We cannot afford to neglect the season of Advent. If Ash Wednesday slips by us, we can survive. If we fail to observe Trinity Sunday one year, we can get by. If we don't know what to do for Epiphany or Pentecost, even if, heaven forbid, we let Palm Sunday go by without a whisper, our churches will probably endure, but not if we forget Advent.

All these other festivals are important reminders of what God has done for us in times past. We will still remember those outpourings of God's love and favor as we read the Gospel and remember together the story of Jesus. But Advent calls our attention to what is yet to come, even what stands at the door.

Christmas and Easter themselves are joyous reminders of what God has done, what is past, but Advent is our wake-up call to what is coming, to Who is coming. And we cannot afford to miss it. We cannot afford to sleep in. We hear that abrupt alarm in the songs of Advent -- "Wake! Awake for night is flying!" "Lo! He comes with clouds descending!" We hear it in the scriptures that the Church has traditionally joined to this season:

"O that You would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at Your presence -- as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil -- to make Your name known to Your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at Your presence!" (Isa. 64:1-2).

"But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.... Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming" (Mat. 24:36, 42).

"What I say to you, I say to all: Watch!" (Mark 13:37).

And so, near the end of every year, we are given this jolt -- like the morning ringing of the telephone beside a hotel bed: "this is your wake-up call" -- this shaking of our souls returning us to a state of being watchful, being alert for the One who is coming.

Sadly, many of us need this wake-up call, because we have been sleeping. I know I've nodded off more than once in the past year. This is a seductive sleep, because the dreams we dream during this sleep seem so real and often so appealing. It's hard to leave them once they've begun; we don't really want to wake up from them. So perhaps the hymn "Wake! Awake for night is flying" is not a welcome one. Our sleep has perhaps been pleasant; the images that danced before us, the feelings that these images aroused, were all so enchanting. We so wanted to stay asleep and see how these dreams would turn out because they were unfolding so well!

The frightful fact of our confession is that much of the time many of us are sleeping and living an imitation of reality, chasing after an insubstantial dream. Clearly Jesus and Paul do not have physical sleep in mind here, nor the phantoms that cross our consciousness during our nightly rest, but they apply these images to our waking hours when we think we're most active, most alert, most profitable in our labors. What does it mean to sleep while you're awake? When I sleep, I close my eyes and ears to the world around me, and I am occupied first with the cocoon of blankets and pillow and then with the world inside my head, the world of dreams. I fear that, for many people, waking up in the morning doesn't really change this state of affairs. Many of us wake up with our eyes and ears still closed to the world -- at least those parts of the world that are unpleasant or threatening.