Sermon for February 18, 2026
Ash Wednesday
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
You may know that I have a bit of a sweet tooth, and I especially love good pastry. Of course, you can never go wrong with kringle, but another one I love is cannoli. The crisp outer shell and sweet inner filling made from ricotta cheese is a perfect combination. A couple of years ago we took a big family trip to Italy, and spent a few days in Venice. Venice is an amazing place for many reasons, but one of them is their pastry. We found a good bakery and felt it was our duty to sample their wares, all of which were delicious.
One night, though, after eating dinner and walking through the maze of streets, we passed another bakery we hadn’t seen before. It caught my eye because the window was filled with the most beautiful cannoli I’d ever seen. So we went in and picked out a few to go. Back in our Air BnB, we sat down at the kitchen table, opened the box, picked up the cannoli, took a bite and…they tasted a bit like cardboard. Their fancy appearance on the outside did not match their true flavor. We learned the hard way that these cannoli were designed to separate tourists from their money, rather than provide a truly enjoyable treat.
By analogy, this is the basic point Jesus is teaching in today’s gospel. Do you put more emphasis on your outer appearance, or on your inner motivation? When you put your faith into action, why are you really doing it? Are you giving to charity because you really want to help someone in need—or because you want your peers to admire you? Are you praying because you want to grow closer to God and hold in your heart the needs of your neighbors—or because you want others to hear you and say “that person prays so much better than me”?
I know fasting is not widely practiced by us these days, except to prepare for a medical procedure. But even if it’s not a full-on fast, many of us do a mini-fast from time to time, voluntarily giving something up on a smaller scale as an exercise in self-control. Maybe it’s a small thing like giving up sweets for Lent because you’ve found yourself mindlessly eating cookies and chocolate since Christmas, and you realize this isn’t good for your health. Or maybe you want to cut back on social media for a while in order to better focus on your “in real life” relationships. Whatever the reason might be for whatever thing you give up for a time, are you undertaking your fast with a positive purpose in mind—because it might help you live more in tune with God, or your family, or your body? Or is it to put on a show of how miserable you are by depriving yourself, in order to get attention?
Even good things—like self-examination and repentance, fasting and prayer, sacrificial giving and works of love (which are the traditional disciplines of Lent)—can be misused to put on a performance for ourselves or others, rather than using these disciplines positively as a doorway that opens us up to greater reliance on God, and trusting Christ’s presence to help us through our difficulties.
Here is the promise Jesus makes in today’s gospel: “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will be.”
The more you look for God to be your greatest treasure, and the more you seek to do your good deeds in a simple way that quietly honors Christ, then the less you’ll worry about what other people might think about you. You’ll be free! Free to simply be who God made you to be. And our Heavenly Father will bless you.
God blesses us by pulling us closer to Christ’s own heart, which is a heart full of pure love, grace, and mercy. Of course, we can never completely put all our trust and reliance in Christ. Our sinful human nature always finds somehow to get in the way. Therefore, we need to be gentle with ourselves. The season of Lent is not about beating yourself up over your sins or failures or shortcomings. It’s about asking God to turn your motivations in the direction of Christ, and allowing the healing and forgiveness that Jesus gives to all humanity from the cross, to come also to your own heart. Being compassionate towards yourself is the first step towards being more compassionate towards others in the way of Christ. Amen.