‘thing’ imaginable, and if we don’t yet see that, and live in that truth, then Lent is a tailor-made remedy for us, because we have some inner work of conversion to do.

Shortly after becoming the bishop of Hippo in North Africa about 400AD St Augustine wrote his autobiography. He called it ‘The Confessions’ and it is an account of his sinful youth, his journey to Christianity, and his philosophical reflections. Imagine a long letter, written to God in the first person and you’ll get a flavour of it.

At one point, in an unforgettable passage, this is what he writes: Too late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new. Too late have I loved you!

Sounds like a man who has fallen in love to me! He goes on…

You were within me but I was outside myself, and there I sought you! In my weakness, I ran after the beauty of the things you have made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The things you have made kept me from you – the things which would have no being unless they existed in you!

He sounds like a man who got caught up in what we might call the ‘trappings’ of life.  Augustine had a weakness for women but it works for anything that functions as a substitute for God, like money and beautiful possessions, or success and power, or even romantic love and popularity …we could go on.

The passage finishes with these words: You have called, you have cried, and you have pierced my deafness. You have radiated forth, you have shined out brightly, and you have dispelled my blindness. You have sent forth your fragrance, and I have breathed it in, and I long for you. I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst for you. You have touched me, and I ardently desire your peace.

Now he sounds like a man who has discovered the love of his life.

It’s all well and good telling you about the spiritual love-life of an early Christian saint but there’s method in the madness and the method is described in our Gospel reading, which talks again and again about something we might call ‘the secret place’.

In our passage today Jesus repeats the word ‘secret’ 6 times. There are 3 commands to get busy ‘in secret’ and 3 promises that God the Father will see what we do when we do it in secret.

Jesus never suggests that we shouldn’t be practicing the traditional Lenten observances of almsgiving, fasting and prayer. He doesn’t say that we shouldn’t practice what he calls ‘piety’. He just tells us that these things should be done ‘in secret’ because doing these things in secret builds up a kind of treasure for us.

The treasure is not something we can quantify. We can’t keep an account as though we are earning favours from the Lord. This is not some sort of Catholic scheme of indulgences. This treasure is the rich intimacy that grows from cultivating a personal relationship with the God Augustine describes as the Beauty, ever ancient and ever new!

This is the treasure of God’s own presence in our lives. The sweet, incomparable gift of His fragrance (there’s no better way to put it). The treasure that builds up in the ‘secret place’ is His peace, His joy, His goodness, His faithfulness, His consolation, His healing, His holiness, His sanctification. There aren’t enough words…

There’s a transition to be made here from the corporate practice of our faith to an individual practice; from collective worship to solitary worship, without neglecting the former.

So I encourage you to press on into the ‘secret place’ this lent. Have a go: skip a meal or two and keep it a secret; give something away and keep it a secret; spend solitary time in prayer and keep it a secret. Experiment with it. See how it makes you feel.

Give God the chance, this Lent, to reveal the depths of His love for you. Allow him to show you how worthy of your love he really is. Carve out a space for just you and Him and see what happens.

We might end by taking liberties with a famous line from Psalm 34:8: Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the one who ENTERS THE SECRET PLACE AND takes refuge in him!

God bless you all.

(The photo was taken in the cemetary at Lusignac, Dordogne, France in 2017)