“What to Wear”
A Sermon by Sid Burgess for Edgewood PC
May 2, 2010
One of life’s most persistent questions is, “What to wear?” and its corollary, “What Not to Wear.” Comes now a TV program with all of the answers. TLC—a/k/a, The Learning Channel—features a series entitled, What Not to Wear. According to the promotional blurb, fashion experts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly convert participants from dowdy to dashing.” From “dowdy to dashing” in a single episode.
Some of the recent shows have featured:
a single Episcopal priest—turned in by friends and family for her
dull attire;
a jazz vocalist whose fashion sense is horribly out of tune;
and, a young mother stuck in pre-teen—or tween--attire.
The show offers advice such as how to match colors; how to create curves and hide bulges; and, how to find the perfect jeans. The target audience of How Not to Dress appears to be women, but one topic would be of significant interest to me: How to hide a large stomach.
In the not too distant past church folks had “church clothes.” “Sunday got to meetin’” attire. Many men wore suits and ties. Most women wore hats and gloves. Even the children “dressed up” for church, and woe to any child who failed to change clothes before rushing out to play.
Nowadays, at least here at Edgewood, most of us dress is what might be called Sunday casual. Unlike the Amish, the Orthodox Jews, or the polygamist sects out west, there is nothing distinctive about our attire. Once we leave the church property, if anyone is to know that we are Christians, the words of the popular chorus explains, “they will know we are Christians by our love.” “Yeah, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
And Jesus would have it no other way.
Today, he speaks to us through the Gospel according to St. John,
34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.”
What a challenge! No uniform, no insignia of rank, no badge, not
even a tee shirt— just our love for one another. Disciples of Jesus
are to love one another so obviously that our identity will be clear
for all the world to see.
Some will be known by their power and wealth, some will be known by
their brains, others for their talents, still others by their
athletic ability. Some will be known by race, color, creed,
language, or nation of origin. For Christians, we are to be known by
our love for one another.
Just to make sure we get it, Jesus repeats this command to love one another three times. First, he says it’s a new commandment: that you love one another. Second comes the “how to,” the instruction: to love “as I have loved you.” And finally, the imperative, that our love for each other should be so obvious that it will serve as our uniform.
First, to love one another we must be present to each other. It is hard to love an empty seat! Perhaps even harder to be loved by an empty seat. So, the first thing any faith community must do, and must keeping on doing, is to gather together some loving folks. Jesus did that at the outset of his ministry—he called the disciples. And he did it again, according to Luke, when he gathered a throng of folks to accompany him on his fateful journey to Jerusalem. Jesus got heavily criticized for diversity of his followers: tax collectors and sinners, women, the blind, the lame, and the weak. Perhaps missing the point, the New Testament Church tried keep the gospel within the familiar bonds of Judaism. Our story today from Acts tell us how quickly God put a stop to that!
Old Peter gets called on the carpet for opening up the church to Gentiles, but he had seen a vision that it took others some time to grasp:
17 If then God gave them the same gift (that is, the same Spirit)
that (God) gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ,
who was I that I could hinder God?”
So to love one another we must gather folks—from all nations, even—to love and to be loved by. Loving others, allowing others to love us, does not come naturally. I’m not talking romance—I’m down the “down and dirty,” day-by-day, you-put-up-with-me-and-I-put-up-with-you long enough—I’m talking years folks. . . ; long enough to get over it and get down to . . . genuine love and acceptance. When at last we do this, they’ll know for certain, we gotta be Christians.
First, Jesus give us a new commandment: that we love one another. Second comes the “how to,” the instruction: We are to love “as Jesus loves us.” Now, careful listeners may have notices a slight change in that verse. The actual quote from John 13 has Jesus us saying, ”Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” And we know what this means. It is a love that goes to the cross for us, that suffers unspeakable pain, even death, that we might have life and have it abundantly. But that love does not stop at the cross.
It is not a past-tense love. By the power of Holy God, it is a love that has risen from the grave. It is a vital, heart-thumping love of the Risen Christ, right here, right now, for you and for me, for them and for those. As Jesus—our brother, our Lord and Savior—loves us now, warts and all, we are to love one another. The church is blessed with an awesome memory. But we do not live in the past. Yes, we are guided by the past— we are guided by what Jesus said and did—but we live and we love by what the Risen Christ says and does
Eat this bread, drink this cup, come to him and never be hungry.
Eat this bread, drink this cup, trust in him and you will not
thirst.
As he feeds the hungry, so too must we. As he provides clothes to the needy, so too must we. As he welcomes the stranger, so too must we. As he ministers to the sick and the infirm, so too should we. As he visits those who are confined in any circumstance, so too should we.
First, that you love one another. Second, love as Christ loves us—present tense and eternal sense. Third, the final imperative: so love others that it will be obvious we are Christians.
Since we don’t have uniforms, since we can’t afford the big
billboards, and the mass media advertisements, since we are so shy
when it comes to talking about our faith,
could be that the directive given to us today by the Head of the
Church is the only option we have to witness to our faith: just
“love one another.”
The fourth century divine, St. Augustine, one of the most important figures in the development of Christianity in the Western world, points out that Jesus loved both the particular and the general. That is, Jesus loved each one he had ever met as if there were none other in all the world to love. Instead of never seeing the trees for the forest, as the old adage goes, Jesus reversed that process and never failed to focus on the particular and the unique in each human being.
The late John Claypool loved to tell the little story about the boy who was trying to learn the Lord's Prayer, One night as he knelt by his bed, these words came out:
Our Father, who art in heaven
How do you know my name?
In baptism, God claims us by name—each and every child of God, precious enough in God’s sight to be known by name. Our confirmands come to us today their names—Brittany and Brandon, Patricia, Katie, and Wakaba—long ago known to God. To love as Jesus loves us to know one another’s names.
But you protest: ‘I’m not good with names.” I say, ‘Yes you are.’ You were created in God’s imagine. That means that deep inside of us is the capacity to love each person we meet—by name. It takes just a minute, just a moment in time to focus long enough on the other, to uncover some clue to help us remember another’s name, another’s uniqueness, as God remembers all of us.
As much as Jesus loved each individual he came into contact with, so he also loved all humankind—even to give his life to restore us all to right relationship with God. Loving on a larger scale means working in the world for God’s justice, and standing in the world for what God teaches us is right. In this election year here in AL we are going to be subjected to a barrage of political advertising. I challenge you to examine each claim made by the politicians seeking your vote by the standards of God’s justice.