"Our Eyes are Watching God" - Sermon for Ash Wednesday, 2-18-26

Simone Weil, the twentieth-century Christ-curious yet devoutly-unbaptized French philosopher, wrote that sin is not making ourselves distant from God, but rather that sin is looking in the wrong direction from where God would have us look. The Litany of Penitence that we will recite in a few minutes, and revisit come Good Friday, reminds us of the many things that keep our eyes from watching God. This litany is an eye chart, an “I” exam in the obverse. Reading where we have gone wrong corrects our vision. Penitence – a detailed examination of conscience, leading to repentance and looking in the right way – is one purpose of the ashes put on our heads.

The other purpose is mortality. We are dust, and to dust we shall return. In case you thought you might be the exception to this, let me put your mind at rest before your body lies in rest: one day you will die. You’re welcome.

The question that Ash Wednesday asks is one that a wise sage once asked. I read it somewhere and it sticks with me. “The question is not ‘Is there life after death?’ Rather, the question is ‘Is there life before death?’” Our Christian hope is life after death. You and I will find out more about that one day. I promise.

Ash Wednesday asks us to live before we die. That is, to keep our eyes watching God rather than looking in the wrong direction. This is God’s desire for us: to love and serve God in this world by keeping our eyes on God, and to watch God eternally in the next.

Through Christ, God gives us the Church to help us correct our vision, to keep our eyes watching God. The rites and rituals, sacraments and practices, prayer and study, and the ordered reading of and meditating on God’s holy word, all this points to God, to help us live before we die, to correct our vision when our eyes look elsewhere, and to prepare us for the life that is to come.

“See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” Open your eyes, look to God, and see.

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

Ash Wednesday – February 18, 2026

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“Our eyes are watching God”