Marked for: death|LIFE

Ash Wednesday 2026

Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

Why do you have crosses on your foreheads? We are told not to make a big deal of our fasting. This is always a question we Lutherans get. Catholics get it. Some Episcopalians get it as well.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go home and wash this off before I put my head on the pillow. I’m not going to wear ashes the rest of Lent. These ashes have nothing to do with the fast, but they have everything to do with my impending death.

Everyone upon whom I placed ashes this evening—young or old—will die. I put ashes on my children’s foreheads. They will die. I put ashes on your children’s foreheads. They will die.

We sometimes think of our own mortality in a detached way. But then, all of a sudden, we realize that our loved ones will die. And for some of you, that happened between last Ash Wednesday and this Ash Wednesday. You watched your loved one decline. For some, it was years ago, but the pain is still fresh.

And for some of us gathered in this room, before Ash Wednesday of next year, you will die. “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” This is the wages of our sin. This is what we deserve.

You are evil people. I am an evil man. There is no denying it. We are in rebellion against God. We make an idol of ourselves. We want to please ourselves.

Wouldn’t it be great if I were in charge of the world? I could fix all the problems—not your problems, just my problems.

We quickly discover what poor gods we actually make. I cannot rebuke the wind and the sea. I cannot make it rain on the just and the unjust alike. I cannot even stop the wildfires going on in our great state. Truly, it is an Ash Wednesday when I am wondering if my voice will hold up as I feel that hoarseness building in the back of my throat because of all the ash in the air.

If we lay up treasures for ourselves on this side of eternity, all we have earned is death. Those treasures become idols. This is why Jesus warns us that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. Everything on this side of eternity is perishable. It has an expiration date—not a “best by” date, not a “sell by” date, but an expiration date. And guess what? It is not good past that expiration date.

We are preparing ourselves to die. We are walking toward Good Friday, not anticipating the death of Jesus Christ as spectators, but anticipating our own death. But that is where something miraculous happens. Where we should be nailed to the cross, our Lord and Savior is nailed to the cross. Where we should die, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world dies in our stead. Where our blood should be spilled, His blood is poured out for the whole world.

And something even greater is yet to come. When we go to the tomb on the first day of the week—when we go to weep and to mourn the Lord and Savior who was supposed to save us, who died in our stead—we find the tomb empty.

Yes, I will die. Yes, you will die. Yes, our loved ones have died. But he who believes in Jesus Christ, though he die, yet shall he live and never die. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. He is the resurrection and the life. He is the hope and salvation not only of mankind, but of the entire world.

All creation is cursed, and all creation groans. But He will come again and remake it all. He will wipe away those tears of sorrow, those tears of hurt, those tears of brokenness—those tears caused by our sin—from our eyes. And we shall put on the imperishable.

No longer will there be dust and ashes and sackcloth and mourning, but an eternal celebration. Life shall reign, and death shall be His footstool.

These ashes on our heads do not make us any better than anyone else. They do not make us any worse than anyone else. They simply remind us that we need a Savior. They are in the shape of the cross—an empty cross—as our Savior has risen. The promise of everlasting life was secured in His hands and His feet and given to you. He is our treasure.

Everything else—even good things, even family and friends, even candy or coffee or chocolate or even bread—comes after Him.

For He is our very life. And where He is, no one can steal that treasure from us. No one can destroy that treasure, for it is the treasure of God Himself: to dwell with His people, to dwell with you, and to dwell with me.

So we journey these forty days not in dourness, not in sourness, not in grumpiness—I know that will come whenever what you truly crave confronts you—but in faith.

We journey these forty days knowing that even though we die, yet in Christ we live. And we will see our Savior with our own flesh and blood once again when He returns to this earth. All sin will be cast away.

In Christ’s name. Amen.