In a recent blog on the issue formality and spirituality regarding clothing, I was questioning the big deal we make about clothing and its relation to ‘church services’. (Read it again, it’s worth while to get the context on where I’m coming from with what follows.)
There is something of a conceit with the whole dressing-up scenario. There was something about putting on a front. Looking the part. Performing a role. Playing the crowd. Fitting in with the communal conceit. There is something weird about making such an effort to dress to impress (lets face it sometimes looking to impress others more than the Lord in His Holy Temple) when deep inside there was not much to impress. There is something of the fraud in looking altogether when the reality was that you were anything but.
In the dressing-up there was something about putting on the appearances that meant that you couldn’t be real. I mean ask yourself the question when are you at your most real? When you’re all dressed up? When you’re in clothes that are fitted to keep flexibility to a minimum, but you give the aura of grandiosity? What do we tend to live out as soon as we get home from the grand occasion? I’ll slip into something more comfortable.
Yet when does God – who is in His holy temple – tend to see you most? When you’re in His ‘holy sanctuary’ or when you’re out and about? Or at home? Or in the street? When does He see you and seek to relate to you now that true worshippers are no longer confined to certain times and places but are free to explore and express God in His essence for who He is?
Surely the liberation with which Jesus liberates us means that there’s no sectioning off ‘holy’ times and other times. Surely all life is holy and if you’re at you’re most real when you‘re most relaxed, why do church in a manner that forbids from being most real?
What am I saying, do I dare suggest an alternative to doing church? Am I suggesting that church with the suits and the dressing-up and everything is in itself wrong? Nah. If it floats your boat and you can maintain the real relationship you had with God over the week and let it spill over to the corporate time with all that stuff, you carry on right ahead. As I said, I don’t have a problem with ties, shirts, suits, dresses, and Ascot-style hats for the occasion. It has its place.
Where I am at this time, however, recognising the worship of God in all life. Recognising church as something that is not limited or restricted to set times in set places. Also recognising the importance of honesty, vulnerability, sensitivity and authenticity in communal times of celebrating Jesus, I am at the place where I’m not sold on the whole dressing-up deal as the way to do church that honours God.
When I say I’m not sold on it, that is to say that I long for church experience that has people at their most relaxed, at their most real, feeling under no obligation to dress up for any part to conform to any obscure notion of God as only accepting sacrifices from people all dressed up. If that opens the door to less formal church expressions, I’m for it as long as it achieves that goal of people together exploring Jesus together in the beauty of holiness that is not about physical appearances but about spiritual realities.
I do feel for too long we’ve used the pomp and ceremony and formality issues to crush people’s understanding of who God is and how He wants to engage with us, through us in all aspects of life. I do feel that for too long we’ve used that standard of externality that doesn’t invite people to know Jesus for who He really is, but to set up a Jesus that is only accessible to those who will conform to our tradition based expression of what it is to know of Him. I know that’s very sad. It’s very sad indeed.
I am glad though that this is not all there is to the story. I am glad to know that there is more to faith in Jesus Christ than these traditions that we hold onto dearly at the cost of real relationship with Him that transforms us to be like Him and let the world know that we love Him and He loves us. I am glad that those expressions of church and those believers who belong to that community radiate that whether in the suit and tie or not.
I am glad that disciples of Jesus Christ are being made, baptised and taught to pursue Him in life-changing experiences that edify the body of Christ and stimulate others to throw off the masks and tear down the barriers to open access to God through Christ. I am glad to know that this will continue until Jesus returns to collect His Bride.
But that’s a formality.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
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