18/02/2026
Archbishop Stephen shared a reflection as part of today's Daily Service on BBC Radio 4 extra. This follows in full
When we hear the latest story on the news of some ghastly human indignity or violence, it is all too easy to say to ourselves, ‘How can people behave like that?’
There is a danger here.
In saying this we might also start imagining that we are somehow better than others, more in control of ourselves, morally superior.
But isn’t this the problem?
Once we start dividing the world up into the morally good (people like us) and the morally reprehensible (all the rest of humanity who do these shameful things) we are actually taking the first terrible step towards doing and saying the very things we find so frightful. For surely it is the denial of a common humanity that is the moral problem. This is where prejudice and hatred and violence begin. This is why some people can be objectified, abandoned, abused and ill-treated. Not believing people are the same as us is the justification for prejudice and then the excuse for violence.
Ash Wednesday tells us something else about ourselves, something that is both sobering and cathartic. We have all fallen short. We have all failed. We are all sinners in need of God's grace. ‘You are all dust,’ says the priest as the sign of the cross is marked with ash upon our foreheads, ’And to dust you will return.’
This sober reckoning of ourselves isn’t depressing or life denying. It is liberating. Now, we can be kind, generous and merciful to each other because we recognise how much we need kindness, generosity and mercy ourselves. And in order to be set free from the far too easy illusion of our own superiority, we need someone to show us how to be human in a way that is kind, generous and merciful. We need someone who knows how entrancingly seductive temptation can be and what it is like to be human, and yet is without sin.
This is who Jesus is for us. It is him we follow as Lent begins, learning again how to be truly human, being realistic about our sinfulness and our need of God's grace.
Lent prepares us for Easter, and we get Good Friday and Easter wrong if we just think that Jesus was killed by wicked people.
This wasn’t what happened. It was good people, the religious leaders and politicians and people like us who put Jesus to death.
And it is so-called good people as well as so-called wicked people who cause problems today.
So, when people say to me the Church is full of hypocrites, I always reply, ‘Yes, and there’s room for one more. Come and join us; we don’t pretend to be anything other than sinners taking the cure.’
Christians are not good people whose lives are morally superior, but ordinary people, with the same muddled motives as everyone else, and the same capacity to get it wrong. The difference is this: we acknowledge our need and have found a place – or should I say a person – who forgives. A person who shows us how to live. This is the treasure in heaven that Jesus urges us to seek. It is what Ash Wednesday is about. Resetting the compass of our humanity. Following Jesus. Knowing that we need him.
Listen to the service on BBC Sounds
