Lectionary Commentaries for February 18, 2026
Ash Wednesday
from WorkingPreacher.org
Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Danny Zacharias
First Reading
Commentary on Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Valerie Bridgeman
This text for Ash Wednesday skips from verse 2 down to verse 12. A smart preacher will read all of Joel to get a sense of the gravity, the trauma, and the fear that the prophetic poet addresses. What we miss in the lectionary choice is the terror of a people overrun by an army that swarms, sets fire, and destroys what once was a verdant landscape.
We miss people in anguish and pale from fear; we miss the sounds, smells, and visuals of war. We miss disciplined soldiers who don’t get in each other’s way as they carry out a mission—soldiers prepared to mete out destruction and not deterred by human suffering. We miss smoke that darkens the skies and hides the sun and the moon, a sky where stars that used to help people navigate can no longer be seen. We miss a great and terrible sight: “Who can endure it?” (2:11).
In the first chapter of Joel, these warriors are described as a swarming hoard of locusts. Of course, it could be that there is ecological devastation along with warring forces; in other words, there might be locusts destroying crops and turning the area into a hellscape, increasing the possibility that the people may add starvation to their fears. Wars do lead to sickness, starvation, and destabilization. This text says it’s a tale as old as time. And in our time, any news outlet or internet site can attest to that, whether we talk about Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Gaza Strip, or Venezuela. Anywhere countries are unstable, people are under duress, and a swarm of locusts seems an apt metaphor.
While we prepare for Lent on Ash Wednesday, often as personal and individual repentance, we should be reminded that the text captures the impact on a nation under attack, and the people who suffer from war. This context for the pericope may guide the preacher to look beyond our individualistic way of approaching Lent. All around the globe, and around our country, people are feeling terror. If we “sound the alarm” (2:1), it might be to help us try to figure out how and where God is. The Joel text speaks of the day of the Lord being at hand. I won’t recount all the scholarship that’s available about the day of the Lord, but suffice it to say, it is not a good thing. And in this text, it is tied to war and its ravages.
Unlike many of the prophets, the book of Joel does not date itself with kings or particular historical events, so we don’t know what army or what timeframe is at hand. In some ways, for the ancient people and for us, the world is “always on fire” with some geopolitical danger, and so the prophetic words are a call to a posture for the people who are afraid, a posture toward God as a community.
As Juliana Claassens teaches us, “The expression of individual and collective grief in the face of a tragedy such as portrayed in the first chapters of Joel is an important step in coming to terms with extreme trauma.”1 And, we might note, women, children, people with disabilities, and the elderly often suffer the most in such instances. I do not want to ignore that male warriors and able-bodied men suffering food insecurity and homelessness, for example, are also victims. But we do a disservice if we don’t note the impact on these other populations (many of which include men). I think it’s important for preachers to make these observations, so that congregations can see the whole community.
What is a preacher to say about war and trauma on Ash Wednesday? What does it mean to return to God on this day (2:12)? It is important to note that there is no mention of “sin” in Joel. Of course, if you read canonically, you would know that the ancient people are blamed for what happens to them. But here, the word for return (shuv), in verse 12, has no such meaning. What we see is a community so distraught that they are in survival mode, and any devotional feelings toward God are not in their survival toolkit.
The prophet encourages them to turn to God in a time of ecological, political, and economical crises. “Rend your hearts” (verse 13) is an invitation to be open to the grief and sorrow that leads us to prayer, fasting, mourning, and weeping. It is a call to open our hearts to God and to one another in a time we would rather withdraw and isolate. The people are reminded of an ancient recitation about God’s character: “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment” (2:13; see also Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18; Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Nehemiah 9:17; Jonah 4:2).
The writer does say that we cannot know whether or how God will respond (2:14). But the point of turning to God includes refocusing our attention and our hearts. That is the point of the Lenten season. The point is to slow down from the “business as usual” that is sometimes the way we live in denial of what’s happening around us. The call to assemble everyone, old and young, celebrating and mourning, religious leaders and all, is to experience particular kinds of lamentation and petitions. The people’s prayers are about God’s character. If they were to die, it would have their enemies asking, “Where is their God?”
The writer’s words toward this call are noteworthy (Joel 2:15–17):
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion;
consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
16 gather the people.
Consecrate the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room
and the bride her canopy.
17 Between the vestibule and the altar,
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’ ”
Ash Wednesday lends itself to this same call to assembly. Many will have had a debauchery of pancakes and other sweets on Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) in preparation for the Lenten fast, but that’s just a tradition we have invented because of our fear of scarcity and of fasting. But this text pushes us to openhearted grief, with a caveat to also dream of another future.
Grief and fear often forestall imagination. But the prophetic poet, in Joel 3, imagines a world after war and geopolitical upheaval. The poet promises that God will “roar” from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem (3:16). They will experience a country nevermore invaded, a return to Eden-like land. It’s a different vision from the day of the Lord in the earlier chapters. Claassens describes this eschatological vision as “an intensified form of hope in the midst of despair, which has power in the present. We see vivid descriptions of how the world ought to be, a world in which there will be food aplenty and hunger will be no more.”2
As Judy Fentress-Williams notes, “This future vision of the Day of the Lord is significant in its inclusivity, and with the expectation that God’s return and restoration is not just a return to how things were, but a return of how things were meant to be.”3 Fentress-Williams argues that to find a future beyond our imagination, we have to cultivate hope. On this Ash Wednesday, preachers can lean into hope without moving too quickly from despair. We could use a good dose of reality infused with a helping of hope for a better future, one in which we are all called to participate.
Notes
- L. Juliana M. Claassens, “Joel,” 309–311, Women’s Bible Commentary: Twentieth‐Anniversary Edition, ed. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley (Westminster John Knox, 2012), 310.
- Claassens, “Joel,” 310.
- Judy Fentress-Williams, Holy Imagination: A Literary and Theological Introduction to the Whole Bible (Abingdon, 2021), 211.
Psalm
Commentary on Psalm 51:1-17
Courtney Pace
This psalm is a prayer of penitence, confession, remorse, owning mistakes made, and seeking a fresh start of new life with a restored soul upon receiving God’s forgiveness.1
Psalm 51 is traditionally attributed to David, who offered this prayer of repentance after Nathan the prophet confronted David about his affair with Bathsheba. David abused his power as king to sexually exploit Bathsheba, reassign her husband to ensure his death in order to cover his impregnation of Bathsheba, and then take Bathsheba as a wife. Nathan used an allegory of stealing sheep to help David recognize the depth of his sin, and upon understanding, David reportedly authored this prayer of contrition.
Though himself a king and a well-established beacon of faith in God’s power, David was a mere human, standing in shame before God for his sin, and in need of God’s forgiveness. To be clear, his sin was not just adultery; it was rape. His sin was not just abuse of power; it was murder. Whatever the innocence of his legacy as the boy who defeated Goliath, companion to Jonathan, or unlikely military successor to Saul, David was now a corrupt monarch.
In verses 1–9, David repeats the phrases “blot out” and “wash” to point to God’s forgiveness as a cleansing, a spiritual rinsing of sin from his person. David’s sin makes him dirty, from which God’s forgiveness would clean him. David certainly notes the cleansing properties of water and the association of God’s presence with the people through water.
In verses 6, 10, and 17, David emphasizes his heart as the center of his being, the nexus of a pure spirit, changed by God’s forgiveness. Alongside allegorical understandings of being cleansed of sin, David also has an embodied understanding of holiness, in his heart and in his bones, evident through a joyful and willing spirit.
David anticipates, even expects, that God will forgive him, because David believes God is faithful. God’s forgiveness will help David to renew and recover from the inside out, which will help him to become a better person as well as improve his ability to be an example for others. Though a king, David seems intent on setting a moral, and not just a militaristic, example for Israel.
In the absence of a physical temple, which David’s son Solomon will build, David offers a sacrifice of repentance, a sacrifice of contrition, a sacrifice of transformational grief, which he believes will be more pleasing to God than a physical sacrifice or religious ritual.
As I imagine this scene taking place, I picture David on his knees, perhaps hiding in a closet or a storage room, or kneeling in the rain. I see him somewhere where he believes he is alone, in a posture of self-acknowledged shame, in a Romans 8—“groans which words cannot express”—kind of sorrow.
Not only had he betrayed his calling as king, not only had he betrayed his calling as God’s chosen, but he had betrayed the trust of a nation. He had surrendered his identity, and for what? For sex? To exercise power he already possessed? To cover his tracks from the people who followed him?
David cries out in self-defamation, convicted by Nathan’s confrontation. Yet even in this prostration, David still may not realize the severity of his sin. Is he penitent for his sin? Is he ashamed of being confronted by a prophet? His prayer focuses on his personal sin and spirit, as in verse 4 when he claims that he has only sinned against God. One could argue, though, that he has also sinned against Uriah, Bathsheba, and his nation—past, present, and future.
Though he committed sinful acts as an individual, there were real effects of David’s actions on other people, as well as collective consequences. David’s sin impacted people and systems beyond his own personal morality scorecard. And as the Deuteronomistic narrative would suggest, his sin undermined the stability and future peace of the entire Jewish people.
David may be performing repentance, likely genuinely, even if he has additional steps to take in his journey to understanding that leads to sanctification. Our spiritual journeys often take place in such steps, peeling layer by layer. This isn’t dishonesty. To the contrary, it’s a very genuine expression of where we are in that moment, starting from within ourselves and turning outward by the leading of God’s Spirit over time.
In David’s case, the sensitivity to the Spirit’s leading did not progress as we would hope. David did not become more alert to avoiding temptation, more vigilant in protecting his family, or more self-aware. Though this prayer shows a strong desire to recover from this tipping-point moment, to those of us who know the rest of the story, it reads like unrealized potential, eventually abandoned in the disgrace with which the prayer begins.
Are we misguided to resonate with this prayer? It is certainly a staple of Christian worship practice, because it has been meaningful to millions of people worldwide who find aid for their own prayers by beginning with David’s words found here.
David is right that a contrite heart is more precious than burnt offerings; Jesus will echo this clearly when calling us to worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24). David is right that water is a powerful cleanser, literally and metaphorically, and certainly has a significant place in spirituality, indicating God’s presence with the people (John 4:10). David is right that repentance must take place from the inside out, as a total transformation of our hearts and spirits.
David failed at living as he hoped in this prayer. We know more about David’s expectation that God would deliver military victory than transformed character and redeemed societal infrastructures. But to his people, his reign was the apex of history. There are some modern world leaders about whom we could say the same.
What is it about their story that remains so inspirational in spite of their multitudinous and egregious transgressions? Perhaps it is those parts of the narrative we have in common with them that give us hope for what God might yet do in and through us.
But will we follow God’s Spirit?
Notes
- Commentary previously published on this website for March 2, 2022.
Second Reading
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:20b—6:10
Richard Ward
The preacher may wonder what this text contributes to reflection on Ash Wednesday. After all, in the sequence of readings, it lies between the two texts that more directly address our pastoral concerns for the day. Psalm 51 is the classic presentation of a devout human being recognizing “transgressions” and throwing themself on the mercy of God. One thinks, for example, of the posture of Simon Peter falling down at Jesus’ feet and saying to him, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8). What follows for both Peter and the speaker in Psalm 51 is a changed and redirected life.
On the other side of this reading from 2 Corinthians are Matthew’s instructions for practicing a life changed and redirected by the teachings of Jesus. In Matthew’s community, the practice of piety looks very different from the religious showmanship of “gentiles” and Matthew’s opponents. At best, what they will get out of such displays is recognition, maybe even admiration. Matthew uses the words of Jesus to sketch the profile of those who will in the end “receive the Father’s reward.” They exhibit the attitude of the psalmist who seeks the “truth in [one’s] inward being” that God desires and the “wisdom in [one’s] secret heart” (Psalm 51:6).
So why bother with this selection from 2 Corinthians? Because behind it is “church drama,” where themes from Psalm 51 and Matthew’s text take shape in human behavior. Some of these behaviors are all too familiar in the practice of pastoral ministry. At issue are complaints from a congregation about Paul’s leadership and challenges to his authority as a “real” apostle.
Throughout his correspondence with the Corinthians, Paul is trying to explain himself and justify his behavior. This excerpt from that correspondence offers a glimpse of what is at stake. Like anyone in his position, Paul often falls into a defensive stance and sometimes goes on the attack. In this letter, Paul is responding to what must have been a recent visit that didn’t go so well for him. To bring the matter closer to home, let’s imagine that a “congregational meeting” has been called where Paul is addressing some of the specific complaints leveled against him; he is trying desperately to shore up his authority to shape the community’s “life in Christ.”
Among the charges are these: that he is “carnal or worldly” (10:2–3), that he is not a good speaker and his “bodily presence is weak” (10:10), that he has “acted dishonorably” (11:7–11). Apparently he is facing a call for a new style of leadership (11:12–13) from those he scornfully calls “false apostles,” who (like those that Matthew calls out) “boast” about their credentials, visions, and other achievements in their spiritual lives. All of this has brought Paul to the brink of losing the right to lead this congregation.
In order to write such a candid letter, Paul must have done the kind of self-examination that the season of Lent encourages for all of us. He must have spent time reviewing his sincere intentions for his ministry, for he says of it, “We are not putting any obstacles in anyone’s way,” as if that counts as a defense against his detractors. Despite sincere intentions, he ends this passage with an accusation: “There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours” (verse 12).
One almost wishes for more of the tone of the penitent and less defensiveness in the letter. Instead of “talking like a fool” (11:17), we wish that he sounded more like the speaker in Psalm 51: “For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me” (verse 3). Frankly, when he speaks of all that he has endured, he sounds too much like the characters who “disfigure their faces” to look “dismal” as they “practice their piety before others in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). Listing what he has endured seems like an effort to redirect the Corinthians’ attention away from where he failed to live up to their standards and expectations of him.
You get the point. Even Paul is not perfect, and he is not handling this challenge from the Corinthian church like a perfect spiritual leader. Nor is he surrounded or confronted by perfect followers of Jesus Christ. None of us are going to perfectly handle a Lenten discipline—neither the church, nor the pastor. All of us will come for the imposition of ashes with something in our lives that is broken and hurts. We are painfully aware that in spite of our best efforts, we fall short. Which one of us wouldn’t want to “do better” and “be better”?
We can see our own struggle in Paul’s to arrive at a right relationship with God, ourselves, and others. For Paul, a fruit of reconciliation with the Corinthians would be to “work together” with a healthy regard for how God’s grace works in a life and in a community.
In the simple act of imposing or receiving ashes, we get a lesson in God’s grace. Grace reminds us that the dust we come from and the dust to which we will return is God’s raw material for making human life. Grace is a movement that draws us deeper into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and toward reconciliation with others. Grace has prepared a place where we can be ourselves with God. Grace has given us the season of Lent where we learn to let go of what was and is no more. Are you ready to accept the gift of God’s grace?
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a season of repentance, reflection, and renewal. The gospel reading from Matthew 6:1–6, 16–21 invites readers to see righteousness as tangible and embodied practices. These holy habits shape our hearts and minds to be focused outward, toward God and toward others. In this passage, Jesus calls his disciples to a way of life distinct from performative piety. Rather than seeking human approval, Jesus urges his followers to practice righteousness in secret, where only God sees.
Jesus’ teaching in this passage is framed by a contrast: the way of the hypocrites and the way of true discipleship. The term “hypocrite” (hypokritēs) originally referred to stage actors, those who performed for an audience. In the same way, Jesus critiques those who perform acts of righteousness—giving, prayer, and fasting—merely to be seen by others. Instead, he calls for a different way: one that is unseen by human eyes but fully visible to God.
For anyone who has performed—whether it be music, drama, or speaking—attention is desired. No stand-up comedian wants to perform to an empty room. No preacher feels good looking out at a congregation to see no eyes looking up at them. But what happens when holy habits, those things that are meant to cultivate relationship, become the ways we instead seek attention?
As an Indigenous man who reads scripture in conversation with my culture and within an Indigenous worldview, I find much resonance. Indigenous traditions hold similar values when it comes to acts of generosity. The practice of giveaways, common in many Indigenous cultures, reflects the understanding that true honor comes from giving rather than receiving, and these giveaways would socially seek to rebalance society through the redistribution of wealth. This cultivates shalom in communal relations.
Jesus’ warning against performative prayer also aligns with Indigenous understandings of prayer as deeply communal and embodied. Prayer is not merely spoken but enacted; prayers are understood not simply as words spoken to Creator but also in communal events such as the dancing of one’s prayers. Whether spoken, danced, or enacted through acts of service, prayer is a sacred practice meant to connect with God rather than elevate the individual in the eyes of others.
Jesus’ teaching on fasting (6:16–18) continues his critique of public displays of piety. He instructs his disciples not to wear expressions of suffering to gain recognition but to fast in a way that is hidden. This teaching underscores the spiritual purpose of fasting: aligning one’s heart with God rather than seeking admiration. Indigenous traditions of fasting similarly emphasize spiritual purification and vision-seeking. Fasting is often undertaken in nature, away from human observation, and serves as a means of gaining clarity, humility, and deeper communion with Creator.
For instance, John Hascall states, “We learn the value of water when we fast three or four days on the mountain, in the forest, or in some other sacred place. Our purpose in fasting is to create harmony in the world and within ourselves.”1 Jesus’ words about fasting in secret, then, resonate deeply with the Indigenous understanding that fasting is not about outward suffering but about inward transformation.
Jesus concludes this section by addressing the nature of true treasure (6:19–21). The warning against storing up treasures on earth calls for an undivided loyalty to God. Earthly wealth, Jesus reminds his followers, is vulnerable to decay and theft. Instead, he urges them to invest in what is eternal—treasures in heaven. This is not merely about financial wealth but about where one’s heart is directed. Indigenous teachings about wealth and community also align with Jesus’ perspective.
Traditional Indigenous cultures practice communal living and redistribution of resources, often rejecting the accumulation of wealth as a sign of individual success. Indigenous communities also have high social expectations upon wealthier individuals to be the providers, especially for communal events. Generosity and balance are seen as fundamental to a good life. Indigenous leaders have historically been known for their generosity, with material lack by a leader being a strong sign of virtue and abundant generosity.2 Jesus’ teaching affirms this principle, calling his disciples to a life where wealth is measured not in possessions but in righteousness and relationship with God.
The call of Ash Wednesday is to repentance—not a repentance that is performative but one that seeks to align our heart, mind, and actions in a good way that honors Creator. While some people naturally want to stay out of the spotlight and not be on the stage, the reality for ministers is that we are often front and center. And our society teaches us to platform ourselves, to shine a spotlight on our words and actions through social media, to build a following of our blogs or websites, and to get more followers on YouTube. While there may be some legitimacy to these things, we need to honestly recognize that this may indeed be working directly against the private, sincere piety to which Jesus calls us.
Notes