To the Nines

Do you like to dress up? Or perhaps you prefer all casual, all the time. In today’s world, there are fewer occasions that move a person to dress. There are some around that can make every level of dressing work for them. Throw at them any dress code you like—formal, semi-formal business/informal, smart casual, or casual—they pull it off with aplomb.

 In my childhood, adults dressed for church: dresses and hats, coats and ties. People dressed up. Today, people dress to be comfortable in church, and they look nice. There is a dated joke from yester-year about a pastor that was trying to convince a neighborhood family to come to church. The parents said they were self-conscious about not having appropriate clothing. The pastor used the benevolence fund to have volunteers shop for the family and deliver the new clothes. A couple of weeks passed and still, they were not seen in church. The pastor dropped by again. The dad explained, “Oh, yes, thank you so very much for the clothes. We put them on, and we looked so good, that we decided to join the Episcopal Church.

It should not matter how we dress in church. Things have relaxed, so, there is a huge range of what people feel is acceptable. The “dress” that should concern us is not our outer vestiture, but how we clothe ourselves spiritually. There are sections of Epistles where Paul uses the metaphor of clothing to treat the matter of how we carry ourselves. Colossians 3:14 is one such example as he tries to get the Christian community to treat each other exceptionally well: “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” This passage might have been the influence for the beautiful prayer for mission from our Morning Prayer Office:

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen.

In this view, it really is the clothing that makes the person. However physically dressed we are, would it not be beautiful if our choices of how to be and how to treat others showed that we are clothed with love, and clothed in the Spirit? God can empower us to reach forth our hands in love. The following passage is the whole of our Epistle Lesson for this Sunday. In it look for the teaching that our baptism has us now clothed in Christ. Because of that, we don’t need other labels for ourselves. We don’t need to dress up in ways that separate us into factions. Christ is the great unifier and equalizer. Christ is all the gear we need to wear:

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. Galatians 3:23-29

Spiritually speaking, to be dressed to the nines is to be clothed with Christ, clothed with love, clothed in the Spirit. When we dress a certain way, it influences how we act. When we remember who we are, and to whom we belong, we are more likely to act in a way that represents Christ.