Sermons ideas for Lent focus on the heart of the Christian gospel: the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Good Friday and Easter are the climax the Christian year. Sermons during Lent could focus on preparation and repentance. Lent is a season for pondering our mortality and sinfulness and our need to die and rise with Jesus Christ—not only in once-for-all baptism but also in the daily mortification of our old selves and vivification of our new selves. Through deliberate forms of self-denial, Christians in Lent open their hearts to the self-giving grace of Jesus Christ and their own union with Christ.
Sermons can focus on grace during Lent. Similarly, reflection on how great our sins and miseries are can sharpen our sense of the need for the grace of our Savior. Sorrow for sin, honest confession, and deliberate amendment of our sinful lives is the basic drama of everyday Christian life at the intersection of sin and grace. Lent is a time for contemplating at that intersection, and sermons can illustrate our plight and God’s mercy. Sermons can focus on the penitential psalms: 32, 38, 51, and 130. Sermons could also focus on passages which focus on repentance, such as Psalm 50, Isaiah 55:11, Joel 2:12–17, Matthew 6:1–6 and 16–21, and Acts 26:17–18.
Preaching during Lent can also focus on our mortality. The word Lent comes from an Old and Middle English word that has to do with the lengthening days of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Putting together the dust of Ash Wednesday, representing human mortality, and the waters of baptism on Easter Sunday makes the “mud season” of Lent. Reflection on our mortality in Lent is a salutary spiritual exercise. If one walks through a cemetery and reflects on the well-dressed skeletons lying six feet underground, and that one’s own chances of someday joining them are high, much of life gets cast in a new light (Gen. 3:19; Eccles. 3:18–20).
During Lent a preacher could also focus on dying and rising with Christ, progressing toward Easter. Roman Catholic and some Protestant congregations mark the opening of Lent on Ash Wednesday by imposing the sign of the cross in ash on the brows of believers. (The ash is often created by burning the dried palm branches from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebration.) As a period of preparation, Lent has historically included the instruction of persons for profession of faith and baptism on Easter Sunday; the calling back of those who have become estranged from the church; efforts by all Christians to mortify the sins that cling to them; and vivifying or robustly encouraging efforts to lead a Christ-like life. Preaching on Christ’s atoning death is entirely proper in Lent, but so is a hearty turn toward Resurrection Sunday. Lent’s destination is Easter. Without it, we would be unwilling to suffer the death of our sinful selves. The only willing suffering is suffering in hope (Rom. 6:2, 4–6, 11; Gal. 2:19–20; Eph. 2:4–6; Col. 2:12, 20; Col. 3:1, 3, 5, 9–10).