A Real Difference

Arriving home, I am greeted, not with a welcome, but a command. “You need to change your clothes.” This abruptness has its neurological justification. Allison, my older daughter, is cognitively impaired, and, like many other people similarly challenged, the world takes on a remarkable clarity. This, of course, is a fresh break from academic jargon and ecclesiastical sidestepping. She’s right. I need to change my clothes. I need to change from parochial father to domestic father, and, notwithstanding all that has been said, rightly, I believe, about the indelible character of ordination, people in my position ought to know when to set one role aside for another. It’s time to dance and talk and cook. While changing from black shirt to beige, I notice an advertisement sewn into my shirt. I had never seen it before. This MUST mean something. There it was, plain as day, the following words: “The Ultimate Shirt.” I put it on. I waited. Nothing. That is, nothing spectacular. I went downstairs and lived my domestic life.

Not exactly nothing. I had changed, and this is precisely what Allison expected and deserved, a father who is present here and not there.

We are all, more or less, dressing down these days, so there is less to notice about the distinction of particular dress as associated with either a role or status. But this was once very very important, and so has been fully exploited as a theological theme. To put on something carried weighty meanings. The Old Testament priests identified as “Aaron and his sons,” who made sacrifice for the people, wore ornate and opulent vestments: “You shall make sacred vestments for the glorious adornment of your brother Aaron. And you shall speak to all who have ability, whom I have endowed with skill, that they make Aaron’s vestments to consecrate him for my priesthood. . . . they shall use gold, blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and fine linen.” (Ex. 28:2,3) This would have been quite impressive against the muted colors of the Middle East, a dramatic announcement of the privilege and danger into which the priest is called in praying for the people. But that is not all. “You shall take the other ram; and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hand on the head of the ram, and you shall slaughter the ram and take some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron’s right ear and on the lobe of the right ears of his sons, and on the thumbs of their right hand, and on the big toes of their right feet, and dash the rest of the blood against the side of the altar. Then you shall take some of the blood that is on the altar, and some of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it on Aaron and his vestments and on his sons and his sons’ vestments with him; then he and his vestments shall be holy as well as his sons and his son’s vestments.” (Ex. 29:19-21) This ancient rite, we are advised, was performed to consecrate the senses, the ear for hearing, the hand for touching sacred things, the foot for walking rightly upon holy ground. (The New Jerusalem Biblical Commentary) And who could doubt that something very important is at stake. The finest vestments worn by the elect priests, now dripping in blood is, if alien to our world, still a powerful image. They were being fitted to a task, made apt for a particular function, and they knew graphically its great importance.

Something of this lay in the background of St. Paul’s injunction to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 13:14) After a long discourse on baptism in which he insists on a mystical and real identification of the baptized with Christ’s death and resurrection, he moves to a series of moral injunctions, a typical pattern in his epistles. That is to say, a theological transformation-- union with the very life of Christ-- implied a moral transformation. The injunctions are not, however, grounded in simple commands. Rather, he holds out the illustration of a completely new person, fresh, forgiven, risen, and newly vested with a new identity. This is, by Old Testament standards, less dramatic visually, but even more dramatic by its potential application. While a few wore the Aaronic robes dripping in the blood of rams, everyone and anyone may put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, to review the baptismal teaching: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3,4) There is little escaping the sense that baptism implied a total and mystical transformation, which St. Paul illustrated, and which succeeding generations have also illustrated with a “baptismal gown.” Two days ago, I gathered with a family for a baptism. The mother stepped aside for a few moments to clothe her infant daughter in a long and elegant white dress. Does the mother know? Does anyone really know the wonder, glory, joy, even fear of giving a child over to the care of God? A little infant, and a new creation.

It is possible to describe the Christian life according to secondary goods: encouragement, education, nourishment, hope, joy. None will, of course, do justice to the thing itself, which is why so often liturgical and sacred texts are replete with expressions such as “the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same” and “grace upon grace” and “eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard what great things the Lord hath prepared for those who love him.” That “thing” is the Lord himself, reigning and yet suffusing bodies and souls, the blood and bone of those who come to him in faith. Christ is, in baptism, put on, a new and living identity. This is all invisible to a naked eye, and so we can, quite anonymously, go about the business of playing one role and then another. We work, which in my case means priest-ing about once in a while, we play, we listen to music, attend to children, help parents, all the while knowing, even without speaking, that we wear an identity which we cannot and will not remove. To be vested in Christ, is to be alive in the very source of life. But does anyone know, do I, the glory which this is, the wonder which it holds, to have a life hidden with God in Christ? And always.