Year C Ash Wednesday 2025 Wakeup Calls and Having Time Enough

 Year C Ash Wednesday, 5 March 2025

St James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Wakeup Calls and Having Time Enough”

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Joel 2:1-2,12-17

Blow the trumpet in Zion;

sound the alarm on my holy mountain!

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,

for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near--

a day of darkness and gloom,

a day of clouds and thick darkness!

Like blackness spread upon the mountains

a great and powerful army comes;

their like has never been from of old,

nor will be again after them

in ages to come.

Yet even now, says the Lord,

return to me with all your heart,

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

rend your hearts and not your clothing.

Return to the Lord, your God,

for he is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,

and relents from punishing.

Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,

and leave a blessing behind him,

a grain offering and a drink offering

for the Lord, your God?

Blow the trumpet in Zion;

sanctify a fast;

call a solemn assembly;

gather the people.

Sanctify the congregation;

assemble the aged;

gather the children,

even infants at the breast.

Let the bridegroom leave his room,

and the bride her canopy.

Between the vestibule and the altar

let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.

Let them say, "Spare your people, O Lord,

and do not make your heritage a mockery,

a byword among the nations.

Why should it be said among the peoples,

`Where is their God?'"

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,

"At an acceptable time I have listened to you,

and on a day of salvation I have helped you."

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see-- we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Jesus said, "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

"So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

"And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

"And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

The last thing I do before I go to sleep is to double-check that I set my alarm. Many days I get up without the alarm, being restless about 5 minutes before it goes off. On these cold winter mornings I get a little grumbly waking up before the alarm, but I get up and get going. That is what an alarm is for, a way for me to do what I need to do, when I need to do it.

It used to be in hotels, before alarm clocks were cheap and ubiquitous, that you would call down to the front desk and get a wakeup call. It was the same as an alarm, just more needed as one is in a strange place and maybe even a different time zone than one is used to.

Alarm clocks, wakeup calls, whatever analogy you use, it is something we all need to do what we need to do when we need to do it.

Lent is a yearly reminder for us to be ready for we never know when the day of the Lord will arrive. We slip, we get used to the way things are, we miss the mark, in other words we sin, both by things done and left undone. And as we promised in our Baptismal Covenant on Sunday, “Whenever we fall into sin, we will repent and return to the Lord.” Lent is our time to remember, our annual Wakeup Call, that we are human. We sin and fall short of the glory of God. And we set aside a time to journey through the valley of the shadow of death to be ready for the glories of Easter. 

We cannot truly feast unless we learn to fast.

And so we come. We come to hear the words, a Wakeup Call of our mortality. A Wakeup Call of the wages of sin. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” At a burial I scatter the “ashes to ashes, the dust to dust.”

We hear the call while there is still time.

I remember as a teenager watching War Games with Matthew Broderick. He thought he was just having fun, and little did he realize that he started a process that just might lead to Thermonuclear War. 

Upon his realization, that the End is Nigh, or just might be, as he is walking along a lakeshore he stops with the realization that he has no more time. “I never learned to swim,” he says. And in that simple realization, there is his lament. He did not take the time when he had it. He did not prepare when he could. As a teenager his words haunted me. The audaciousness of youth is one thinks one is immortal and has all the time in the world.

When I see the eyes of children in a cancer ward they have lost that. They know they are mortal all too well.

As the prophet Joel warned:

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near--

a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!

Like blackness spread upon the mountains
a great and powerful army comes;

their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come.

You have been warned. You knew this day would come! And yet, we did not hear the Wakeup Call of God’s word and his prophets. We did not heed their warning.

And so friends, we come to this season, this uncomfortable season, to remind ourselves that we are all in it together. The only security in death that we have on our own is that it is surely  coming. But the other part of the Wakeup Call is a reminder that we do not suffer this surety alone. We have a Wakeup Call so that we can mend our ways, and God is gracious and a lover of souls.

As Joel continues:

Yet even now, says the Lord,
return to me with all your heart,

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.

Return to the Lord, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.

Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,

a grain offering and a drink offering
for the Lord, your God?

God did not call us to forsake us. God did not save us to destroy us. We weep,  and mourn, we rend our hearts. Not because we are unlovable but because we are loved and yet still we choose things apart from God.

We mourn our silliness and our selfishness. We repent of our ways and choose a different way, God’s way. We do it now while we still can. And so we begin this season of our Wakeup Call, this yearly Lent with penitence and fasting. As Joel closes:

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sanctify a fast;

call a solemn assembly;
gather the people.

Sanctify the congregation;
assemble the aged;

gather the children,
even infants at the breast.

Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her canopy.

Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.

Let them say, "Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.

Why should it be said among the peoples,
`Where is their God?'"

I stand here, weeping and repenting, for my many sins, for all our ways of missing the mark. I call on God to Spare God’s people, both today and always. We mark ourselves as those who will surely die. We continue on in hope that we will live eternally.

Friends, rejoice, for now is the time to do what we need to do while there is still time to do it. Rejoice, because God has stayed God’s hand. Rejoice that you can Repent, and Return to the Lord. Now is the Acceptable Time, now is the Day of Salvation! Amen