Your jacket

1 Advent A 2010
(Isaiah 2: 1-5; Ps 122; Romans 13: 11-14; Matthew 24: 36-44)


Walking out of my martial arts class this past summer, sweaty from a hard workout, I turned as a young man shouted at me from a passing car. “What’s that?” I shouted back. He rolled the window down all the way and shouted again, “Wax on, wax off!”

In terms of what can be shouted from a car on 82nd Avenue, I appreciated this and walked away doing “wax on…” I liked the old Karate Kid movie with everyone’s favorite resident Asian sage, Mr. Miyagi. Not long ago I rented the re-make with Jackie Chan and Will Smith’s son. I liked it because it was different, placing the kid in China as a guest rather than in L.A. There was no “wax on, wax off.” Instead Jackie Chan taught basic martial arts in a different way.

“Put on your jacket! Take it off. Pick it up. Put it on. Now take it off. Pick it up.” And on and on and on, the kid endlessly taking that same jacket off, putting it on, stooping over and over until I felt my own back creak with the stoop and I thought the jacket would be worn to shreds.

Finally the endless gesture, seemingly so meaningless, makes the kid rebel. Jackie Chan then demonstrates how the seemingly meaningless ordinary gesture is actually the foundation for a powerful kung fu practice, the basis for defense and balance on which all else will be built. And, says Jackie, “everything is kung fu.”

The year has turned, and we are again in Advent. Have you been tempted to ask what is this purpose of endless repetition of readings, prayers, colors, and moods? Think of this: Put on your jacket, take it off, pick it up. This will teach us everything. And, I tell you, “Everything is Advent.”

“Cast away the works of darkness…”

The light wanes and grows short, this time of year. The fading light is a reminder that there is darkness in this world. I myself have become very aware of the heaviness of darkness, the weight of it, clinging to my body like an old, stained jacket. We each have such a jacket. Some of its stains have been imposed—the discouragement from struggle, from the cruelty and the seemingly random nature of the world and its pain. Some stains we have put on ourselves, from the anger and impatience and frustration and self-absorbedness of our lives. Paul does us the favor of listing some pretty general jacket-stains: “reveling and drunkenness”, “debauchery and licentiousness”, “quarreling and jealousy.” My personal jacket has stains like resentment, disgust, and apathy, the temptations of middle age. When we allow our lives to be shaped by these stains, that is sin. “Take off your jacket.” Because the good news is, we can. We are not our discouragement, our heaviness, our despair. In each of us there is a soul that stands with open arms awaiting our God.

“Put on the armor of light…”

We can live in a new and renewed way. We can place on ourselves a new jacket, a new way of being and seeing and feeling and praying and loving. The time is now. “Put your jacket on.” “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Jackie says that “everything is kung fu,” but I say that everything is Advent. We live now in hope because he has come among us in humility, taking flesh and teaching and healing and dying and rising and filling all things. So what we do is full of meaning: our turning, our casting aside our personal and corporate works of darkness, our putting on the light of Christ. The vision of Isaiah, that all nations will come as pilgrims to Jerusalem, that swords will become plows, spears become pruning shears, tanks become farm tractors, warships become hospitals—that is the promise and the gift to those who follow Jesus.

This is how we are to live, this is what we shall do. Take off your jacket, pick it up, put it on. We shall be changed, we shall be transformed, in the casting aside of darkness and putting on Christ. The Light is promised to us, the Light is dawning in our midst. The time is now. Casting aside and putting on teaches us the deep lesson of this time.

That lesson is simple: Everything is Advent.