SELECTED SERMONS

AT
HOLY TRINITY
SLOANE SQUARE

25 FEBRUARY 2009

ASH WEDNESDAY

THE REVD ROB GILLION

RECTOR

Other sermons are also available on the

Holy Trinity website
www.holytrinitysloanesquare.co.uk
Today begins our season of Lent. Lent means spring. We
need to use our imaginations today.
It’s time for preparing our souls and spirits for Easter. Forty
days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day. What can this time
mean to us on our spiritual journey.
Well we begin with a Penitential Rite – ashes in Scripture are
a symbol of purification, and a deep understanding of our own
mortality. We have burned our Palm Crosses to place an
ashen cross upon our foreheads as a mark of being a disciple
of Christ.
Tonight is not a mournful night. It is a night to rejoice that
through the Cross of Christ we need not fear death. Through
his saving love we are redeemed, forgiven.
We seek to identify with Jesus in his wilderness experience.
The Lenten fast for the body is the Lenten feast for the soul.
Lent is about blessing, about walking closely with our Lord,
growing in spiritual maturity and depth.
We’re not to look dismal – for the Gospel entreats us – look
fresh and healthy. Lent is a time for secrets – the secrets
known only to ourselves and our Heavenly Father.
It is interesting this day should fall in the middle of London
Fashion Week. When the mantra “How do I look?” is
rendered redundant by Lenten discipline - rather how are we
inwardly.
My thoughts turn on this Ash Wednesday to drab uniforms
and the prisoners I served as a Chaplain – recognising their
own sinfulness and yet accepting the sign of the Cross, the
sign of Christ – no pretence. My stole, presented to me as a
reminder of that ministry and my yearning to share with others
the Amazing Grace which saved a wretch like me.
During Lent I want us to taste afresh God’s understanding, his
kind, patient love. Make more room for him. These forty days
in the desert will perhaps be the most memorable of your
whole life as you travel with Christ. The challenge of Lent is to
make a fresh start – a time for new beginnings.
REPENTANCE is high on the list of activities for Lent. But
repentance is not negative. True repentance is an active
positive attitude which results in real and deep changes.
Signs of this truth may be in giving up things that are not good
for you or that you’ve become over-dependant upon. It
doesn’t mean taking on an air of sanctimoniousness, but in
our Ashing tonight we face up to the reality of death and our
fragility – but we are signed with the CROSS and follow this
with the life giving sacrament of Holy Communion. To
celebrate that Christ has overcome death and raised us with
him to new life.
Lord I pray you come to us. You touch us, you wipe away our
tears. “You smile at me, embrace me. Thank you that I can
leave my burden at the foot of the Cross and be cleansed.”
Let us pray we leave this act of fellowship and worship with a
feeling of warmth and security, despite the coldness and
insecurity of the world – physically and spiritually. To
acknowledge there is dust and that Christ can brush it away.