Ash Wednesday 2026

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and all that is within me, bless God’s holy Name.

There are lots of trumpets in today’s readings. In Joel, the first blow is the shofar, to sound the alarm that an army is invading, an army of locusts. The second blow of the shofar is to call people to the fast. Drought and locusts – of biblical proportions – are on the way. Joel’s context was bad – the devastation by the locusts was catastrophic and unprecedented, compounded by the drought.

Tell your children and your children’s children.

The devastation is going to be so severe that it must never be forgotten. ‘The utter destruction of our nation,’ says Joel, ‘will be remembered for ever.’

Joel calls the Nation to prayer as the way to try and make sense of what is happening, to figure out how to endure and to remain faithful to God despite having nothing to offer to God because the locusts and the drought eliminated their offerings of blessing: grain, new wine and oil. There was nothing for the Nation to do in this horrific situation that was literally darkness due to the sheer masses of locusts.

Joel – and Jesus – call us inward: they call us to lament. In the fear, in the bewilderment, in the helplessness, Joel calls the Nation to lament, and not just a few; but everyone: the aged, the children, infants at the breast, the bridegroom, and the bride.

Our common definition of lament is to express regret or to mourn. But biblically and spiritually, to lament is not just a bunch of us complaining about the darkness and fear. Lament is to gather the pain and fear of your own and others, to make meaning of the root of that pain and fear, and to reorient your perspective on the root of that pain and fear so you can lift it up in prayer and praise for God to act. Lament requires us to look inward at ourselves, to search around our insides and find what is really at the heart of our problems and at the heart of our relationship with God, and then to genuinely appeal to God to act in love for God’s Children, not for just oneself. As I said on Sunday:

You can’t control what other people do;

but you can control how you respond.

To lament is the process of controlling how you respond.

As we lament, we share our fear and grief with God, but not just share it, but offer it. As an offering, our lament is praise to God and our confidence in God’s power and love that God knows our pain and fear. In our offering, God knows that we are still in relationship. In offering our pain and fear, we are asking God to act, and that action might be through us, but we won’t know until we make the offering.

Biblically and spirituality, lament is never only for ourselves, but for all who are enduring the same pain and fear. Lament is much deeper than remorse. Lament requires us to look inward and to be in solidarity with all who suffer. And through our lament, we begin to see and hear God. And as we start to see and hear those glimpses of God, we will see the pathway to restoration. So, lament is not remorse. Lament is an offering of our pain and grief to God, nurturing that close relationship we have with God. And lament is also about striving for hope.

After the Last Supper was Jesus’ moment of lament. It was His moment of pain and fear:

Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.

He had to make meaning of His pain and fear of his Crucifixion and Death. He had to reorient His perspective and lift it up in prayer and praise for God as He says:

Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me;

yet, not my will but yours be done.

And He did so not on just His behalf, but on our behalf. And everything that flowed from Jesus’ moment of lament is wherein lies our own hope.

And because of that hope, we lament during Lent. Our lament causes us to turn back toward God. And that turn is what we know as repentance. That’s the familiar theme of Lent: repentance. Today we are called to a period of self-examination; of almsgiving, prayer and fasting; of repentance.

In a moment we will recite Psalm 51 together. It is an act of repentance, asking for God’s grace. As we take in the words of the Psalm, we will feel the desperation of the author. But we will also feel the genuine desire to change our way of life, to turn back to a life lived for God’s purposes. Our lament takes us inward to find the root of our pain and fear, to reorient how we confront it, and as we repent, as we turn back to God, we lift that up to God in prayer and praise.

To lament prevents us from practicing our “piety before others in order to be seen by them” because lament requires us to look inside ourselves and offer up those vulnerabilities. It’s harder to fake.

The trumpet is calling the Nation to worship, the trumpet is calling us to lament.

This is the time to take a deep look inside, search around our insides and find what is really at the heart of our relationship with God, to find the nucleus of the grief and fear, and turn to God and make it an offering.

May God hear our lament and restore us.