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!

An Argument from Beauty

Kant thought that if we think something is beautiful then we want everyone to agree with us. I can see how people would think this way, but I disagree. That kind of appreciation for beauty takes all of the warmth out of beauty. It's like a man who sees a beautiful violet growing out of the ground. Upon beholding it, he takes out a field manual on botany and studies the theories on why it is so brightly colored, and treads it down in the process.

Many have endeavored to explain the beauty of an unfolding rose, the light from a moonlit path, or a west-coast Florida sunset. Poets have crafted our language to try to express our feelings of passion that are envoked by an ornate oak, or emerald rolling hills. I love the stimulation that comes with well done art, and the awe and respect for the vastness of nature.

Where is the kingdom of God in all of this beauty? Could we dust the horizon, and find the fingerprints of God freshly laid?

I think that the answer could be found, if one is mature enough, in the deepest fathoms of the spirit, in the placid glass that forms the heavens, in the utter beauty, the sweet existential exquisiteness...of my wife's lasagna. Ahhhh...the beauty.

I cannot under any other circumstances except in the worldview of a theist explain the allure of nature.

Why do I find things beautiful?

Some of you will be thinking, "Duh. It's an evolutionary trait; something we are born with. It gives us the will to procreate, it tells us what is good to eat, it guides where we sleep, it helps determine the future of the human race."

Let's take a sunset for example. I'v lived on the west coast of Florida, so I have the privilege of taking in some of the most breathtaking sunsets in the world. You know the postcards you buy on vacation? That's been my backyard. Sunsets, though, have nothing to do with procreation, survival, or anything beneficial to my species. Actually, sunsets become more brilliant when pollution is at it's height. Something that is almost universally held as beautiful is the result of our destroying the environment.

When stormclouds roll in, I get excited. Cracking through the breezing stormclouds, lightning pierces my gaze. I also happen to live in the lightning capital of the world. Lightning strikes here quite a bit. These strikes are usually mixed up with blustering winds, flooding and falling branches. Surprisingly, I am completely drawn to this kind of weather. I love lightning. I wish I could grab it and stare at it for a while.

Robert Frost has a famous poem:

SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Taking a look at the imagery in this poem tells us how beauty is not necessarily correlated to the survival of the species. He contrasts two beautiful things with very ugly actions. A frosty lake, a candle flame-both are beautiful-and both have the capacity to kill.

I think Weimaraners are absolutly beautiful dogs, but I don't want to have sex with them, I don't want to eat them, and I don't have any real beneficial purpose for liking them. What benefit or purpose then, has beauty, beit objective or subjective?

I offer this thought: Could it be, that we have a creator who is benevolent in more that just the unique miracles of scripture, or the glory of the ones to come? Could it be that my west coast Florida sunset was a truly altruistic and loving gestural abstraction?

I think God had fun creating the world. Not like the fun you and I have, which is often self-centered. He enjoyed taking out his "paintbrush", creating the laws of science and physics, and breathed art into the world for us to enjoy.

The next time you see a sunset, or a snowy mountain cap, or a droplet of water running down a leaf of grass, thank your Creator for the gift of beauty.