Airing Clean Laundry

During my last two years of college, I lived with two great friends, David and George, in an old house in the university area. The other David had his own room; George and I shared the other room. Something about the demands of school, more especially, the lack of discipline made me a bit of a slob here and there. George and I seemed not able to put dirty clothes in the hamper and keep up with the laundry. Clothes would just drop from hands to the floor so that, before too many days, the entire tiny room seemed like a large dirty clothes basket. Pitiful, really. Then after a laborious Saturday at the laundry mat, all would be back in order. We would say, “Let’s not let that happen again!” but we would. Each of us had to learn later how to manage clothing in a civilized way.

Certain passages of the Bible apply the metaphor of changing clothes to the discipline of siding with God and moving in action with God’s ways. Putting on clothes is a way of preparing for the tasks ahead, and dressing for the work coming up. St. Paul uses the image, urging the Christian community to be done with behavior destructive to their progress in the faith and to dress for success in holy living. He asserts that Jesus the Savior himself could be put on as clothing for the work ahead within and beyond the community. He asserts that some behavior tears things apart and other behavior stitches things together with Christ, corresponding with God’s designs.

Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:12-14)

Anticipating the approaching day when God’s salvation is all in all for the cosmos when the new creation is consummated in full, we must mind our actions and attitudes. Putting aside works of darkness, there is the armor of light for us to don. It casts off dirty hatred, violence, and fear run amok. This year, the passage above accompanies our opening for the season of Advent. Every year the language of this letter is hoisted in the Collect for the First Sunday of Advent:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.

Praying this, we focus on the present with the future Parousia in mind. Now is the time for a good change because “the day” is coming. We are awake to the coming of Christ in glorious majesty, his advent for the great judgment of all, and the general resurrection. Do we know the specifics? No, we don’t know how near the day is, or what it will be like, but we know that our actions now matter. The call goes beyond laundry decorum: sorting dirty clothes and folding clean clothes. We expect ourselves to carry on as agents of divine light. Love must be the point of our actions, encouragement, illumination, healing, and peacemaking too. Now is the moment: God gives us grace and the armor of light.