DRESSED IN HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS ALONE
We owe a great deal of our modern phrases or figures of speech to two sources; Scripture and Shakespeare. Often I like to quiz my confirmation students on whether a phrase comes from the Bible or Shakespeare. From Scripture we derive such phrases as “my brother’s keeper,” “sour grapes,” “horse of a different color,” “raising Cain,” and “handwriting on the wall.”
Shakespeare gave us “give the devil his due,” “all that glitters isn’t gold,” “break the ice,” and “heart of gold.” From one single speech in Hamlet we have taken “neither a borrower nor a lender be,” “to thine own self be true,” and most notably, “clothes make the man.”
If clothes do indeed make the person what they are or identify them as something special, what does that say about the importance of choosing what we wear? Clothing is a matter of personal style, necessity of climate, and often an occupational requirement. Is there any other consideration to be made? Most people choose clothing for its practicality and comfort, yet we buy clothes made from leather or wool that require special care.
Whether we dress for success or just to appear neat and clean, there may be a deeper need with which we ought to be concerned. According to Paul, we need to clothe ourselves in a special garment, not visible to the eye, but detectable all the same. It’s a special garment because it is modeled after the one designed and worn by someone very special to us, someone whose style we should all try to copy.
The garment had its origin a long time ago, in a remote part of the world, its maker unaware of who the wearer would be or who would become of him. The fabric of this garment was woven by hand, from linen threads spun from fibers of flax. The color was unimaginative and dull, a rather plain, off-white, natural color of the fibers themselves. It was the color of the poor. Only the rich could afford the vibrant colors that dyes provided; the rich color of kings, the royal blue and gold of the wealthy.
The weaver of this cloth came from a long family line of weavers; a humble, yet proud profession. Centered in Palestine, the family had been the proud manufacturers of linen garments for the priests, called ephods. Most of the priest’s robes were standard size, but there had been a time in the family when a woman called Hannah requested a small amount of linen to make a robe for her son. This boy, Samuel, went to serve in the temple of the Lord when he was very young. Year after year his mother had come back to the family’s business, each year needing just bit more fabric as the boy grew.
Plain linen made up a great deal of their merchandise, but once there had been a very special order that came from a man who had 12 sons, a proud and happy man who often sent his wives to purchase garments to clothe his growing family. One day, however, Jacob himself came to commission a very special coat; a multicolored coat as a special gift for his favorite son, if such a thing could be spoken aloud. The coat took over two months to complete and required a great deal of dye with thread to match. That sale alone had kept the weaver and his family fed for months!
In addition to the various clothing needs of both priests and other citizens, the weaver’s family had always been in the business of manufacturing strips of cloth to be used at two of life’s most emotional moments; the birth of a child and the death of a loved one. When a child was born, he or she was immediately bathed in salt water and rubbed with salt as a symbol of truth and honesty.
Then the child was swaddled in strips of cloth, wrapped up snuggly to comfort and calm the child. Mothers who could afford to do so placed orders for these linen strips, in accordance with their tradition. To deprive a child of swaddling would have been an unthinkable injustice.
Swaddling strips were also used at the end of life’s journey to bind the dead for burial. After the body was prepared by washing and applying spices, the same long strips of cloth used to protect new life were used to wrap the dearly departed. It seemed obvious to the weaver that his work, although commonplace when compared to other great artisans and tradespeople, was an absolutely vital part of the lives of his customers.
It was just such an important piece of everyday life that a descendant of the original weaver was working on at the time when Emperor Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the empire. Every citizen was required to return to his birthplace to be properly counted, and of course, taxed. The weaver was fortunate that he still lived in his hometown of Nazareth and would not have to travel. This woman who had placed the order for the swaddling clothes he was working on had a significant distance to go, all the way to Bethlehem, and in a very obvious advanced stage of pregnancy.
He always enjoyed making the swaddling clothes for infants, as he tried to imagine the joy of welcoming a new life into the family. He and his wife had not been so fortunate, but they were surrounded by love all the same. This young mother did not look to be much more than a child herself, but she had a very kind face and a reverent manner that impressed him as he worked. It was apparent to him that she greatly anticipated the birth of this first child, more than any other mother he could recall, and so he tried to imagine the child that would be wrapped in the cloth he spun.
He daydreamed that he was weaving a garment fit for a king, although the plain linen would never make that impression on anyone. He prayed a blessing over the individual strips of cloth, investing the fabric with qualities he would want his own child to possess. There was a strip of cloth made of compassion, one of kindness, another of humility, to which he added gentleness, then patience, also forgiveness, and finally love, which would be the sturdiest and finest cloth to bind all the rest together. A child swaddled in these virtues, he reasoned, would grow to be a remarkable child indeed.
Many years later the weaver, now growing old, was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover when a great stir was going through the crowds. A rebel, an infidel, a blasphemer had been tried by the governor and was scheduled to die by crucifixion. It saddened the old man to think that yet another Messiah had shown himself to Israel, only to be rejected by the people like all those before him. When would the true Son of God appear?
As the word spread as to the identity of this condemned man, the weaver learned with much sadness that it was someone he knew; the son of Joseph the carpenter from his own hometown of Nazareth. He had once done business with this young man named Jesus, when his loom had finally outlived its usefulness and a new loom had to be built. It was his mother Mary who had ordered the swaddling clothes at the time of the census; the cloth over which he had prayed a blessing and dreamed of what the child who wore them would become. Never had he expected that this was how that life would end.
He managed to fight his way along with the crowds to the hill where the despicable Roman crucifixion would take place. He thought perhaps that he might offer some comfort to his poor grieving mother as a friend and a neighbor. He stood close by, observing the soldiers as they gambled to see who would receive the garments they had stripped off him as they nailed him to their cross. He could see the particular weave of his tunic and recognized his own handiwork as that of the swaddling clothes made more than 30 years ago; but the tunic itself was in one piece, not strips of cloth sewn together. How could that possibly be?
He was still pondering that mystery as the crowds began to disperse when they released his body from the cross, and as he turned to make his way back to Nazareth, he wondered whose strips of cloth would soon wrap the body of this one the Romans called the King of the Jews.
You see, you really can tell a great deal about a person by what they are wearing, but you can really determine what kind of person they are by “who” they are wearing. If my story has left you wondering “what if it were true?” then Paul’s words to the Colossians should have you asking yourself, “who am I wearing?” The story was fabricated, for lack of a better word, but Paul’s advice is genuine wisdom.
We who have been chosen by God and who have chosen to follow Christ are instructed to adopt a fashion that will never go out of style. We are to clothe ourselves in a garment fashioned after the one worn by Christ. Whether we envision ourselves wearing a garment made from strips of cloth or layers upon layers, we are to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and bind all these together with love.
Once we have done that there is more to do. We are to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. You will notice that this requires us to make a conscious choice. We have to let peace rule in our hearts. It will not just come to us if we are still ruled by other factors and emotions that cloud our thinking and actions. We talk a lot about peace at this time of year, but we need to accommodate the peace of Christ at all times.
Remember that in Paul’s culture the heart was believed to be the center of emotional thought. If we are successful in letting peace gain control over our sense of wellbeing and joy, then our next step is to be thankful, which would seem to be a natural reaction to being at peace.
Next, Paul said that we are to continue in our self-improvement program by letting the word of God dwell within us; not only dwell, but richly dwell through scripture and songs and words of encouragement to others. Again, this takes our best effort because unless we actively seek to immerse ourselves in God’s word it will never take up residence within us.
Notice that as we do these things, and keep pursuing them day after day, the way we appear on the inside begins to change the way we appear on the outside. It’s all part of the concept that clothes make the person who they are. The last directive is the most demanding. Our goal is to have the presence of Christ so much a part of us that whatever we do or say is done in His name in a way that makes us thankful to Him.
Now it’s obvious that to expect any degree of success in making ourselves over, we would have to do more than adapt a new style of dressing and allow room in our hearts and minds for the peace of Christ and the word of God. Nothing worth doing is ever without its demands. If we look back a few verses from our reading today, we will see what Paul wrote immediately before.
“But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”
It’s a good practice every year or so to sort through your clothes and remove those things that just don’t fit or don’t suit you any longer. It’s the only way to make room for all the new things we need because we have physically changed, and hopefully for the better.
The same is true when heeding Paul’s wisdom. In order to make room in our lives for what we need to make us feel better and look better and actually become better, we need to rid ourselves of what we don’t need, what doesn’t suit us, what keeps us enslaved to the trends of years gone by.
With each passing year, we should be growing closer to perfection, closer to the resemblance of God. As we bid goodbye to each passing year, it should be with the resolve to become more like Christ than we are like ourselves. Let’s make the word of God a priority in our days until our demeanor, our attitude, and our very speech reflects the presence of God in our lives.
Let’s weave for ourselves a beautiful garment that only we know we are wearing, but the whole world can’t help but notice. Let’s make a new fashion statement so that everyone will be asking, “Who are you wearing?” and we, dressed in His righteousness alone, can honestly answer, “I am wearing the image of my creator.”
