New Clothes

Sermon

A fourth grader in our neighborhood, Elsa, has created her own small business making and distributing fabric face masks. It’s called “Fancy Faces.” She learned how to sew in March, watching her mother make face masks. Elsa and her younger sister deliver orders to Alameda neighbors. Creative, innovative, thoughtful—right?

Now, for some undefined period, all our wardrobes include something new: face masks. We can wear masks that match or compliment our clothing. The mask we put on can make a statement by design or by color. Not wearing a mask also makes a statement about what we believe, and even who we are, in this politically polarized nation and time.

The question of who we are is central to understanding our scripture this morning. The letter to the Colossians uses the image of putting on new clothes as a metaphor for the new life we receive in Christ. Colossians was addressed to a community fractured by false information and polarization. The sharp divisions, based on cultural backgrounds, were causing dangerous havoc. The message of Colossians is this: your old identity is bogged down in lies, anger, malice, slander, and abuse. Remember who you truly are in Christ, and you’ve already stripped off the old “earthly” ways. In this renewal, there is no longer Greek nor Jew, no slave nor free. Christ is all and in all!

Now, we too are living in a time when people are digging deeper and deeper into polarized trenches. They are siding only with their “team.” Over the past decades and intensifying over the past few years in the U.S., what we believe to be true is very different depending upon our news sources. I know this from personal experience. A loved one of mine simply won’t accept anything from my news sources (the New Times, NPR, The Guardian, and the BBC, among others). We still have conversations—with wildly differing views—on the pandemic, political leadership, the Black Lives Matter movement. But often, our disagreements quickly slide into anger and belittling. To use a Colossians term, when that happens, we have gone “earthly.”

What held the Colossians together? How did those Jews and non-Jews become a community of forgiveness? What bound them through the tidal waves of economic and social change? What holds us together even as we are not able to meet physically, and as the political stresses threaten to pull us apart? What will bind together families that in some cases have too much time together, and in some cases, too much separation?

This week, I discovered a blog by a Presbyterian called “Dancing Faith.” (See why it attracted my attention? ) Stephen Paul Kliewar (quoting Padraig O’ Tauma) wrote:

“What does ‘believe’ mean? There is a ‘lie’ in the middle of it, that’s the first thing. … Curiously the entry for ‘belittle’ is what follows the entry for ‘believe’ in my dictionary. When [our story] is not believed, then things are exhausting …

Kliewar continues:

“No wonder we are exhausted: We spend so much time trying to figure out what we believe. What our ‘truth’ is, and there are so many ‘truths’ out there. Truths about this world, truths about this virus, truths about ourselves, and we try to make sense of it all, we create a belief system—something we can hang on to, something that works, for us …

But honestly, we should probably pay attention to the lie in the center—for we have constructed our belief out of all the fragments of life that have come our way. … and we have woven all of this together into a covering, in which we wrap ourselves, a cloak which shelters us.

There is truth there … that will not change even in this post-fact world.

Kindness is more powerful than cruelty. Forgiveness frees. God is love …

Humility is necessary, so that we remain aware that we might be wrong. Because when we don’t, then when we encounter others whose beliefs are different – and we may belittle them.

We must let God create holy uncertainty—which is the certainty that the one thing we can hold fast to is Love. Life in Christ means that no matter what we do, it must be done in love.”

Let me be clear. When we put away anger, we are not dismissing the energy and righteous anger aimed at transforming all that needs changing, including our nation’s original sin of racism. Jesus’ compassion for those at the margins of the society and his pouring-out of self for the sake of others—that is our aim, as his followers. But it’s very important to direct the anger toward the broken systems and not toward belittling others. Nonviolence is rooted in relationship with the other.

The little “lie” in the middle of believe points to our inability to recognize truth when we are in our little echo chambers. One of the things that drew me to Presbyterianism, as a young adult, was the way decisions are made—not from the top down, but in community. We are at our best when we hear a variety of voices. When we listen. When we seek God’s Spirit in our diverse community. We hold fast to love and we become stronger, together.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Philosopher Martin Buber captured this with his distinction between I-It and I-Thou (I-You) relationships. The attitude of I towards It is separate from us. “It” is something we use. But I –Thou is a relationship in which the other is not separate. All of our I-Thou relationships bring us into relationship with God.

Friends, right now, the world needs more of I-Thou relationships. Not lies, not abusive language, not malice, not wrath. We are clothed with the new self, according to the image of our Creator.

A group to which I belong has an annual scarf exchange. We anonymously donated unworn scarves from our wardrobes and then choose a “new” scarf from the bountiful, colorful collection. As I wrote this sermon, I wore the scarf I chose last time. When I put this on, I remember the friendships within that group and our common purpose. We belong to one another.

This week, I heard an epidemiologist voice something that I had been thinking: that the unwillingness to wear masks to slow the spread of the virus is actually a failure of imagination. Perhaps unless someone we know and care about has been very ill, it’s difficult to believe this is even happening.

Kliewar, the blogger I mentioned earlier, wrote:

“No matter what truth I have grasped for myself, no matter how I have shaped reality to make it palatable to myself: Deadly, not deadly, truth or hoax, if I believe in the One, in Love, then I distance, no matter what! I wear a mask, no matter what!

Would it be stretching things to suggest that when we put on a mask, we “put on” Christ? We recognize our belonging to one another, not just our loved ones, but the stranger we pass in the store?

Today, I wonder if mask-wearing could become a simple, spiritual discipline? What if every time you put your mask on, you thought, “I am choosing to put this on because I believe in Love.”

We have been raised with Christ. Christ is all and in all.