Spiritual High Fashion

The fashion industry is big business. Watch a movie like “The Devil Wears Prada” starring Meryl Streep and you know it’s big, powerful business. Playing the role of an autocratic dictatorial editor-in-chief of a fictitious “Runway Magazine”, Streep exerts huge influence over what women will be wearing in the year to come.

It is a powerful business and it is high fashion. And as one comedian says, “they have a right to call it high fashion, just look at the prices.” Or as another says, “Clothes that make a woman can break a man.”

Most women love clothes. One young woman told her friend that whenever she feels down in the dumps, she buys herself a new dress. Her friend said, “I’ve always wondered where you got them.”

Fashions come and go and styles change. I can remember when our five daughters, years ago, were wearing platform shoes. A few years later they saw pictures of themselves and thought the shoes looked gross. Now, platform shoes are back in style.

Styles change and fashions come and go. Think of women’s dresses. Sometimes the hemline is low, sometimes high. Today the waistline is going down and the hemline is going up and we wonder where they will end. Men have lined up to see the outcome!

Hemlines. Who knows where they will go? A little girl got lost in a department store. As they paged her mother, the little girl was asked why she didn’t hold on to her mother’s skirt. She answered, “I couldn’t reach it.”

Men’s fashions change also. Ties get wide or narrow, flashy or conservative. Men’s suits have cuffs or no cuffs, wide lapels or narrow lapels, two buttons or three, or are double breasted or single-breasted. One man said his suit had been back in style three times.

For men, perhaps the biggest challenge in style and fashion is to fit the Grand Rapids furniture physique. That is when the chest falls into the drawers!

Fashions come and go. Styles change with the times. Clothing for the body varies with the climate and country, the year and the season and with the dictates of high fashion editors of magazines like that depicted in “The Devil Wears Prada” and the fashion designers of New York and Paris.

But fashions for the genuine soul and the authentic selfhood never go out of style. And those fashions are just what Paul the Apostle speaks about in our text of today.

The people of Colossae in Asia Minor knew something about clothing since they grew black sheep which produced a much desired wool for exquisite clothing. And the Colossians also produced an expensive fabric dyed a dark purple red for the mercantile trade.

So when Paul wrote of spiritual high fashion, the Colossians had a natural background for understanding his metaphors. And he wrote of fashions universal and timeless, that should never go out of style.

So what are these fashions for the soul, the spirit and the authentic self?

I.

To wear these new fashions for the soul, you must first take off the old clothes of the old self.

In the first verse of chapter three, Paul alludes to the ancient practice of Christian baptism. The person to be baptized took off old clothes, died to the old way of life in the water of immersion, was raised to be a new person and was adorned with a white robe, symbol of the eternal life in which the baptized was now to participate. They were to set their minds on spiritual high fashion.

It is one thing to take off old clothes from the body. It is another matter to take off the old adornments of the soul. Paul has two lists of five kinds of character garments we should get rid of. He asks Christians to throw off sexual immorality. People shouldn’t use each other for sexual pleasure without commitment. Think of the huge percentage of babies born out of wedlock in African American families and increasingly in Caucasian families. Such a practice often condemns both mother and child to a life of poverty, and imposes a tremendous burden on the American taxpayer.

Next, take off the old garment of impurity. St. Augustine, one of the church’s greatest theologians, had a wild and impetuous youth. But when Christ began to take hold of his life, he knew he would have to change his prayer from “give me chastity, but not just yet.” to “give me chastity right now.”

Other old character garments we are to throw aside are passion and evil desire. Passion here suggests violent, emotional, abusive behavior. The Christian life is to shun basic instincts and to take control of sudden impulses of evil desire and passion.

Another bad character garment Paul wants us to discard is covetousness or ruthless greed. The Greek word, pheonexia, means the insatiable desire to acquire and possess more and more. The covetous person is totally dominated by materialistic goals. She thinks only of money and things and seeks to possess everything. Discard covetousness, says Paul.

II.

Most of us have a lot of old clothes in our closets we need to get rid of. The same is true of our spiritual and moral closets. Here are five more character garments Paul advises us to throw out.

Put away anger and wrath, he says. The Greek word for anger here means a sudden flame of fury. Probably most of us have felt it when driving and someone pulls out in front of us or cuts us off on the freeway.

Gary Larson, the famous cartoonist, has a delightful cartoon of hell. Down in hell three doors with windows in the top half depict three sections of hell with flames showing through the windows. The first door of hell is labeled, “Terrorists”. The second door is labeled, “Murderers”. The third door is labeled, “Those who drive slow in the fast lane.”

Wrath should also be discarded. It means a slow-burning, long-lasting smoldering anger that refuses to let go and nurses grievances and grudges. But let it go, before this inward rage consumes you.

Malice should also be removed. It means a conscious desire to hurt someone. And foul talk and slander and vulgarity and obscene language should be done away. Think of current day movies where every form of the “f” word is used showing an extreme lack of literary creativity that would make Shakespeare shake his head in disbelief. What damage can be done with an abusive tongue!

So take off these old character traits, says Paul. We see how terrible they look on others. Recognize how bad they look on us and then remove them.

III.

But now we came to the good part – the advice about what to put on. A new suit or dress can make us feel great. So can these new clothes for the soul in spiritual high fashion – fashions which never go out of style.

Paul advises us to put on compassion. Compassion means to feel with someone, to stand beside them with understanding and sympathy. It was said of Jesus that he looked upon the multitudes and had compassion upon them. We should do the same with family and friends who often need someone to listen, to understand and to help.

Paul next recommends the garment of kindness. The kind person is immediately recognized by children and adults alike. However, Simon and Garfunkel have a line in one of their songs which says, “the elephants are kind, but they’re dumb”. The implications are that only dumb people are kind. But Simon and Garfunkel are wrong on both counts, because elephants are very smart and they can get very angry.

Besides as the song “Alfie” says, “and if only fools are kind, what will you give on an old golden rule, Alfie?” The kind person is wise and thinks about the best for his or her neighbor and community.

Humility is the next garment for the soul. Arrogance, brashness, violence and revenge are its opposites. Humility is not a cringing obsequiousness. Rather it is having a sober self-estimate, not to think too highly of oneself or too lowly of oneself.

A similar character garment is that of meekness which is better translated gentleness. This does not mean timidity and cowardice, being afraid to stand up for our convictions. Instead it calls us away from thoughtless, brash and crude behavior.

Put on patience next. In our sometimes frantic and frenetic lives we are often sharp and quick with each other, believing the worst rather than waiting to hear the best. Patience means the willingness to pay attention, to listen and understand. God patiently forgives us so we should patiently forgive each other.

And now comes the most fashionable garment of all – the spiritual garment of agape or love. Agape-love makes us feel accepted, included and esteemed. It wills the good for others even when we really don’t like them. Agape-love covers a multitude of sins. It can transform the tawdry into the tasteful, the ugly into the beautiful.

This is the spiritual garment Jesus commanded for all time, for it will never go out of style, for God is agape-love.

It is important to be well-groomed and well-dressed in body, but it is even more important to be well-groomed and well-dressed in soul and spirit. May God in his grace, help continually to clothe us with these spiritual traits so badly needed, and which never go out of style. They are spiritual high fashion.

Amen

By Rev. Maurice A. Fetty

Park Congregational Church

August 4, 2013