Sound the Alarm

Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:1-2,12-17; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
February 6, 2008
Dwight Zscheile

For a deep sleeper like me, it is painful when the alarm goes off. I feel jarred and disoriented when I’m pulled from the cozy isolation and darkness of dreams into the reality of a new day. The first temptation is always to hit the snooze button—to shut off that alarm for just a few more minutes—even though I know that eventually I will have to wake up.

In our reading from the Prophet Joel, we hear: “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain!” For Israel at the time, a day of doom was impending—of judgment and death, in the concrete form of an invading army. The alarm sounded by the prophet is a wake-up call, a voice disrupting the status quo. But the people have a chance to avert disaster by changing their hearts. “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.”

The alarm is an invitation to awaken to the truth of how far they have strayed from God. It is a call to return. For indeed, God is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” He “relents from punishing.” They are jolted out of their self-deceit and offered the chance to come to grips with reality by coming back to God.

One summer evening when I was 10, I was riding around the block in the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of neighborhood kids. As we passed by a side street, a car came roaring toward us, straight through a stop sign. I still remember to this day the flash of those headlights and the squealing of brakes. The car missed us by inches. But in that moment, as they say, my life flashed before my eyes. It was my first encounter with my own mortality.

Such experiences have a way of waking us up from the spiritual sleep we’ve fallen into. For Christians, Ash Wednesday is like that. As we trace the sign of the cross on each others’ foreheads and recite the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” our death flashes before our eyes. The ashes are a messy reminder that no matter how good we are at controlling and managing our existence, death will eventually have its due.

When death flashes before our eyes, so does life. We suddenly gain perspective on what matters, on what our real treasures are, and how we may be squandering them. Things that we discounted in everyday life are seen for the priceless gifts they are. Death has a lot to teach us about life.

One of the lies our culture likes to tell us is that there is nothing really wrong with us. We prefer to say to ourselves, “I’m OK, you’re OK,” than to confront the reality of ourselves and our world more deeply. But on some level, deep down, we know better.

We know that we are not living as fully, as generously and lovingly, as we could be. We know that we too often choose the easy path of convenience and conformity rather than the hard one of disciplined discipleship. We know that we are all too prone to close our hearts off to one another rather than risk opening them up in love, especially to strangers. We know that we have compartmentalized our lives rather than embracing the integrity and holiness that God calls us to. We know that we too often refuse to trust God and instead seek our own wills. We know that parts of us are broken, hurting, and in deep need of healing.

That is why it is so important that the mark we trace today in ash is a cross. For through the cross, the powerful realities of sin and death are turned into forgiveness and eternal life. The cross is the place where God’s grace and mercy embrace us in all our brokenness and perversity, amidst the violence we do to one another and even to God. The cross stands as the meeting point of death and life, where all that we are now and all that God dreams for us to be are joined. The cross is a powerful alarm, a call to confront the depth of how far we have strayed, because God has made such a great sacrifice to meet us and bring us back home.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The story does not end there, however. For in Christ our ultimate wake up call is resurrection. Amen.