4 Lent Sermon Quotes: Fresh Angles for Preaching

You may think of quotes as a great thing to add a little gravity, insight, or humor to your sermons. And they are! But have you considered Lent quotes as a jumping-off point for sermon ideas?

We picked these four Lent quotes for their sermon potential. Each one opens up a fresh angle on Lenten themes—joy in repentance, simplicity, honesty, and fasting—with commentary on the sermon direction it suggests to us. Where you take them is up to you.

Whether you're planning a series or looking for a that elusive sermon spark, we think you'll find something here worth using.

(Looking for more resources for your Lent sermons and services? Our Lent Worship Guide puts our sermon series, sermon ideas, liturgy options, and more at your fingertips.)

4 Lent Sermon Quotes and Preaching Angles

Esau MacCaulley on Joy in Lent

The joy of the Lord is not a ticket to be purchased by our fasts. He is always good.

— Esau MacCaulley, Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal (IVP, 2002).

Begin Lent with joy, observe it with joy, and end it in joy. That's the sermon angle this quote suggests to us.

On Ash Wednesday, when we remember our mortality and take the ashes that are a biblical sign of sorrow and repentance, point to the joy beneath it all. On a shallow view of repentance, you might think of it as just admitting you have broken a rule and resolving not to do it again. But if we think of it in terms of turning toward God, we are not simply rejecting the bad. We are turning toward the source of goodness itself. We were facing toward darkness and futility, but in turning, we look toward the loving face of a Father who has his arms out. If the prodigal son in the parable had heard the call of his Father's heart from the pigpen, if he had known that his arms were already open to embrace him, wouldn't his first step on the road been taken with the greatest joy?

This reframes the Lenten journey at its beginning. It's not a trudge, but eagerly heading home. The disciplines of Lent are joyfully embracing that return and putting the pigpen in the rearview.

(Planning an Ash Wednesday Service? Find full services, sermon insights, liturgy, and more on our Ash Wednesday Worship Guide.)

Malcolm Guite on Not Doing Everything

Most of us are under pressure, external and internal, to do everything, be good at everything, be accountable to everyone for everything! It is not so. In the divine economy each of us has a particular grace, gift and devotion. Finding out what that is, and learning how to be guilt-free about not doing everything else, may be part of what our Lenten journey is for.

— Malcolm Guite, Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter (Hymns Ancient & Modern, 2014).

Why did Jesus fast in the wilderness? Didn't he have anything better to do?

In imitation of Jesus, during Lent, we often adopt simplifying disciplines like solitude, silence, or fasting. We "give up something." Why?

We can see part of the answer in the Sabbath. God commands us to rest. Ironically, that's kind of hard. It isn't that work is bad, either. But we have to say, "no," nonetheless. Lenten disciplines require the same thing. We say "no" to good things in order to focus on God alone.

By heading to the desert and fasting, Jesus was saying "no" to many good things, to many people who might have been healed, instructed, and led. It wasn't just about avoiding the devil's temptations, it was about letting God lead him.

This is where Guite's quote comes in. How many of us are overstretched by doing truly good things? How many of us carry the burden of not being able to do them all? Lenten disciplines allow us to step back and ask which things God is calling us to do and to say "no" to everything else.

N. T. Wright on Honesty and Confession in Lent

Lent is a time for discipline, for confession, for honesty, not because God is mean or fault-finding or finger-pointing, but because he wants us to know the joy of being cleaned out, ready for all the good things he now has in store.

— N. T. Wright, Lent for Everyone (Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).

We have an honesty problem. And it's costly. This quote by N. T. Wright provides a jumping off point for addressing this during Lent.

Unfortunately, Christians aren't great at admitting to this honesty problem. In the abstract, of course, we'll agree that everyone is a sinner and that we're saved by grace. But point out sin and chances are that you're in for a string of denials and self-justifications. Churches on Sundays are full of people who are imperfect in the abstract, but perfect in all the particulars.

Lent is the tonic for this. We should remember this all year, but it's such a persistent problem that it makes sense to have a whole season in which we are reminded that we really need to deal with our sin problem. It's that hard to do and it's that important.

The critical point, though, is what Wright ends with. Fault-finding and accusation is never the point. The point is that, when you're in denial about sin, there's no room for growth into the blessings God actually wants to give you.

Andrew Murray on Fasting

Sorrow and anxiety cannot eat: joy celebrates its feasts with eating and drinking… We are creatures of the senses: our mind is helped by what comes to us embodied in concrete form; fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, to sacrifice ourselves, to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.

— Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer (Revel, 1885).

On the bleeding edge of the "futurists" are the "biohackers." They envision all sorts of new ways of engineering our bodies for better performance by fiddling with nutrition, exercise, even devices.

Fasting is the original biohacking — see it in the Old and New Testaments — and it features prominently in the spiritual practices of the church across history.

Fasting is embodied spirituality. It is incarnational. By experiencing physical discomfort in the form of hunger, we express a spiritual reality. The feedback of our senses — the feeling of restraint against desire — it teaches us something that no rehearsed argument can do. We learn the feeling of sacrifice in our bodies. It is spiritual "bio-feedback" of an ancient sort. Put another way, it is like spiritual interval training, but instead of strengthening our bodies, it is fortifying our souls.

Through fasting, we express sorrow, we teach ourselves restraint, we testify to the sacrifice of Christ, and our own willingness to sacrifice for him as we pick up our crosses to follow.