Isaiah 58: 1-12                                                                                                             Rev. Dr. Galen E. Russell III

Matthew 6: 1-6                                                                                                                            February 18, 2026

            Ash Wednesday

“But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Prayer: Help us grow in faith, O God. May our spiritual lives be acceptable and pleasing to you, O God. Amen.

Many of us have been watching the Winter Olympics. They’re on during the day, repeated on prime time. And of course, with that comes all the commercials, too!  There’s an ad for the Olympics that Video | Facebook) has fans of major sports teams, teams that are rivals against each other, coming together and scoffing at each other when they meet. In the gym, or in the restaurant, or wherever. But, when the Olympics, come on, they turn off the rivalry.

They show respect for each other. They all join in cheering for Team USA. All the while the song by Captain and Teniel, “Love, Will Keep Us Together,” is playing in the background. And the kicker punch line at the end is this: “For two weeks, we’re all on the same team.”

I’m like-And of course, in my head, I’m going, “Why only two weeks?” Why not All. The. Time. Why can’t we turn off rivalries and the hatred? Put aside the scoffing and dissing each other? Why can’t we practice respect and kindness, and be on the same human team? All. The. Time. Why can’t we decide to have love keep us together. All. The. Time?

Yeah, I know… it takes work. Effort. It takes an inner spiritual desire. We have to work at having Love keep us together. Push to live spiritually.

Tonight we kick off Lent, our 40+ day season where we are working and pushing to live spiritually. I want to help us focus and concentrate on our relationship with God this season of Lent, perhaps more so than other time of the year.

And we started it off by ashes being smeared on our foreheads or our hands reminding us that we will all die. That our lives are temporary. We heard the words that remind us that we’re far from perfect. That we’re actually, dare I say it, sinful.

And yes, even though this all sounds very Debbie Downer-ish, I invite you to consider that in order to live spiritually, we have to start here. Aware of our mortality. Aware of our capacity for wallow in the negative. In our ability to not love.

Aware of our sinfulness. Aware of our capability to make anything in our lives, especially ourselves more important than God.  That, to my understanding, is one of the best definitions of sin. It’s our capacity to enthrone something other than God in our lives. Ourselves. Our vices. Habits. Loves. It’s our human nature to be this way. So, sin is not as much wrong-doing as it is wrong-being. It’s part of who we are. Our human nature.

So why is it so important that we start here? Aware of our frailties, imperfections, not measuring up?  I think it’s necessary, otherwise we couldn’t know God’s new life. We have to experience the lows in order to share in the highs. To live in the valleys so as to know the mountains. As human beings we have to experience our mortality, our negativity, and our sinfulness, otherwise we would not be alive.

And if we weren’t alive, we wouldn’t know the exaltation of Easter’s new life without Good Friday. We wouldn’t know the inspiration of a healthy relationship with God without spiritual strife. We won’t be able to know what living spiritually is all about.

I think it starts with prayer. The kind of prayer that is deliberate. The kind that takes you to that secret place with God. Jesus teaches us to find a physical place. A room. A time alone. A place on the mountain, which is where he often went. Or it could be in a valley somewhere. Wherever that is, that’s your room. Shut the door. Pray to God who knows you, who sees your heart. Who loves you and listens to you in the quiet. Take a break from life. Spend time with God. Grow in faith. Renew your love.

Sounds simple and easy, yes? It is. But I warn you. It’s not without its dangers. Our sinful nature has a way of creeping in. I mean that the things that we love to do, and find spiritually meaningful, can almost sneakily become more significant than our relationship with God.

 Like how I try to start each day in the office with my prayer time. I have a habit of spending up to an hour focused on God and my relationship with God. And I used to get annoyed on the days that I couldn’t do that for whatever reason. Maybe I was late, or maybe someone came in unexpectedly. And I would be all in a huff.

And one day, I realized that I wasn’t in love with God nearly as much as I was in love with my habit!

So, over the years, I’ve learned to give up being rigid about my prayer and devotional time. Gave up being annoyed. It’s what’s in my heart with God that counts. So what if I miss a morning? So what if someone comes in unexpectedly? I’ve learned that God is always in the interruptions. God is always calling for us to renew and reconcile with the Divine.

But this does speak about giving things up for Lent, or taking things up for Lent, like living spiritually. If you have to give something up for Lent, choose something that hinders your relationship with God. What have you prioritized over God? Discern what that is. And let your life grow closer to God without that thing or things. Be without for a long enough period that when Lent is over, and you’ve practiced being close to God, you will have the exaltation of Easter, and God and your relationship with God will be in the top spot of your life. And then you start to live your best spiritual life, I think.

And your life on the inside starts to affect your life on the outside. Your actions and words are affected by the prayer life you’ve cultivated in the secret room with God.

And you get the inspiration to do justice, to love kindness and, to walk humbly with God. You share the joy of loosening the bonds of someone else's injustice. The power of sharing resources with those in need.  Your faith becomes shareable. Publicly. Faith is not a privatized thing.

God I don’t believe wants you to be a perfect specimen of faith. I don’t believe God wants you as an exhibit on the shelf in the Faith Hall of Fame. God, I think, wants us to be centered spiritually, secretly at first, then out there living faith publicly. Share your faith. Share your results of living a spiritual life in secret.

Which takes me back to another Olympic ad I noticed. Eli Lilly and Company’s 2026 Winter Olympics ad campaign, “Never Over,” uses the scientific method—observe, question, hypothesize, experiment, test, test, test, test, test, test, test…them, share results. Observe. Question. Test. Again. Share results.

When we share results of the prayer time in secret by offering food for the spiritually hungry, satisfying the needs of the afflicted, “then your light share rise in the darkness and your gloom like the noonday sun. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in the parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water that will never fail.”

Amen.