Clothed

Pastor Fred Wolfe (biblicalfamily.org)

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I'm fluttering half numb fingers through my dimly lit closet for a shirt that suits the goals of my day.

A woman's cries echo from the night before against the early sun's rays peeking through my blinded bedroom windows.

“Why does he do this? ...now he's dealing drugs! He is turning our house into a brothel, ...into a den of wickedness. He's lost his father, and he's just lost his brother, and it seems that his only comfort is to poison his brain and our house with his pills!”

For reasons all too obvious, my search for the right set of clothes seems a futile effort. Which shirt will say, “I have the answers.” Which set of pants will convey, “A furious boldness and the humble concern of Christ?” The preparation for this confrontation leaves me feeling inadequate and unprepared. After all, my past has shared this man's shame.

When we walk where were walking to, one of the first things we see about our fellow human beings is how they are dressed. It speaks inaudibly to the presuppositions and prejudices we carry around with us. Some of these judgments prove right, as when we see the under-dressed or impoverished, and we provide them coverings as we are compelled in Mathew 25.
But sometimes these kind of surface judgments cause us to ignore the true nakedness of mankind. As in the great fall, when Adam and Eve became aware of their nakedness, and blush-faced hid themselves from God, so I feel for many in modern day Christianity are in desperate need of a spiritual parent to discerningly tell them, “You're not going out in that!”

Postmodern society and the so-called emerging church is suffering from an interesting yet festering theological paradigm that if left uncovered, may cause a great deal of infection to the kingdom of God.

The first time I attended an emergent “Cohort”, I found myself welcomed warmly, made to feel part of the group from the first moment. I loved that feeling. It made me want to come back. I was also surprised by the overriding philosophy of “transparency” that pervaded many of our conversations. People admitted to the overuse of alcohol, addictions to pornography, their doubts about the inspiration of scripture, their lack of church attendance, and even their worship of God through the collection of butterflies. These confessions of their souls seemed to be going wonderfully...

Then the group made such a sharp veering turn towards death and despair it made me want to cry. What were the responses to these admissions? Acceptance. This sickening pungent odor of maligned grace and mercy placed a stranglehold on my understanding of Orthodoxy. This shroud of seeming transparency could not have done more to blind them than a spiritual smoke bomb. They were pasting fig leaves all over their exposed and accepted rebellion.
Our understanding of shame and it's purpose in the past century has somehow gone from a powerful call to repentance and covering of Christ, to a ineffectual misunderstanding about the relationship between guilt and mercy.

In genesis 3 mankind fell. Then the eyes of both men and women were opened, and they knew that they were naked. This powerful emotion drove them to hide from God, who walked in the garden, and try their best to cover their nakedness. It was woefully inadequate. The judgment of God came down on them, and they were driven from the garden. Before they departed, God made a plan for their ultimate redemption and deliverance from shame in verse 15. God, seeing their desperate attempt to clothe themselves, knew he had to intervene. He removed the leaves that would have eventually dried, decayed and fallen away, a shameful experience. He saw their nakedness, and he desired them to feel their shame! Peter called those who are bold and arrogant, blaspheming in matters they don't understand, “brute beasts!” Why does he draw this particular comparison? They have no shame! Beasts have no shame. Our guilt is one of the things that makes us human. Our Lord then performed the very first animal sacrifice, in the likeness of generations of priests that would follow from Aaron to Melchizedek, and taking the animal's skin, made clothes for them. In His mercy He chose to cover their shame.

I sit on my bed in the twilight of morning and mediate. I want my purple robe; I want my coat of many colors; I want my camel's hair and leather belt; I want my bedazzled ephod. All I have, however, is a six month old polo shirt and a pair of jeans. I will never have just the right superhero outfit to project my Pastoral intentions.

Then as our God so often does to an open and waiting heart, he whispers.
“Ask me for clothes.”
Ah...I get it.
“Clothe me, Lord.”
“I already have.”
“You are clothed with the Spirit that guided Gideon. You are clothed with the salvation of David's priests. You are clothed with my best robe and my golden ring, for you were lost, but now you are found, you were blind, but now you see, you were dead, but now you are alive again. In your baptism into my victory over sin and death you were clothed in my victory over sin and death and I don't see your shame anymore.”

Such is the daily mercy of God, who clothes us in the splendor of his son, not by any human work, but as a result of his grace upon human repentance!