Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words by Vince McCully (adapted)
May we be brought closer to our God this Lent
(whatever we conceive Them to be).
May our words, filled with love
Be as water to the parched tongue of the one in the desert.
May our actions, filled with good intent
Be as a pillow to one with only rocks to lay their head on.
May our thoughts of kindness, patience and compassion
Be as a soothing music to the ears of the one hard pressed by whispering temptation.
May our self-denial and abstinence be accompanied by our smiles and lightness of step as we dedicate all to our God.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). Words by Richard S. Gilbert.
O flaming chalice, symbol of a free faith,
Burn with the holy oil of helpfulness and service.
Spread warmth and light and hope;
Warm hearts grown cold with indifference;
Light dark places with justice; rekindle hope in despair.
May we bring fuel for thy fire of love.
May the oil of loving kindness flow from us to thy leaping flame.
May hands of service shelter thee
That no winds of hate may extinguish thy brightness.
May thy light and warmth be eternal.
May we be keepers of thy flame.
Opening Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love,
be with us as we gather for worship,
each in our own place.
Help us to feel a sense of community,
even though we are physically apart.
Help us to care for each other,
in this world in which the clouds
of war, poverty, and climate change hover,
and help us to make a difference,
starting where we are, with what we have.
May we keep in touch however we can,
and help each other, however we may.
May we be grateful for the freedoms we have
and defend the freedoms of others.
May we hold in our hearts all those
who are grieving, lost, alone,
victims of violence and war,
suffering in any way,
Amen
Reading by Ant Howe (adapted)
The season of Lent reminds us that there are journeys we all have to make in
life. Physical journeys… Spiritual journeys…..
Some journeys we can share with others….. but other journeys lead us into
the wilderness alone.
Some people give something up during Lent, others take something on.
Whatever we think about this season of Lent, may we know that ours is a
journey of hope. Our free and liberal faith calls us to journey from oppression to inclusion, from grief to gladness, from despair to hope.
And so on this Sunday before Ash Wednesday we have come together for a time of worship, and together we enjoy the company of one another, and know the blessing of God.
In this time of worship, may we find renewal for ourselves as we
gather virtually with others whose journey has also brought them here.
Alternative Lord’s Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love, here and everywhere,
May we be aware of your presence in our lives.
May our world be blessed.
May our daily needs be met,
And may our shortcomings be forgiven,
As we forgive those of others.
Give us the strength to resist wrong-doing,
The inspiration and guidance to do right,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
We are your hands in the world; help us to grow.
May we have compassion for all living beings,
And receive whatever life brings,
With courage and trust. Amen
Reading Into the wilderness by Sarah York
When Jesus was baptized the spirit descended upon him like a dove and God said, “This is my son, in whom I am well pleased.” It must have been a great feeling, but it didn’t last long. The next thing Jesus knew, the nice spirit that had descended like a dove became aggressive and drove him into the wilderness. There he spent forty days of deprivation, self-examination, and confrontation with the devil. Qumran National Forest. He suffered; he struggled; he was tested. Jesus’ solitary struggles to remain true to his covenant and calling echo those of his ancestors, who spent forty years in the wilderness establishing a religious community.
Wilderness is a part of every person’s soul-journey, and part of our journey together as human beings who seek to live in community. Time in the wilderness is always a time of struggle. It is also a time of transformation and renewal. In traditional terms, it is a time of purification. The journey into wilderness reminds us that we are alone and not alone. We are neither where we have been nor where we are going. There is danger and possibility, risk and promise. In the wilderness, the spirit may descend like a dove and lift us on its wings of hope, then drive us into the depths of despair; it may affirm us with a gift of grace, then challenge us to change. In the stories and rituals of Eastern as well as Western religions, a journey into the wilderness represents a time when we both pursue and resist the Holy.
We may choose to enter the wilderness like the people of Yahweh, to escape bondage, or, like Henry David Thoreau, to “live deliberately.” Or we may, like Jesus, be driven there without much choice. Once there, even our markers of time and space collapse, for this wilderness is not in space or time, but is the boundless territory of the soul.
Prayer Prayer for the Journey by Krista Taves (adapted)
Spirit of Life and Love, God of grace and mercy, Source of all things that changes us as we cannot change ourselves,
Each one of us is on a journey, and all our journeys place us before forks in the road. These places ask us to make choices, saying yes to some things, saying no to others, grieving in what we must leave behind, rejoicing in the blessings, often unexpected, that come our way.
In these journeys, some will choose to walk with us, and some will choose another path. Some will pause for a while, withdrawing into their own places of transformation where we cannot follow. Some of these partings happen gently and lovingly, others with judgment and disappointment.
It is our calling to accept these things as a testament to our strength and our fragility, and to trust in the process, even as we fear the unknown, even as whispers of beloved memories draw us deep into our own hearts, even when we see more clearly where we have come from than where we are going. The journey asks us to keep walking.
Spirit of Life, we ask for patience, we ask for understanding, we ask for compassion, we ask for hope and gratitude so that we may welcome our collective and individual journeys with open hearts, open minds, and open hands. Amen
Reading Lent, from Whistling in the Dark by Frederick Buechner
In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year’s days. After being baptised by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness, where he spent forty days asking himself the question, what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another, what it means to be themselves.
If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn’t, which side would get your money and why?
When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like, and what do you see in it that you most deplore?
If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less?
Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?
Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?
If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?
To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are, but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.
Time of Stillness and Reflection (words by Cliff Reed)
For one man, driven there long ago, it was bare rock, cave, and waterless wadi. What, where, is your wilderness?
Marsh or mudflat, lonely shore, wind whistling through dry winter reeds?
Moorlands purple with heather in the summertime? The forest, still and deep?
Mountains, eternal pillars of the sky – haunt of gods and ravens?
The snowfields – perilous and pure? Even a city lot the wild has reclaimed?
Wilderness – where you are alone with God, and maybe with your demons…
Go now to the wilderness, if you dare. Go there in your mind and soul. Go there and be still.
[silence]
Come out now, out of the wilderness to your cluttered life – but carry the wilderness within you, learn its truth.
Musical Interlude I Giorni by Ludovico Einaudi
Address Lent as a Spiritual Journey
Next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. As most of you will know, I was not brought up in a church-going family. I imbibed most of my cultural Christianity from daily school assemblies, and from reading my Children’s Bible (and my Gideon New Testament, as a teenager). Neither of which included any Lenten observation. So Lent has always been something that other people did, not very relevant to me. I enjoyed my pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, but never considered any sort of Lenten practice.
The origin of Lent, of course, goes back to the Gospels, and the story about how, after he was baptised by John the Baptist, Jesus went off for forty days into the wilderness, and did some serious soul-searching, as we saw in our third reading.
Let us remind ourselves how Christians approach Lent: according to the United Methodists, they put ashes on their heads on Ash Wednesday “to remind us that we all have sinned, we all need repentance, to let God through Christ change our hearts and lives; to remind us of all those around the world who are mourning and suffering; to remind us that in the passage of time, we will all someday die; to remind us of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection; and to remind us that in the midst of all this, we are still called, claimed, forgiven and loved children of God.”
Now I would guess that there are things in that statement that the vast majority of Unitarians would not be happy with – the idea that we need Christ’s mediation to be in right relationship with God being the main one. Nevertheless, I wonder whether a periodic examination of our inner lives might be beneficial, if it leads to an awareness of our shortcomings (which we surely all have) and to a resolution to do better in the future. And I love the final reminder “that in the midst of all this, we are still called, claimed, forgiven and loved children of God.” This is something that I have come to believe profoundly.
Then during the 40 days (seven weeks excluding Sundays) of Lent, many Christians “give up” something, usually chocolate, or biscuits, some food they like. A work colleague of mine years ago, used to give up chocolate, biscuits, cake and alcohol for the period of Lent each year, and my goodness, she was grumpy! Which I really don’t think was the idea. I also winced at a post the other day by the Christian satirical website Unvirtuous Abbey, “For those who think that the season of Lent is The Biggest Loser – Jesus Edition, we pray.” Ouch.
Then a few years ago, something popped up in my Facebook feed from an American Unitarian Universalist friend, Barb Greve, who shared a UU idea for Lent:
“As Unitarian Universalists, we share theological roots with our Christian siblings. However, rather than a practice of self-denial, we offer this opportunity to spend the Season of Lent engaged in a spiritual discipline of deep intention and appreciation of our world, our place in it, and an openness to Grace in our daily lives.
Practicing Lent is designed to be used individually, as a family, or as a congregation. We have selected a word for each day in Lent. We believe each word will be accessible to all ages and stages of faith development. Reflect on the meaning of this word to you. Find a photograph each day that speaks to you about the word, idea, practice, or concept. Share it on [the website] and celebrate the shared inspiration we bring to one another.”
Which was a very different approach. This year there has been quite a flurry of interest among Unitarian friends about Lent, and what they are planning to “do” for it. Which has made me look at these two aspects of Lent more closely. On the one hand, there is the self-denying, penitential aspect, which (interestingly) many secular folk have also latched on to. Even my avowedly-atheist son knows that you’re supposed to give up something for Lent. And on the other, there is the life-affirming, positive aspect of using the period of Lent to intentionally establish a new spiritual practice, which I rather like. And in between these, there is the idea of giving up something as a positive practice, rather than as a penitential one.
So let’s look at the three approaches to Lent, and perhaps pick one that appeals to us, and resolve to do something about it, now, here, in 2026.
First of all, giving something up as a penitential, self-denying practice. I had toyed with the idea of giving up chocolate for Lent, as a way of losing weight, then I read that post from Unvirtuous Abbey, and winced. I cannot enter into the proper Christian self-denying head space, so I think it would be disrespectful of me to give up something just because. And anyhow, I don’t really want to!
However, there is another aspect to giving something up, which may be more appealing to Unitarians, because it could be done for what we might consider to be “the right motives.” That is, to decide to give something up for Lent for a positive reason. Here’s what my friend Kate Brady-McKenna, minister at Bury, has to say about drinking only water during Lent, which is her chosen spiritual practice: “I’ve done the water-only thing before, and found it one of the best Lent things I’ve tried. It feels like a tiny-sacrifice-with-a-purpose, and gave me a real appreciation of how only drinking water, but drinking all the fresh clean pure water I want is actually a massive privilege.”
I was tempted by this idea for a while. But then I realised that if I did it, I would only be copying her, and not doing it because I felt any great prompting from the Spirit. Other examples of this sort of idea are Stoptober, during which folk are encouraged to stop smoking for a month, and Dry January, during which they are supposed to give up alcohol for a month. I’ve never seen the point of these, except as a stepping stone for a permanent change of lifestyle, in which case, good for them. And the season of Lent might provide another opportunity for a dry-run at making a beneficial change in your life.
But the approach to Lent that really speaks to my condition is that of the adoption of a positive spiritual practice. This year, having been blown away by them, I am going to sit with the questions Frederick Buechner posed in our third reading – by which I mean, sit in silence and contemplate them, then journal about whatever comes up for me. I believe it is important, at regular intervals on our spiritual journeys, to spend some time “in the wilderness” of our own hearts and souls, and to do as Ray Seal advises, take a pit stop, so that we are “able to let that inner spirit, that is all things good, refresh us, refuel us, and set us up for the next steps of our journey.”
So now I’m going to give you a few minutes in silence to think about which spiritual practice you might like to try this Lent. It might involve silence, or writing, or drawing, or something else. Nobody else will know what it is – it is for you alone. And it’s not compulsory – you may decide that this is not for you. In which case, please just hold the silence, until I bring us back.
[2 minutes of silence]
Whatever you have decided, it is good to recognise that your soul is on a journey, and that time in the wilderness, which is what Lent originally commemorated, is a part of every person’s soul-journey, as Sarah York reflected in our second reading. I’d like to repeat a part of it: ” Time in the wilderness is always a time of struggle. It is also a time of transformation and renewal. In traditional terms, it is a time of purification. The journey into wilderness reminds us that we are alone and not alone. We are neither where we have been nor where we are going. There is danger and possibility, risk and promise. In the wilderness, the spirit may descend like a dove and lift us on its wings of hope, then drive us into the depths of despair; it may affirm us with a gift of grace, then challenge us to change. In the stories and rituals of Eastern as well as Western religions, a journey into the wilderness represents a time when we both pursue and resist the Holy.”
It’s not easy, this spiritual work. It is much simpler, far less challenging, to skate over the surface of our lives, spending our time regretting the past or worrying about the future, rather than concentrating on the present moment, which is the only point at which time and eternity co-exist. But I am coming to realise that the effort must be made, if we are to grow into the best people we can be.
May it be so for all of us.
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Open our hearts,
That we might take this opportunity
Of the season of Lent,
To examine our lives and our spiritual journey,
And resolve to continue with what is good,
And leave behind what it not so good.
May we return to our everyday world refreshed,
May we share the love we feel,
May we look out for each other,
And may we keep up our hearts,
Now and in the days to come,
Amen
Postlude Stella del Mattino by Ludovico Einaudi