The Advent Patch
Romans 13:11-14 | 12/05/2004
Used to be that getting “patched up” had something to do with heading down to the emergency room for bandaging that cut on your hand you got in the kitchen, or sewing up that road rash rip in your leg you got from laying down your mountain bike.
These days, however, getting “patched up” at the doctor’s office may have more to do with internal than external medicine. More and more medications are being delivered by an adhesive “patch,” worn on a patient’s arm, thigh or rear end, which delivers measured doses of medicine through the skin.
The day is coming when you’ll be able to roll up just about anyone’s sleeve and see one sort of patch or another that offers them better living through chemistry. But it’s not always simple. Take, for example, the guy who showed up at the cardiologist for a two-week follow-up appointment complaining about one of his medications. “It’s the patch,” he said. “The nurse told me to put a new one on every six hours and I’ve run out of places to put them.” The doctor had him quickly undress and confirmed what he hoped wasn’t true. The patient had more than 50 patches stuck all over his body! Fortunately, the instructions were changed to remind patients to remove the old one first!
But these patches are the up and coming thing. I saw a commercial on television this week for a children’s patch that delivers Triaminic, a common, over-the-counter cough and cold medicine for kids. Thirty-five years ago, I would have welcomed a patch to administer medicine to our son, who we had to literally hold down.
There’s another one I’m watching to see how it succeeds. Its marketers call it a “cutting-edge, advanced appetite suppressant, metabolism booster and energy enhancer ... all in one weight-loss patch.”
And then there are the more common ones. You’ve got your Nicoderm CQ patch and Habitrol patch to help you quit smoking. Ortho Evra is a birth control patch which made TIME magazine’s 2002 list of the year’s best inventions.
You can go to 1-800-PATCHES to order any number of different wellness patches, including the Èden Weight Loss Patch, and the IcyHot Patch, a pain reliever, which is one I have tried.
The next step in patch development will tell us about the person wearing it. Not only are patches being developed to put medicine in the body, they are now being developed to determine what’s already coursing through your veins and arteries, bringing hidden things to light. Consider, for example, what it would be like to be able to know whether or not your airline pilot, your baby sitter, the guy watching the gauges at the nuclear power plant or the driver of that 18-wheeler had something stronger than coffee to drink before reporting to work. That’s the reasons behind a new “patch” application dreamed up by a company called SpectRx. The company has developed a wireless patch that fits over four tiny holes in an employee’s skin that continuously monitors their blood alcohol level and sends continuous signals to a receiver.
If the monitor picks up a whiff of alcohol, the transmission is altered to alert officials manning the receivers so the airline pilot can be grounded, the children rescued, the nuclear power plant worker’s hand taken off the switch, and the vehicle disabled with an ignition-lock system, keeping the would-be drunk driver off the road.
Thinking about all this new biotechnical stuff made me wonder: Wouldn’t it be cool if we could monitor our moral and spiritual development by putting on a scratch-’n-’sniff “sin patch” or a “power patch” that kept us in touch with our righteousness?
And what if there were a patch that could tell others instantly that you were lying, or lusting, or living out some kind of addiction? I imagine it would be about as popular to us as the drunk patch is to someone who likes to drink alcohol.
But here’s the thing: We’re at the first Sunday in December; the second Sunday in Advent. This is a season of preparation. Our text is Romans 13:11-14 in which are embedded not only images of moving from darkness to light, from slumber to awareness, but both negative and positive instructions.
READ ROMANS 13:11-14
On the one hand, we’re advised to be aware of the destructive behaviors that do nothing but “gratify the flesh” (13:14), rather than nurturing the spirit. The apostle Paul uses words like “darkness,” “reveling,” “drunkenness,” “debauchery,” “licentiousness,” “quarreling” and “jealousy.”
There are some pretty strong—and strange—words there. Debauchery? It means doing things that corrupt you or others. Licentiousness? It means having no moral restraints at all. (Who ever said the Bible doesn’t need some translation?) And isn’t it surprising, and maybe sobering, that the writer of this passage, the Apostle Paul, considers our attitudes just as sinful as our actions. Note that he lists quarreling and jealousy right along with the other obvious sins.
One would hope that as we prepare for the coming of the Christ child, we would need neither a “sin patch” nor a skin patch to alert us to these kinds of behaviors, and that we would understand how inappropriate these actions are for anyone who wishes to visit the manger at Bethlehem. On the other hand, in place of sinful activities, we’re encouraged to “put on the Lord Jesus” (13:14) — a clothing metaphor which is a favorite of Paul, who was quite aware that there are too many wardrobe malfunctions among the people of God. “Put off, therefore,” he would say, “the garments of unrighteousness.” And in Galatians 3:27, he says that those who are baptized “have clothed themselves with Christ.” In another place in Galatians, Chapter 4, verses 22-24, Paul reminds us that “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God…”
Christ Jesus — our Advent patch. The Advent Person. The Advent Reminder. This season is about him. It is not about us. It’s not about glitter and glamour, twinkle lights and evergreens. It is a time to “wake up!” (v. 11, The Message paraphrase) and be aware of what God is doing in our world.
Instead of a “sin patch,” Paul says that putting on “the armor of light” (v. 12) and “the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 14) is much more therapeutic and will keep us healthier. In other words, Paul urges us to get “patched up” and prepared for a life lived in and lived for the kingdom of God, rather than to continue in the sins of the past. Rather than behaving in a way that sends out the signals of sin, Paul tells us that we “put on the Lord Jesus” and thereby send out signals of righteousness.
Putting on Jesus every morning like we put on our shirts and pants reminds me of a story I once read about a church membership class for 12 year olds. At the first session the pastor asked, “What must we do before we can expect forgiveness from sin?” After a long silence, one of the students shyly raised his hand. “Sin?”
While we use a lot of effort to keep our “real” selves a secret from those around us, we need to remember that God has already been continually monitoring our souls — no “sin patch” necessary. The One who created us always knows the truth of what’s flowing back and forth inside us, whether it’s healthy or diseased, sober or soused. Other people will figure us out, too, by watching us over a period of time. Keeping secrets, particularly ones involving our own behavior, is a full-time job. Someone once said “Those who have a secret to hide also need to hide the fact that they have a secret to hide.” With all that “hiding” going on, it’s no wonder that, somehow, even our best-kept secrets eventually see the light of day.
The Advent patch indicates to everyone that the wearer is fully filled with Christ, filled with love for God, neighbor and self, which is a “fulfilling of the law,” as it says in verse 10.
What if airlines and other employers took a similar perspective — to encourage employees to “put on” their best behavior and follow positive models rather than be saddled with a “sin patch”? A sin patch would only identify the problems within you and says negatively, “you’re naughty and we must watch you closely.”
In other words, the patch that pilots or truck drivers or power plant workers may be forced to wear is an attempt at managing the small number of “sinners” in the group while in effect punishing the “good” employees and bringing about corporate dis-ease.
Most healthy companies will tell you that the more policies, procedures, monitoring and meddling employees have to deal with, the more problems you are going to have ... not less.
As Jim Collins puts it in his book Good to Great: “Most companies build their bureaucratic rules to manage the small percentage of the wrong people on the bus, which in turn drives away the right people on the bus, which then increases the percentage of wrong people on the bus, which increases the need for more bureaucracy to compensate for the incompetence and lack of discipline, which then further drives the right people away, and so forth.”
Many of the arguments in our churches and denominations revolve around what is and is not a “sin.” The views are wide and varied, with different Christians talking up their own different lists of right and wrong.
But rather than focus on the “how” of sin and the appropriate punishment, we should be focused on the “who” of Christ — to rise to His perfect model of grace and truth. Perhaps that’s what Paul means in verse 14 when he urges the Romans to “make no provision for the flesh” — don’t focus on the sin because it can tend to keep drawing you back in — but focus instead on the freedom and health one can receive through “wearing” a relationship with Christ.
Truth is, we can’t hide our sin, whatever it is. Eventually it all comes to the surface, and the biblical definition of sin is broad enough to characterize just about anything that keeps us from experiencing the fullness of God, for which we were created. The flip side is that we also can’t hide our relationship with Christ if we are truly “putting on” his character in our own lives, applying his prescription of love and grace to every word and deed.
Patch or no patch, we’re sending signals — of sin or of holiness — every day that reflect our true selves to the people around us. We don’t really need an Advent patch to remind us that Jesus came to show us the way, however imperfectly we might implement “the way.” A little child in the manger reminds us. And the babe of Bethlehem points to the power of children to simplify, to bring into focus, what’s important and what’s not.
PLEASE PRAY WITH ME: God, fill us up with joy, fill us up with peace, so that filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit we are a model of Jesus Christ, inside and out. Amen.
BENEDICTION: May God grant you the light of Christmas which is faith; the warmth of Christmas which is love; the radiance of Christmas which is purity; the belief of Christmas which is truth; the all of Christmas, which is Christ.
Sources:
Collins, Jim. Good to Great. New York: HarperCollins, 2001, 121.
Knapp, Louise. “New Patch Nixes the Liquid Lunch.” Wired Magazine Web Site, November 26, 2003. Retrieved June 7, 2004. Nurse Friendly Web Site, Nursefriendly.com. Retrieved June 10, 2004.
