Ashes and Honesty
Andrew Guffey • February 20, 2026
This is us.
Ashes are hard to clean off. Maybe you noticed that if you attended an Ash Wednesday service. The ashes sink into the pores of our skin, mingled with the sanctifying oil. I have to have lemons handy to clean off the ashes before I handle the Eucharistic bread. Even then, the stain of the ashes lingers around the edges. And I think this is a good thing. It reminds us that the frailty we confess on Ash Wednesday, the confession that we make, and the promises we adopt linger with us, too. It reminds us that we are not just dust today, but that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. The ashes are an honest confession of who we are, an embodied sign of our commitment to see ourselves truthfully.
This honesty about ourselves, the ashes of Ash Wednesday, is just the beginning of our process of renewal, conversion, transformation. But don't just take my word for it. On Wednesday, both Pope Leo and Sean Rowe, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, gave impassioned Ash Wednesday reflections. Pope Leo's came in the form of a sermon. Presiding Bishop Rowe's in a letter. Both were stirring reflections on what the ashes that stick to us can tell us about our path as disciples of Jesus.
Leo reminded those listening of the need we have to gather as people of Christ, people of peace, a people who recognize their sins:
- Even today, Lent remains a powerful time for community: “Gather the people. Sanctify the congregation” (Joel 2:16). We know that it has become increasingly difficult to gather people together and make them feel like a community — not in a nationalistic and aggressive way, but in a communion where each of us finds our place. Indeed, during Lent, a people is formed that recognizes its sins. These sins are evils that have not come from supposed enemies, but afflicts our hearts, and exist within us. We need to respond by courageously accepting responsibility for them. Moreover, we must accept that while this attitude is countercultural, it constitutes an authentic, honest and attractive option, especially in our times, when it is so easy to feel powerless in the face of a world that is in flames. Truly, the Church exists as a community of witnesses that recognize their sins.
But he goes on to remind us of what is entails in that little word, "sin":
- Naturally, sin is personal, but it takes shape in the real and virtual contexts of life, in the attitudes we adopt towards each other that mutually impact us, and often within real economic, cultural, political and even religious “structures of sin.” Scripture teaches us that opposing idolatry with worship of the living God means daring to be free, and rediscovering freedom through an exodus, a journey, where we are no longer paralyzed, rigid or complacent in our positions, but gathered together to move and change. How rare it is to find adults who repent — individuals, businesses and institutions that admit they have done wrong!
Leo suggested to us, "we perceive in the ashes imposed on us the weight of a world that is ablaze, of entire cities destroyed by war." But it is our honesty about our sin, about our failures to love others as we have been loved, about our failure to act when we should have acted, about our failure to act with mercy, justice, and humility--it is out of the ashes of our honesty that we may yet rise:
- “Where is their God?” the peoples ask themselves. Yes, dear friends, history, and even more, our own conscience, asks us to call death for what it is, and to carry its marks within us while also bearing witness to the resurrection. We recognize our sins so that we can be converted; this is itself a sign and testimony of Resurrection. Indeed, it means that we will not remain among the ashes, but will rise up and rebuild. Then the Easter Triduum, which we will celebrate as the summit of the Lenten journey, will unleash all its beauty and meaning. This will take place if we participate, through penance, in the passage from death to life, from powerlessness to the possibilities of God.
Presiding Bishop Rowe spoke similarly about the conversion of our communities that Lent invites us into:
- Today, in the opening collect of our Ash Wednesday service, we ask God to “create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” I think of Pharaoh’s hard heart, and sometimes my own, when I say that prayer, and never more so than this year. These days, it can seem as if we are living in a wasteland of Pharaoh’s imagination. We see the principalities and powers promulgating violence, dehumanization, and injustice on our streets, and it seems nearly impossible not to react along the lines of the divisions and polarization that our political leaders have championed. It is easy to have a hardened heart. It is tempting to get angry and be governed by outrage, or to grow cold and indifferent.
- If we turn from Pharoah’s imagination toward God’s imagination, however, we find a different path. Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. With that great commandment, he is teaching us that we are all one, all part of God’s chosen people, and when we hate and revile each other, we are actually destroying ourselves. Theologian Howard Thurman, whose thinking helped shape the Civil Rights movement, put it like this in “Jesus and the Disinherited”: “The logic of the development of hatred is death to the spirit and disintegration of ethical and moral values.” It is not easy to leave behind Pharoah’s imagination and its toxic drip of polarization that hardens our hearts and minds. The liberation we seek requires the conversion – the turning – of our hearts. We can begin that process anytime, but Lent gives us an opportunity to undertake the work together.
The journey of Lent is not just our personal journey, but it is about our work together. The ashes of Wednesday linger. Let me leave you with some concluding thoughts from Pope Leo's Lenten Message from earlier this month:
- Likewise, our parishes, families, ecclesial groups and religious communities are called to undertake a shared journey during Lent, in which listening to the word of God, as well as to the cry of the poor and of the earth, becomes part of our community life, and fasting a foundation for sincere repentance. In this context, conversion refers not only to one’s conscience, but also to the quality of our relationships and dialogue. It means allowing ourselves to be challenged by reality and recognizing what truly guides our desires — both within our ecclesial communities and as regards humanity’s thirst for justice and reconciliation.
- Dear friends, let us ask for the grace of a Lent that leads us to greater attentiveness to God and to the least among us. Let us ask for the strength that comes from the type of fasting that also extends to our use of language, so that hurtful words may diminish and give way to a greater space for the voice of others. Let us strive to make our communities places where the cry of those who suffer finds welcome, and listening opens paths towards liberation, making us ready and eager to contribute to building a civilization of love.
Whether you received the ashes on Wednesday or not, our work remains. May this Lenten season encourage us to deeper listening, greater honesty, emboldened compassion, and hearts and hands attentive to the God in our midst, who raises us from the dust to be children of the living God who is Love.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
Rem ember, you are dust.
Every now and again we dip into the archives to bring back a topic from a past discussion. When you've been doing this for more than a dozen years, there's plenty of good stuff to revisit. So we're doing that this week, and it turns out to be a surprisingly timely decision. Next Tuesday marks Random Acts of Kindness Day (yes, really), and it turns out that nine years ago, almost to the very day, our conversation revolved around the idea of random acts of kindness. Since we last talked about it, the idea of random acts of kindness has become surprisingly institutionalized. According to the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation , which actively encourages just such things, "When we choose kindness, our brains light up with oxytocin, dopamine, and connection; reminding us that kindness is not just good for the world, it is good for us." And almost 250,000 people worldwide have signed up with the foundation as RAKtivists, pledging to try to make the world a better place one act of kindness at a time. For its part, the foundation, which aims to make kindness a norm, offers kindness tips and suggestions, creates teaching materials, and encourages kindness in our schools, homes, and in our workplaces. For example, when on social media they suggest: "Scroll until you see someone's creative effort -- a drawing, recipe, a photo -- and leave a genuine, specific compliment." To be honest, that sounds like a really nice idea! Here's the prompt from our discussion way back in 2017: In 1982 Anne Herbert wrote the phrase "practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty" on a restaurant placemat in Sausalito, Calif. Since then, the call to practice random acts of kindness has become firmly rooted in our social culture. So what's an example of this? When's the last time you were on the receiving end of a random act of kindness? What did that feel like? When was the last time you performed one? How did that make you feel? Is such a gesture really meaningful, or is it a way to avoid making kindness a part of our everyday lives and routines? Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday February. 10 starting at 7pm. We gather at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
Where Did Early Christians Think Their Borders Were?
Just when I thought we had exhausted the possible universe of discussion topics about all the various and troubling ways that artificial intelligence technologies are promising to reshape the human experience (and rarely are these for the good) I come across another example that makes my head spin. This one is populated by what are called "deadbeats" being built by companies in what is coming to be known as the "digital-afterlife industry." There's a long article over at The Atlantic's website ( click here for a gift link to the story ) that goes into detail about the people and the companies developing the products that in some cases promise to make grief obsolete by giving users AI chatbot versions of deceased loved ones -- for a monthly subscription fee, of course. Or, in industry parlance, access to AI "deadbot" versions of those loved ones. And it seems that this is a lucrative technology. In 2024, the industry was valued at more than $22 billion, a sum expected to more than triple in less than 10 years. There are a lot of questions that emerge as we think about what all of this means for the way we experience grief and loss: "'Deadbots,' as these posthumous AI creations are known, promise to replace the dead, and the way they are remembered. This raises plenty of ethical issues, not least the extent to which turning deadbots into marketable products will rely on exploiting people in mourning. But perhaps the biggest question is how such a product might shift our experience of personal grief and collective memory. Is grief merely a painful human shortcoming that we haven’t learned to optimize our way out of yet, or does it have a purpose?" As the article makes clear, this technology is very different from the familiar ways we have come to memorialize those we have lost, whether through portraiture, literature, memoir, and so on, which are interpretive expressions of the living's memories of the dead. Instead, "Interactive griefbots are generative, producing “new utterances, new reactions, even new ‘memories’ and ‘behaviors,’ all under the guise of the deceased,” she said. This shift from representation to emulation presents a new ethical line, one that may require new legal protections. Both death and grief are states of profound vulnerability, she warned; the dead cannot stand up for their own interests, and the bereaved may not be in a psychological state to protect themselves from financial manipulation by a company incentivized to prolong their grief. One company, called You, Only Virtual, or YOV, says its point isn't to make grief easier, but rather to bypass it altogether. The company launched with the tagline, "Never have to say goodbye," and promises a user experience that will make you feel as if your loved one never died. In other words, they are promising not to capture every aspect of the person who has passed, but instead to capture how the user felt with that person when they were alive. The point of the interaction is "about inducing the emotions of the living, not imitating the emotions of the dead." We're going to talk about all of this in our conversation this week. Not just about the technology, but about grief itself, how we experience it, and what grief does to and for us. Read the article by clicking on the link above, then join us for the discussion this Tuesday, Feb. 3, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
"...Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances..."
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
Sheep in the Midst of Wolves