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I might as well get this off my chest. I have an abiding dislike for alarm clocks. Truth be told, more than a few of them have met an untimely demise as they have flown across the room after daring to interrupt my sleep. It's true. There is nothing quite so grating, so unpleasant as the electronic wheezing that emerges from the clock by my bedside every morning at 6 a.m. It doesn't matter if I'm dreaming or not. I could even be laying there half awake and thinking about getting up a little early. Sometimes I am already sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing my eyes and thinking of the day's schedule when it goes off. No matter what state of sleeping or waking I am in, alarms set me on edge. They raise the hairs on the back of my neck and hurl me into the day with a kind of graceless beginning.

I have often thought that a great technological advancement might be some kind of robot alarm that could gently reach out and say, "Hey there, it's time to get up." It would then wait a few moments before gently reminding me again, this time placing a nice cup of coffee on the nightstand. "Here's your coffee." What a pleasant way to start the day. But in my case, such gentleness wouldn't really work. I'd nod to the robot, roll over, and go back to sleep. That's why the clock radio doesn't really work for me. It's just too nice. A little Mozart in the morning doesn't wake me, it merely accompanies me as I continue to sleep.

I guess I have to just deal with the fact that I need the sound of the trumpet blowing. I need the alarm telling me that it's time to get up and get going. It's time to make the coffee and the family breakfast. It's time to begin the day. Sleep, as wonderful as it is, needs to give way to the rest of life's demands. I don't much like it, but I have to wake up or all kinds of bad things could happen.

If I don't wake up, my children won't get a nourishing breakfast before school. If I don't wake up, the dog doesn't get walked. If I don't wake up, I miss meetings, hospital and home visits, and a host of other responsibilities that come with pastoral ministry. I don't much like the alarm, and there are days when I don't like waking up, but I know that it needs to happen. You just can't sleep your life away. In fact, if you do sleep your life away, can you actually call it life?

As I think about my own life and the need to be awakened so that I can take care of business, I can't help thinking about the church, and it's long and deep sleep. Like me, I think the church is a deep sleeper. Walk in the room, call it by name, and it will not awaken. Tap it on the shoulder and shake it gently. It continues to snore. In fact, I wonder if the church is in the process of sleeping its life away? What do you think?

The prophet Joel brings this call sharply into focus for us.

Good old Joel seems clear. The people are sound asleep and he is calling for the alarm to sound. Forget the gentle clock radio music. Don't even think about some annoying buzzer just beyond reach. Scripture calls us here to a true alarm. "Blow the trumpet!" Can you imagine someone standing next to your bed while you are sound asleep and putting a trumpet to your ear? This is what I call an alarm.

We are not being awakened, however, merely to take care of business as usual. We are not being jolted from our quiescent snoozing just for the fun of it. We are being called out because the "day of the Lord" is upon us. For the original readers of this text, this was a call for a whole nation to awaken from the slumber of its sinfulness and to enter into repentance. A call to everyone, even the writer. The old, the children, even those still breast-feeding are called. Even newlyweds are called from their bedchambers. This is not a mere waking from an afternoon nap. This is a true alarm -- a wake up call to face the fact that the people have traveled far from where God calls them to be. Is it possible that such a call comes to us as we enter this season of penitence? Is there a trumpet blowing in our land that we need to hear? Could we be in a similar bind as the people of Israel seem to be in this passage? Are there changes we need to make?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say a loud, emphatic, "Yes."

The temptation in this literature is to go to the historic value of the work and to look at what it meant to the people of Israel. Certainly this is the good academic work that needs to be studied, but the prophet's voice is not merely an ancient and dusty word to a bygone people. If this were so, all we would have here would be an old story that might not even be worth the telling. As it is, though, the prophet's voice echoes down the centuries to you and to me, shaking us from our own dazed slumber and calling us to repentance. More than that, we are called away from our religiosity to a true change of heart.

I know you're sitting there thinking, "I'm not such a bad person. I'm good. I go to work, take care of my family, and I try to do the right thing. Why do you have to be so judgmental? I need the sermon to make me feel good, not bad. Get it together, pastor, and give us a word that puts a smile on our faces!"

A smile will come. But first we really do need to heed the prophet's voice.

This passage from Joel isn't about personal piety. It's not about individual morals, it's about the character and behavior of a people. The word here has to do with the fact that God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7), and that while we may slip blithely -- even unconsciously -- away from God's calling to us, God does notice. God does care. Judgment, it turns out, is real. This prophetic call comes to us to repent as a people -- as a church -- as a nation. In the wake of this call we need to stop what we're doing. We need to pause and pay attention in a confessional, truth-telling kind of way. Let us, in this season, learn how to rend our hearts and look past the carefully constructed numbness of our lives. Forget, for a moment, any impulses toward defensiveness. Let go of the temptation to retreat into ideology or rigid orthodoxy. Dispel the smog of our own narrowly held points of view and pose the questions that beg the asking.

What things are we doing that we need to stop doing? If we lift the veil of our own unconsciousness, the answers are right there, waiting, yearning for us to embrace them. How are we, as the church, called to repentance? In what ways do we carry on that are not faithful to who God has called us to be in Jesus Christ? What walls have we built? Who have we kept out? What actions do we take, what rules do we enforce that make a mockery of what Jesus did for us on the cross? Does our church act and look like the kingdom of God that we hear about in the parables of Jesus? When we describe the reality that God calls us to build and give our lives to, does it sound like our church? If not, what do we need to do? All of these are hard questions, to be sure. But friends, our salvation waits in the answers.

Let us look not only to our church, but to our nation, as well. As we enter another year of a war that seems to have no end, is there something that calls for repentance? As we hear the language of fear and retribution, does our faith have a response? Is there a change in national behavior that God might have in mind for us? And in the midst of this national malaise, where is our voice? What words of truth, hope, healing, and peace are we offering as more and more people fall to unspeakable suffering and death? Do we speak and live the words of Jesus about loving our enemies?

As billions are spent on war while millions go without health care, what is the priority to which God is calling us? As schools crumble and education falters while there is plenty of money for weapons and destruction, what do we hear from the voice of the holy? We are the wealthiest people on the planet. As starvation and disease stalk the earth, are we called to offer solutions? As the very environment that supports life is unraveling because of us, how are we called to behave?

Though the sound is unpleasant, and the waking is no fun, I want to suggest that both our nation and our church have need of an alarm clock, or maybe as Joel suggests, a trumpet placed right in our ear. It is time for us to awaken from the slumber of our lives, and what better time to rise from the beds of our collective numbness than in this Lenten time that comes upon us? What better time to "rend our hearts" with words of truth than this day of ashes?

A first reaction of some who hear this may be one of defensiveness. That's understandable. Confession is a difficult thing. Besides, most people resent being awakened from a deep sleep. It's hard to shake the sleep from our eyes; it's difficult to center our attention on what is really happening in our churches and in our world. But make no mistake, the alarm is being sounded, and we are being called, all of us.

The day of the Lord is indeed at hand. In fact, I'd go a little further than the prophet and suggest that God's judgment upon us is not something fixed and far off; something we can ignore until a later time. I would submit that God's judgment comes all at once with God's love and God's grace. It's what you might call a package deal. And if we can find the courage to tell the truth to ourselves about who we are and what it is we are truly doing, then we might find the tender taste of God's mercy as we turn in our hearts to healing and hope; as we stand up for what we know to be good and right. We might experience a new birth and a new beginning, as church and nation, if we open our eyes and our hearts to what is truly going on and how we are playing a role in it.

It's Ash Wednesday, and the suggestion, the call, to us is ultimately a call to authenticity in our faith. Let us take these days and weeks ahead as a time to examine what we're doing, how we're doing it, and especially let us look at what results come from our actions. Let us do this as ones awakened from a deep sleep so that we might attend to the business at hand. God's business. God's work. Amen.