Proper Dress Required

Psalm 30:10-12

Colossians 3:1-17

I know this doesn’t sit well here in Kansas City Chiefs territory, but I have been a loyal Miami Dolphins fan my whole life.  From the time I was three or four, I had Miami Dolphins pajamas and robe, bedsheets, overnight bag, throw-rug, hats and shirts.  My first grade school picture is evidence.  I talked my parents into letting me wear my Miami Dolphins Jersey, the mesh kind with holes in it. 

When we lived in New Haven, my friend from Boston – and a die-hard Patriots fan – got us tickets to the Patriots/Dolphins game at Foxboro Stadium on a Sunday night.  This was a dream come true.  Two rivals from the AFC East battling it out at Foxboro.  Dan Marino vs. Drew Bledsoe.  The game mattered to both teams and the atmostphere was electric.

 

The tickets we had were someone’s season tickets.  So we were seated in the endzone, about ten rows back from the field.  And everyone was a season ticket holder.  And this particular section of fans were all members of a plumbers or pipe-fitters union. There was a fist-fight two rows behind us early in the game that was sparked by one guy saying something that sounded critical of Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe.

I wish I could tell you I enjoyed the game.  But I didn’t.  I was miserable.  Not only did the Dolphins lose on a late-game touchdown drive by the Patriots.  But I had to summon all my energy and focus to NOT ever cheer for the Dolphins.  I actually sort of half-cheered for the Patriots when everyone else did so that I wouldn’t be recognized as a secret Dolphins fan.  I was the only one among thousands NOT wearing a Patriots jersey or sweatshirt or stocking cap.  Thank the Lord I had the good sense NOT to wear my Dolphins jersey.  I wouldn’t have made it out alive.

I guess I’m trying to say – what you wear matters.  How you dress sends important signals about your loyalties and your identity and your tribe. 

Last week’s sermon was more strident and militant than usual.  I emphasized that our loyalty to Jesus Christ and his way will likely be in conflict with our other loyalties – like our loyalty as consumers in a global economy, or our loyalty to a fundamentally selfish and unequal economy, supported and protected – as it is – by the constant threat of military force.

I spoke that way on purpose.  It is the kind of hard-edged language required to translate the central message of Colossians – that Jesus Christ (and NOT Caesar) is the image of the invisible God and that “all things” – “thrones or powers or rulers or authorities” – “all things have been created through him and for him (1:15-16).

To be honest, in this matter of new loyalties and a new way of life, you all are way out in front of me.  You already know that your loyalty to Jesus and to his new way of life trumps your allegiance to politics or the economy.  You all are already practicing that newness in the ways you live together.  The way you share your time and energy, your money and your food, your expertise and your homes.  The important place given to young children and to those elderly members who need our attention.  The compassion and care given to those who experience loss, suffering, or pain.  In all these ways and many more, you have dressed yourselves in new loyalties.

Our reading for today privileges the metaphor of wearing the right clothes.  You have “taken off” the old self and “put on” the new self (vs. 9-10).  As God’s beloved people, you are to “clothe yourselves” in habits of life that signal who you are (v. 12).  And you’re to recognize how to dress in layers – the various virtues are pictured as undergarments, and the habitual practice of love is pictured as the overcoat which brings the outfit together – “over all these virtues put on love” (v. 14).  This reading even goes so far as to suggest that the risen Christ is himself a kind of garment that we wear.  So that when you “wear” Christ, your life is hidden in his, and will appear in some larger sense in the future (v. 4).

The image of wearing new clothes – changing how you dress – is offered to help us imagine how we register in our own lives what God has done for us.  Just as it would be silly to wear a football uniform during a basketball game, or a ball gown while you’re roofing a house, or a swim suit, snorkel and fins to an important business meeting – so too it’s silly to hear about what God has done for us in Christ and to continue wearing yesterday’s clothes.

There are really three images of newness in today’s reading.  They give us three ways to imagine the newness of a life that’s loyal to Jesus Christ above all else:

First, there’s the image of killing.  We are to “put to death” (v. 5) the way we used to live.  Second, there’s the image of walking paths.  “You used to walk in these ways” (v. 7), we’re told.  But now it’s time to walk on a different path.  But the third image is the one I’m focused on today, and it’s the image of changing into new clothes.  We are to “take off” the way we formerly arranged our lives and “put on” a new identity (v. 9-10) characterized by a new set of commitments.

OK, now I need you to get undressed.  Wait, that sounded wrong.  What I mean is that I’d like to direct your attention to the old clothes that we can take off and lay aside.  There are four clustered lists of behaviors or practices that are signs of loyalties to something other than Jesus Christ:

1. Sexual immorality, impurity, and lust –

     The problem isn’t simply having strong sexual desires.  The problem is living with your desires in irresponsible and undisciplined ways that bring harm to you and others.

2. Evil desires and greed, which is “idolatry” –

     The never-ending lust for more signals a heart that cannot be satisfied and at rest.  Greed is idolatry because it reveals a life that can’t get enough.  Those whose daily practices are fed by an itch to accumulate and possess cannot open themselves to practices of gratitude or practices of sharing.  Those who want more can’t hear Jesus’ invitation to live with less so that we have more to share. 

3. Anger, rage, and malice –

     I think the focus here is not so much on occasional outbursts or flashes of anger.  The problem in view here is a fundamental orientation of anger and ill-will.  The problem is a life lived from an underlying energy of anger that fuels all of one’s commitments and that sometimes flashes forth uncontrollably in rage.  An angry life is a life that relates to all others as opponents and competitors instead of as friends who are as fragile and disappointing as we ourselves are.

4. Slander, filthy language, and lying –

     The way we use language is perhaps our most visible and identifiable piece of clothing.  Our patterns of speech either reveal our new loyalty to Jesus’ way of life, or they reveal a life still caught up in obedience to a violent politics and a greedy, competitive economy.  Those who are committed to harming others in the ways they talk do not have room to take up the language of praise, encouragement, truth-telling, and blessing.

You can take these clothes off.  You don’t have to keep wearing them.  You will protest, of course, that it is not so simple as that.  It is easier to change clothes than it is to shed old addictions and habits.  And that’s true.  But you have been freed from the grip and terror of these old patterns.  They don’t rule you anymore.  You are God’s chosen and beloved people, freed to put on new clothes.

And we get some help imagining what these new clothes look like.  So look at yourself in the mirror, and I think you’ll like what you see.  There are three clustered lists of behaviors that are the new clothes we’re changing into:

1. Compassion and kindness -  

     Now we face others no longer as competitors but as friends.  We practice solidarity with others, sharing with them the common space of God’s love and forgiveness.  We are learning to relate to all others as those who are just as beloved and forgiven as we are (even if they’re not aware of it yet!).

2. humility, gentleness, patience -

     We are learning to loosen our grip on our need to be in control, to have the final word, to command our circumstances and our relationships.  Now we can begin to see ourselves honestly.  We can relate to others in ways that give them time and space to be themselves.  We no longer have to get our way.  So there is no need to coerce others, to hurry them along on our timeline.  We can wait with them.

3. Forgiveness, love, and peace -

     There is only one way to live in peace.  Rome’s peace isn’t peace.  The peace fostered by competitive economies isn’t peace.  Only living together with a willingness to bear one another’s faults will lead to peace.  Only loving others – even our enemies – and praying for God’s blessing upon them, will lead to peace.  Retaliation, threats, revenge, and violence – those are the stock in trade of powerful empires.  That’s how you stay in control once you get on top.  But that’s not peace.  Peace is a gift from God that grows as people learn to love each other by practicing forgiveness.

I hate to admit this, but I have seen a few episodes of the TV show called “What Not To Wear”.  Here’s how it works.  Some person allows the fashion experts to inspect and criticize they way they dress.  This includes going through their closet and drawers.  These poor souls are asked to wear some of their usual outfits and are paraded out to be mocked and criticized for all that’s wrong with their fashion sense.  And then they are given money to go out and shop for a new wardrobe. 

Now I would NEVER submit myself to that kind of public humiliation.  Which is why I signed up for a shopping service called “The Trunk Club.”  I don’t want to boast, but I now have a personal shopper.  Well actually, I’ve had three (which must mean that there is some serious turnover at the Trunk Club).  But anyway, after inputting my clothing needs, my personal shopper loads a trunk full of clothes and sends them for me to try on.  Out of two trunks full of clothes, I’ve only kept one pair of jeans.  But if you hate shopping like I do, it’s still worth a shot.

We attend to the way we dress because we want our clothing to communicate to others who we are and what we care about.  What you wear always says something.  It might speak to the kind of work we do, or to our ethnic heritage, or to our sense of style and our need to express ourselves.  It might convey our desire to fit in or our hope to stand out.

Our reading today invites us to wear new clothes.  To leave behind whatever no longer fits or the clothing that no longer expresses who we want to be.  But it goes further than that.  In verse 16 our reading invites us to imagine ourselves as dressed in new clothes, gathered with others and now singing together in a choir.  “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.” 

Like an endzone full of Patriots fans, dressed alike and giving voice to our passionate loyalty, we are gathered into a glad choir singing with thanksgiving to God.  Our new robes are the risen Christ and his way of life, a robe that downplays our ethnicity and our age, our income and educational levels, blending our lives into a new harmony.  No longer are we singing the jingles of commercials or the fight songs of this or that powerful group.  We sing of the peace that flows from the love of God shown to all the world in the cross of Jesus Christ.  Amen.