![\"Karate](\"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/KarateKid_WaxOnWaxOff-500x281.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Once upon a time there was a preacher
\nwho was worried about his congregation.
\nThey were good people,
\npeople who loved Jesus,
\npeople who had embraced the Christian way of life.<\/p>\n
But there came a time
\nwhen they became exhausted.
\nThey were tired\u2014
\ntired of serving the world,
\ntired of worship,
\ntired of being seen as peculiar
\nand whispered about in society,
\ntired of the spiritual struggle,
\ntired of trying to keep their prayer life going.<\/p>\n
Attendance at church was down,
\nthe people were losing confidence,
\nand many of them were in danger of drifting away,
\nof leaving the community and falling away from the faith.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a problem that can strike any faith community at any time.
\nCall it spiritual exhaustion or loss of will,
\nit can happen to individuals, to families, to parishes, to dioceses,
\nand even to entire nations.<\/p>\n
Well, once upon a time
\nit had struck this one particular community,
\nand so the preacher
\nwanted to give his people a message of encouragement.
\nHe wanted to deliver a sermon
\nthat would wake them up,
\ngive them strength,
\ngive them hope,
\nencourage them to keep going
\nin their walk of faith.<\/p>\n
What he produced was perhaps
\nthe greatest Christian sermon ever preached or written.<\/p>\n
And we don\u2019t even know his name.
\nAs a matter of fact, we don\u2019t know where he lived,
\nor who his congregation was.<\/p>\n
But we do have his sermon.
\nIt\u2019s called the Letter to the Hebrews.
\nWe\u2019ve been reading portions of it on Sundays
\nfor the past three weeks,
\nand we\u2019ll hear from it again next week.<\/p>\n
The Letter to the Hebrews
\nis one of the more mysterious books in the Bible.
\nDespite its name,
\nit\u2019s not really a letter, and it\u2019s not really written to Hebrews.
\nWhat it is though, is the most beautiful of sermons,
\nmeant to encourage an early Christian community
\nsuffering from spiritual fatigue
\nto persevere in the faith.<\/p>\n
That encouragement is for us, too,
\nwhen we feel the fatigue of our discipleship
\nand would just as soon drift away from our faith.
\nThe Letter to the Hebrews is written to lift our hearts,
\nto pull us back together,
\nto renew our spirits.<\/p>\n
We saw that encouragement last week
\nas the preacher of Hebrews
\ncompared our spiritual journey to being on the race track in a stadium,
\nsurrounded by thousands of spectators in the stands,
\nthe great cloud of witnesses that have come before us.
\nAs Monsignor Steiner said last weekend,
\nit\u2019s like being in the Olympics,
\nwhere the roar of that cheering crowd
\nstirs our hearts and pushes us to do our best,
\nto be our best.
\nWhen we feel exhausted and weary of our Christian discipleship,
\nthe great cloud of witnesses, the saints,
\nare cheering us on to keep running the race,
\nto not give up.<\/p>\n
This week we get a different image,
\nthat of a father teaching his son through discipline.
\nThe preacher of Hebrews acknowledges the difficulties
\nof living our Christian faith.<\/p>\n
But this is not a punishment, he says.
\nThis is discipline.
\n\u201cEndure your trials as \u2018discipline,\u201d
\nsays the preacher,
\n\u201cFor what \u2018son\u2019 is there whom his father does not discipline?\u201d<\/p>\n
This is echoed in today\u2019s gospel
\nwhere Jesus tells his disciples
\n\u201cto strive to enter the narrow gate,\u201d
\nthat many \u201cwill attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.\u201d
\nIt is no accident that the words discipline and disciple are related.
\nBeing a disciple takes work, dedication, and trust.
\nIt takes discipline.<\/p>\n
You can really see this kind of discipline clearly If you remember the movie, He begins to get bullied by some boys who know karate, Now, Daniel wants to be able to defend himself, And the first thing Mr. Miyagi does is hand Daniel a bucket of water After he\u2019s done washing and waxing the cars, It\u2019s exhausting work, especially in the California heat, This is how the preacher\u2019s community feels in the Letter to the Hebrews: Daniel confronts Mr. Miyagi, Mr. Miyagi has taught Daniel discipline, but also trust. We are all sons and daughters of our heavenly father, But the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us It\u2019s also the discipline of serving the poor, Each day we wake up with the tasks of being a disciple, The discipline imposed by Mr. Miyagi
\nin the movie The Karate Kid<\/em>.
\nThere\u2019s a section of that movie that wonderfully illustrates
\nwhat the preacher of Hebrews is saying today.<\/p>\n
\nDaniel is a teenage boy who moves with his mom
\nfrom New Jersey to an apartment in California.<\/p>\n
\nand in one scene, as they are beating him up,
\nhe is rescued by the maintenance man at his apartment,
\nold Mr. Miyagi.
\nMr. Miyagi uses karate to defend Daniel and chase the bullies off.<\/p>\n
\nand eventually Mr. Miyagi agrees to teach him karate.
\nThey even have a sort of covenant ceremony,
\nin which Mr. Miyagi ties a headband around Daniel\u2019s head
\nand says,
\n\u201cI promise to teach you karate,
\nand you promise to learn.
\nI say, you do, no question. Deal?\u201d
\nAnd Daniel agrees.
\nIt\u2019s at this point that Daniel becomes, in a way, a disciple of Mr. Miyagi.<\/p>\n
\nand tell him to wash and wax all of his cars.
\nIt\u2019s the most famous scene in the movie, when Mr. Miyagi tells Daniel,
\n\u201cWax on with the right hand, wax off with the left.\u201d
\n\u201cWax on, wax off. Breath in through the nose out through the mouth.\u201d
\nDaniel doesn\u2019t understand what this has to do with karate,
\nbut he\u2019s just promised to do as he is told,
\nso he picks up the bucket and begins.
\nThere are a lot of cars, and it takes Daniel a long time.<\/p>\n
\nDaniel comes back the next day ready to learn karate.
\nMr. Miyagi gives him two Japanese sanding blocks
\nand tells him to sand the floor.
\n\u201cThe floor\u201d is the huge wooden walkway in his backyard,
\nand Daniel has to get down on his knees
\nand make large circles with the blocks
\nsanding day after day.
\nThen after he finishes that,
\nDaniel has to paint the tall wooden fence
\nthat surrounds Mr. Miyagi\u2019s property
\nusing long strokes, up and down,
\npainting the long boards with the right hand,
\nand the short boards with the left hand.<\/p>\n
\nand with each task, Daniel\u2019s patience wears thinner and thinner;
\nhe wanted to learn karate.
\nInstead, he\u2019s frustrated and sore,
\nand he feels like a slave.<\/p>\n
\nexhausted, impatient, ready to give up.
\nThis is how we can sometimes feel,
\nwondering when all our trials will bear fruit.<\/p>\n
\naccusing him of not keeping up his part of the bargain,
\nof not teaching him karate.
\nDaniel starts to walk away, ready to give up his training, his discipleship,
\nwhen Mr. Miyagi calls him back,
\nand tells him that he has been learning karate all along.
\nHe says, \u201cShow me wax on, wax off.\u201d
\nWhen Daniel makes the motion of waxing on and waxing off,
\nMr. Miyagi shows him how that is a defensive karate move.
\nMr. Miyagi goes on to show him how each of the tasks he\u2019s done
\nhas trained his body to do a different karate block.
\nWax on, wax off,
\nsand the floor,
\npaint the fence,
\nthese have all been building muscle memory,
\nand when Mr. Miyagi begins to throw punches and kicks at Daniel,
\nhe is able to fend them off with the moves he has learned.<\/p>\n
\nHe has become like a father to Daniel, who has had no father.<\/p>\n
\nand there come times when we weary of our Christian life,
\nwhen we feel like the burden of discipleship as a punishment,
\nwhen we, like Daniel, are ready to walk out and give up.<\/p>\n
\nthat we become disciples through discipline,
\nthe discipline of being patient with our families,
\ntrying to live honest lives,
\nforgiving those who wrong us,
\nspeaking well of others.<\/p>\n
\nof making time to pray each day,
\nof coming here to worship with this community.<\/p>\n
\nwith our particular crosses to bear.
\nThat is the discipline of being a disciple of Christ.<\/p>\n
\nbore fruit for Daniel,
\nwho was able to learn karate and defend himself;
\nand the discipline imposed on us by our baptism into Christ
\nwill bear fruit for us,
\nwho hope to pass through the narrow gate
\nand experience the joy of eternal life.<\/p>\n