Ash Wednesday Homily

Isaiah 57:15

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
‘I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”

• Some recollections on getting hit by a car while cycling and my mortality… once I realized I was still alive, my next thought was “Toni’s gonna kill me.”

Today we stop to kneel at the intersection of two immense theological truths - the Holiness of God and the sinfulness of man.

On the one hand: “the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy.” Isaiah strains language to its breaking point. God is not merely greater than us. He inhabits eternity. He is not in time the way we are in time. He fills it. He transcends it. He holds past, present, and future as one seamless whole. His name is Holy — utterly other, morally radiant, blazing in purity and glory. God has time and space within his eternality and immensity.

And on the other hand: ashes.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

There is no more humbling sentence. It strips us of our illusions. We are not self-made. We are not self-sustaining. We are not immortal. We are dust animated by borrowed breath.

Ash Wednesday forces us to stand honestly between these two truths: God inhabits eternity. Made for everlasting life, we dwell in dust. But Isaiah 57:15 does something extraordinary. It refuses to leave those two truths separated.

The Holy One says, “I dwell in the high and holy place… and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.”

This is one of the most astonishing sentences in the Bible. It's theology ablaze, it's the incarnation foretold. It’s one of those beautiful places in Scripture where a word as small as “and” or “but”, those tiny conjunctions, can preach the full gospel of God.

The God who inhabits eternity also inhabits humility.

The One who dwells in unapproachable light also dwells with the contrite.

The High and Holy One draws near to the low and broken.

That is the reality of the gospel. Not only can God do such a thing, but he most assuredly did do such a thing in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was born among the lowly to the lowly for the sake of the lowly, to tabernacle among us, God the Word made flesh.

I. The God Who Is High and Holy

Ash Wednesday must begin here, or it becomes sentimentality.

“Thus says the One who is high and lifted up… whose name is Holy.”

We do not begin with ourselves. We begin with God.

He is not manageable. He is not a projection of our inner needs. He is not the chaplain of our ambitions. He is high and lifted up. His name is Holy.

Holiness means moral perfection. It means blazing purity. It means that in Him there is no darkness at all. God is altogether different from us and separated from us by an immeasurable chasm of being and purity that no mere mortal can bridge.

And this is precisely why ashes matter.

When Isaiah saw the Lord “high and lifted up” in chapter 6, he did not congratulate himself. He cried, “Woe is me! For I am undone.” In the light of holiness, he saw himself truthfully.

Ash Wednesday invites that same honesty.

We confess that we have loved lesser things more than the living God. We have trusted ourselves more than Him. We have harbored resentments, spoken carelessly, indulged pride, ignored the poor, and neglected prayer. We have been busy, distracted, and self-protective.

We are not what we were created to be. Ashes are not decoration. They are declarations. They say: I am not self-sufficient. I am not righteous in myself. I am mortal and morally frail. And yet — this is not the whole sentence.

II. The God Who Draws Near to the Contrite

“I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.”

The word contrite means crushed. Broken. Not theatrically ashamed. Not self-hating. But pierced. Awakened. Humbled.

There is a world of difference between shame and contrition.

Shame says: I am worthless, so I hide. Shame looks for fig leaves and weaves a new runway-worthy clothing line.

Contrition says: I am sinful, so I come. No more hiding. No more pretending. No more minimizing. I can’t save myself; I must have a Savior.

Ash Wednesday is not about groveling before a reluctant God. It is about coming honestly before a gracious one.

Notice the promise: He dwells with the contrite.

Not tolerates. Not endures. Dwells.

The high and holy God makes His home with the humble.

This is why Lent is not meant to be morbid. It is meant to be hopeful.

God is not drawn to our strength. He is drawn to our need.

He does not dwell with the self-satisfied. He dwells with the brokenhearted.

If you come today weary of your own failures, tired of patterns you cannot seem to break, aware of compromises you wish you had never made — you are precisely the sort of person Isaiah 57:15 is written for.

God dwells with the contrite.

Our GREATEST need and God’s greatest gift - forgiveness for our sins.

• The paralyzed man lowered down before Jesus by his friends - “Your sins are forgiven.” They probably thought his greatest need was working legs. Today, I can feel that pain, that desire; I get that thought. But his greatest need - and mine! - is mercy. It is to hear the gospel minister declare the word of absolution: Son, your sins are forgiven.

• Joni Eareckson Tada on the first thing she’ll do in heaven with legs made new: “I’ll fall on my knees to worship the Lord who saved me.”

III. The Purpose: Revival

And why does He draw near?

“To revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

The God who inhabits eternity draws near in order to revive.

Revive means to make alive again.

Sin deadens us. Pride hardens us. Self-justification suffocates us. We become less alive, less tender, less joyful.

Contrition opens the door to resurrection.

Ash Wednesday is the first step toward Easter. Dust is not the final word. Revival is.

The ashes remind us that we will die. The promise reminds us that He revives.

In fact, the entire Christian faith stands on this paradox: the High and Holy One entered our dust.

The One who inhabits eternity took on mortality.

The Holy One bore sin.

The crucified Christ is Isaiah 57:15 embodied. The high and lifted up Son of God dwells with sinners — not from a safe distance, but on a cross to save us and the world.

And in His resurrection, He revives the contrite heart.

IV. What Does This Mean for Us Today?

First, it means we can confess the truth.

We do not need to defend ourselves before God. There is no room for self-justification. We do not need to minimize our sin or exaggerate our virtue. The Holy One already knows. 

The ashes free us from pretense.

Second, it means we can come near.

Some of you may feel spiritually cold. Some of you may feel disappointed in yourselves. Some of you may feel spiritually dry.

The promise is not that God dwells with the impressive. He dwells with the contrite.

Come low — and you will find Him near.

Third, it means Lent is not self-improvement. It is reorientation.

Fasting, prayer, and repentance — these are not spiritual performance metrics; these are ways of making room in our hearts for revival. They are ways of saying: Lord, I want Your life more than my illusions.

The aim is not to prove devotion. The aim is to invite revivication.

Let me leave you with this.

The verse begins with transcendence: He inhabits eternity, but it ends with imminence: He revives the contrite.

Christianity alone dares to hold those two together without dilution.

God is infinitely high — and intimately near.

He is holy — and hospitable to sinners.

He dwells in the high and holy place — and also with the lowly in spirit.

Today, as we are reminded that we are dust, hear as well the promise of life to the repentant, “I dwell… with the contrite.”

Dust does not repel Him. Pride does. God resists the proud, but God and humility - oh, that’s metal meet magnet!

Ashes do not drive Him away.

Self-sufficiency does.

The door to the church of the Nativity is LOW! You gotta get down, you have to bow low, to draw near.

Come low.

Come honest.

Come needy.

And the One who inhabits eternity will dwell with you — not to crush you, but to revive you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.