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March 15, 2023crc

The Messiness of Wisdom and Sin

The following sermon was preached by Brenda Kronemeijer-Heyink at Wine Before Breakfast on February 28.

I find this text from Proverbs both intriguing and confusing. And even though I’ll look with you at some of the text in the sermon, I’m not sure this will clear up all the confusion. Nor do I think it should. I think that the confusion is a fitting part of the book of Proverbs and wisdom in literature in general. We live in a world that is complicated and confusing, and even though we might crave simple answers, we can find comfort in how this text relates well to the messiness of real life.

Proverbs often give practical wisdom, providing examples of how “if you do a certain thing, then this is usually what will happen.” In this particular text, the focus is on how we speak and the gaining of riches. The text says multiple times that hard work and righteousness will lead to riches. For example, verse 4 says that “the hand of the diligent makes rich,” and verse 3 says that “The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry.” And verse 22 says that “The blessing of the Lord makes rich.”

Yet, I doubt any of us here would have difficulty finding counterexamples to these words. The poor are often hard working: stuck with long hours and unreasonable shifts in order simply to make ends meet. And there are many who exploit the poor, through renovictions, price-gouging, and questionable labour practices. The riches they have gained from these practices are surely not because of the Lord’s blessing.

There are ways to explain away the difficulties of the text. If you look at the translation by Cal Seerveld (see end of this), you’ll notice that he’s put certain verses in quotation marks. Verses 4 and 5 are seen to be quotes of what people usually say: how diligence brings wealth. Such words can be a helpful lesson to a child but they can easily become false, too quickly reinforcing the lie of the American dream: that our effort alone gets us anywhere, forgetting that our privilege, whether from race, education, class, able-bodiedness, or something else is at least as much a reason for our success as any of our own effort.

Another quotation in the translation in the back is verse 16, where we are reminded of how “possessions are not a citadel of strength to a person of wealth!” Only righteousness brings life. Ultimately, as verse 22 says, only the Lord’s blessings make the righteous rich, and from our own experience, we know that those riches are not necessarily worldly wealth.

While I believe all that I have said so far in interpreting these texts is true, I also find these explanations a bit too simple. And I think the text itself warns against explanations that are too simple. There is something disconcerting but also challenging in how a text that focuses so much on riches and righteousness also focuses significantly on deceit and lying lips. And in that juxtaposition I am struck by how easy it can be to lie to ourselves: to think we have a right understanding so that we don’t make space for the further instruction that might lead to life, as verse 11 and 17 suggest.

As someone who is personally not that tempted by riches and who has spent time thinking about and coming to terms with my own privilege, there’s not that much enticing to me to believe the lie that my own efforts have brought about my own happy middle-class existence.

However, as someone who deeply wants to be affirmed by others, I can easily be tempted by the lie that hard effort and productivity is the same as goodness and righteousness. This is a variation of what verses 4 and 5 in the text seem to say – that diligence brings rewards. And that effort and hard work are in themselves completely good. Such an idea also corresponds to how society around us often sees procrastination as the worst sin today [cf. David Zahl, Seculosity]

I think that those of us in academia and ministry – jobs where our work hours are unusual and where our efforts are for the greater good – to help others – can be especially tempted by this lie of how my worth is tied up in my work and what I produce. After all, doesn’t the Lord bless the work of the righteous?

Yes, and. As the last part of verse 22 says “all your troubled struggle doesn’t add a bit to it.” Our efforts bring nothing.

I find these words deeply humbling. All this work that I invest so much time and energy into – and then this verse says the Lord blesses the righteousness despite all the work we do.

Such words humble me and help me recognize how easy it can be to deceive ourselves, to convince ourselves that we know how to interpret the texts and thus know what wisdom is. There are certainly better ways of living that lead to flourishing and doing well. But there is no perfect formula to succeed or even avoid sin: it is not a simple “do this and all will be good.” Sin is slippery, like the lips that bring about deceit.

When it comes to sin and wisdom, we can easily fall into thinking that if I only do this, then all will be good. If only I would try harder, or if my situation changed and it was an easier season, or if only those other people would act better, or whatever words you use to convince yourself that all be well. And the worse part about sin is that, just like wisdom, it acts a bit like Heisenbergers uncertainty principle: if we try too hard to define exactly what wisdom looks like, we are likely to have lost sight of what wisdom really is, reducing it to something simple that doesn’t reflect the messy reality of life around us.

Yet, despite knowing how ineffective it is to simplify what it looks to live wisely and avoid sin, we will always be tempted to do it. Perhaps it’s a desire for control over our lives. Perhaps it’s because we’re so often right, and we forget about how easy it is also to be wrong. Perhaps it’s to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. There are so many reasons that it’s not possible to name them all.

A couple of years ago, I spent a season studying sin. Because you know, I’m a pastor for university folks, and I like talking about hard things. We looked at Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung’s book, Glittering Vices, on the 7 deadly sins. I deeply appreciated how she talked about the complexity of sin and even how situational it is, just like wisdom. Each of us has different things that tempt us. It can be easy to look down on those who are tempted to things that are not attractive to us, and it is easy to dismiss the sins we have in ourselves. Studying the enneagram is another way of understanding the complexity of sin. You discover your type often by identifying how you’ve tried to address your deepest longings in unhealthy ways.

As I came to understand how complex sin is, it gave me hope.

It became more obvious that I was never going to live the life of wisdom that I could deceive myself into pretending that I was one step away from.

I did not need to compare myself to others because I wasn’t the same as them – and God wasn’t interested in my holiness comparison.

Instead, I could dump my messy failed self in front of God. Because even if sin is deeply complex, God’s response to our sins is not. God’s response is grace and love. A response of love that we see through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. A response of love that we remember each time we do the Eucharist, each time we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit.

These wisdom texts and any conversation on sin ought to invite us to know ourselves well, to look and see sin for the ugliness it is. And God encourages us to live wisely, as a way not to harm ourselves or others.

But ultimately such study isn’t so that we can try to become better but to look to God – and recognize the truth of verse 12 of the text – that love covers a multiple of sins. Or as the translation from Cal Seerveld says, “love dresses all kinds of misdeeds with clothes.”

And as we talked about earlier this semester, it is God who clothes us. The love of God doesn’t simply cover up and hide the shame or guilt that we might have from our sins and how we continue to do things that we wish we didn’t. Instead God’s love heals our wounds and washes us clean. And then God clothes us, the same way God clothed Adam and Eve as they left the garden. Because of God’s love, we are clothed with Christ, and so as Colossians 3:10-11 says, “we have stripped off the old self with its practices, and are now clothed with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of our Creator.” God’s love covers the whole multitude of all of our sins, and we can trust that God’s love will continue to work in and through us now and forever.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Proverbs 10:1-22 – Cal Seerveld’s Translation

1 A wise son or daughter makes a father or mother’s heart merry,
and an insolent, godless child breaks its parent’s heart to pieces.

2 Treasures gotten by underhanded dealings are of no use at all:
doing what is rightly just, however, saves you from death!

3 The Lord God Yahweh never lets a man or a woman who is actually righteous stay hungry,
but God rams the greedy desire of those who like to cut corners right back [down their throats]!

4 “A negligent empty hand brings on poverty:
the grip of the diligent makes one rich.”
5 “A fellow ho gathers in at harvest time knows what he is doing:
a fellow who oversleeps at harvest time is simply disgraceful!”

6 Genuine blessings halo the head of whoever come through with just deeds,
while the mouth of people who don’t act straight casts up a smokescreen over deeds that violate others.
7 The person who has persevered in doing what is just will be remembered as a gift of shalom,
while the good name of those who have been guilty of crookedness shall decompose.

8 A person who is at heart wise simply carries out [his or her] tasks:
it’s the pair of slipper lips that will be smashed to bits.
9 “Who walks in wholesome ways will walk securely unafraid:
who chooses his paths to be twisty will be discovered [tied in knots],”
10 An eye that blinks the double-crossing wink makes bitter trouble;
[I repeat:] it’s the pair of slippery lips that will be smashed to bits!
11 The mouth of folk kept truly just is a bubbling source of life;
while the mouth of people who don’t act straight [I repeat] casts up a smoke-screen over deeds that violate others.

12 Hate rouses bickering, blistering discontent,
while love dresses all kinds of rebellious misdeeds with clothes.

13 You will find wisdom on the lips of an experienced, discerning person,
but “You need a stick for the backside of anybody who at heart lacks sense.”
14 Judicious men and wisdom women are thrifty with hard-won knowledge,
but blockhead babblings are pregnant with disaster:
15 “Possessions are a citadel of strength to a man of wealth.
It’s poverty that ruins the poor –
16 [No!] the handiwork and wages of a tried-and-true man or woman is full of life,
but the income of a crooked fellow only increases his or her sin.
17 When one faithfully follows a nurturing discipline, you are on a pathway of life;
but to pay no attention to corrective judgments will leave you wandering around lost!

18 Lips of deceit conceal hate,
and whoever spreads gossip is a godless, insolent fool;
19 Wherever there is too much talk, the upstart misdeed will not fail to materialize –
whoever is more chary of his or her lip movements has more sense.
20 The tongue of a tried-and-true woman or man is as valuable as the choicest silver,
while the heart of connivers is worth next to nothing.
21 The lips of the tried-and-true woman or man will nourish many [to new life!]
Stupidly closed fools, however, because they lack sense at heart, drop dead!
22 It is only the Lord God Yahweh’s blessing that makes one rich:
all your troubled struggle doesn’t add a bit to it.
Pages 194-5 in Reading and Hearing the Word (1998)

February 21, 2023crc

Learning to live with limitations

This year we have spent some time thinking about disability justice at both Graduate Christian Fellowship and Wine Before Breakfast. In doing so, we have focused on learning from those with disabilities. One lesson we have learning is about how good and holy it is to live within our limitations as human beings.

One source of learning has come from Amy Kenny’s book, My Body is not a Prayer Request. We have joined a number of Christian Reformed churches in doing a book club on the book. You can also watch a video of her presentation at the Calvin University January Series.

We have also been listening to the voices of people who have a disability. One example of that is Hannah’s preaching at Wine Before Breakfast on God as disabled.

One final possible source of learning is a talk by Jane Grizzle, “The Grief and Gift of Bodily Limitations.” While the focus is more on injury and illness, it highlights our relationship with our bodies and the goodness of learning to acknowledge our limitations. The talk can be listened to here or read here. The following are a few quotes from the talk to give you a sense of the presentation:

Her friend who is a counselor told her that ” without fail, if her clients talk about their bodies, they cry every time. It is a place of great vulnerability.”

“Illness and injury require us to slow down, to take a different path, to rest. In some ways, these limitations are a spotlight on our priorities. And when we are forced to slow down and take a look at our lives, what we see may not be pretty. Limits are another word for interruptions or dead ends. When I think about times in my life when I have hit one of these limits, I dislike them for one of three reasons: they are humbling, they are isolating, and they are disorienting.”

“In his book, Being Human, Rowan Williams writes that if we believe we are in charge of our selves and our bodies:

[We] drift towards a steady expectation that the best relationship you can be in to the world is control. The best place to be is a place where you can never be surprised. We want to control what’s strange and we want to control what doesn’t fall under our immediate power. We’re uneasy with limits that we can’t get beyond because limits, of whatever kind, remind us that there are some things that are just going to be strange and difficult wherever we are and however hard we work at them.
[But acknowledging our limits exposes something very true about us]: “we depend on what is not ours, what is not us, our will, our hope, our achievements…Christians are adopted into a dependent relationship to that which Jesus calls, Abba, Father.”

February 15, 2023crc

Prayers for Michigan State

Please pray for the students, faculty, staff, and all others affected by Monday evening’s shooting at Michigan State University. We ask that you specifically pray for the campus ministers, including Dara, who works with a Christian Reformed campus ministry similar to what we have here in Toronto.

To help give you words to pray, the following are prayers provided by the CRC’s Do Justice website:

“On February 13, 2023, a mass shooter at Michigan State University in East Lansing killed three students, and injured five more. The gunman later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound when he was confronted by police off campus.

Jesus you are with the wounded, the anguished, the broken-hearted. That is where you’ve said you’ll be and that is where we find you. Where the wages of sin, of indifference, of violence and despair are truly brought to bear on your creation is where you are. Be present and tangible to those grieving loss of love, and the loss of their safety and help the community heal and support one another.

Lord, in a country where going to the theatre, the grocery store, a dance club, to work, to a prayer meeting or to school as a kindergartener or a university student could be a death sentence, may the fear and terror of living not rule us. But make us able to see clearly.

How Long is a question we ask knowing that there are things we could do but haven’t. How long till those words do not ring hollow?“

February 13, 2023crc

God as disabled

The following are excerpts from a sermon given at WBB on January 31 by Hannah, a writer, MFA student, and regular participant at GCF.

“In John 20, Jesus has to prove himself wounded. Despite being raised from the dead, he still bears the wounds of crucifixion – the ones Thomas could see and maybe some of the he couldn’t.”

“What does it mean that Jesus was still injured after being resurrected? After ascending into heaven? It means he was human. His body was fallible. He was like me and you. Able-bodiedness is only temporary. If you’re not disabled now, you will either become disabled or die first. Jesus did both.”

“What I take from this passage [John 20], from Jesus as a Disabled God, is that I don’t need to be healed to be forgiven. I do not need to be healed to be liberated. I am not a symbol of salvation. I am someone that needs to be liberated by removing barriers.”

“I would challenge you to consider how disabled people around you are invited into leadership and participation… How are we enabled to lead, speak, and offer our gifts, whatever they may be. One way would be to have information available online that details the physical and verbal specifics of worship, and the specificities of accessibility, so we can ‘stroll’ in just as confident to be there as anyone else, knowing that we are in a community that affirms that we do not need to be cured or fixed to be accepted.”

As quoted by Hannah: “In presenting his impaired hands and feet to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God. Jesus, the resurrected Savior, calls for his frightened companions to recognize in the marks of impairment their own connection with God, their own salvation. In so doing, this disabled God is also the revealer of a new humanity. The disabled God is not only the One from heaven but the revelation of true personhood, underscoring the reality that full personhood is fully compatible with the experience of disability.” Nancy L Eisland, The Disabled God (100)

Cross-posted on our Instagram account.

January 28, 2023crc

Prayers of the People – Unity and kingship

The following prayers were used at the Wine Before Breakfast service on January 24. They are adapted from the Prayers of Intercession in the resources from Ecumenical week of prayer. The opening section is adapted from The Abingdon Worship Annual 2012 (by Mary Scifres) and the closing section from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers.

O God, our King and Creator,
forgive us when we try to make you in our image;
forgive us when we turn to earthly rulers
for the wisdom and strength
you have already shown us.
Fulfill your purpose in us,
that we may be your people,
your temples upon this earth,
your partners in love and mercy.

Creator God,
today we live with the consequences of actions
that have made life unsustainable for some
and overabundant for others.
Teach us how to responsibly use
the resources you have given to us,
that they would be used for the benefit of all
and with respect for your creation.
Creation cries out to you.
Teach us and show us the way.
[Silent and spoken prayers for creation and those affected by climate change and food insecurity]

Compassionate God, help us repair the harm
that we have inflicted upon each other
and the divisions we have created among your people.
Just as Christ Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit onto the disciples
to birth the community of the new creation,
send your grace to heal our divisions
and gift us with the unity for which Jesus prayed.
Teach us and show us the way.
[Silent and spoken prayers for the church and the university]

Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life,
you embodied justice in your ministry on earth
by the good that you did,
breaking down the walls that divide
and the prejudices that imprison.
Open our hearts and minds to recognize
that though we are many, we are one in you.
Teach us and show us the way.
[Prayers for justice and reconciliation]

Holy Spirit, you create anew the face of the earth.
The summit of the mountains,
the thunder of the sky,
the rhythm of the lakes speak to us –
Because we are connected.

The faintness of the stars,
the freshness of the morning,
the dewdrops on the flower speak to us –
Because we are connected.

The voices of the poor,
the oppressed and the marginalized speak to us –
Because we are connected.

Unlike earthly kings,
you, O Lord, are ever steadfast and faithful.
You sent us your Son, Jesus the Christ,
to rule over us, not as a tyrant,
but as a gentle shepherd.
Keep us united and strong in faith,
May we know your presence in our lives
and see you in the lives of those around us.
Amen.

January 27, 2023crc

Prayers for God as king

Prayers written by Deb for the January 24 Wine Before Breakfast service focused on 1 Samuel and the image of God as king.

Creator God,
We come before you in heartache and frustration
Because the system just isn’t working.

We long for the ease and confidence
of a society that is just, fair and noble
But the world in which we live
is anything but just, fair and noble.
The system just isn’t working.

In our attempts to right the ship
we have forgotten you
and put our faith in the latest and greatest idea.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent...

We confess that we don’t know
how to meet the suffering in the world
But, trusting that you do,
we quiet our hearts and await
what you are ready to teach us.
Amen.

January 26, 2023crc

Give us a King

The following are a few excerpts from a sermon preached by Peter Haresnape at Wine Before Breakfast on January 24.

Growing up in England, Elizabeth was the queen, Maggie was the Prime Minister, Kathryn Janeway was the captain, Margaret was the pastor, and my Mum was in charge. And now, 2023, men seem to be everywhere. We have men prime ministers, men popular entertainers, and even men preachers. And now, a man queen…

A king can symbolise concepts that are hard to grasp. The Crown in right of Canada represents the immaterial presence of authority and power, the power that lies behind the institutions of courtroom, cabinet, and cop. It’s the assertion of sovereignty over vast tracts of land, on the basis that the Crown holds the land on behalf of the Indigenous nations, administering it in their best interests. It’s a complicated legal fiction designed to make it hard for Indigenous nations to have their land rights recognized, and simple enough for the citizens of Canada to believe. A king can be very helpful.

So the people say, ‘give us a king’. And why not? These are the elders of Israel, speaking on behalf of the whole nation. ‘Give us a king’, because Samuel the Judge and Priest and Prophet is old, and his sons are corrupt, and there are no more righteous judges. The days of Deborah and Gideon have gone, the old days when God called leaders to respond to specific problems. They want an end to the uncertainty, a permanent king and army and state, like other nations.

….

In the fullness of time, God sends someone into the line of King David, in the form of a prophet, with the authority of the judge. And this person is plunged into the pain of the world, filled with the Holy Spirit, and tempted with three great temptations – hunger, safety, and power. And he says ‘worship God’. And this person is acclaimed as a healer and a miracle worker, a teacher and storyteller, and he says ‘God’s kingdom is here’. And this person forms an army of outcasts and insiders, and marches on the capital, and says nothing to those who demand his life.

And these rulers crown him, and raise him up, and call him the King, and kill him.

This is God’s solution to the violence of the world. The true King who holds absolute power of life and death, who could summon angel armies and darkness and blight, but who chooses to forgive. This is God’s solution. This is God’s Kingship. And this Kingship undoes every abuse of power and every claim to innocence. This Kingship exposes every tyrant’s pretension and every strongman’s terror. . . .

To read all of Peter’s sermon, see his website.

January 25, 2023crc

God as clothing – Sermon on Colossians 3

The following sermon was preached by Deb Whalen at Wine Before Breakfast on January 17.

It all began in the garden. A loving and shrewd God squinting at Adam and Eve.

“Who told you you were naked?”

It’s ironic that Adam and Eve’s first lie was an attempt at covering up their wrongdoing, and they chose to make it about their need to cover up their bodies. And we’ve been dealing with the fallout ever since. Because of Adam and Eve, every one of us, each and every day stands in front of our closet, asking:

“What am I going wear?”

By this point in our lives, as evidenced by all the fully clothed people in the room today, we’ve all learned to dress ourselves, no longer relying on someone else to choose our outfits on for us. Even those of us for whom getting dressed is merely a basic necessity, we’ve figured out at least what doesn’t work. What colours we hate and won’t wear. What fabrics we simply cannot bear because they are a punishment to our skin. And we know generally what size we like to wear, even if it is too big, like some of our most forthright friends and family will insist on telling us. Perhaps some of us have adopted a bit of a uniform, with a number of items in our closet that are in multiples. 3 plain black or white t-shirts, a few button up shirts, maybe one white and another a darker colour. A sweater or a cardigan. A pair or two of jeans. 1 pair of “nice” pants, or a skirt that goes with anything, and a bare minimum amount of shoes. Perhaps you have assembled a wardrobe of pieces that are interchangeable with one another so that when you get up in the morning, the decision making comes down to whatever is cleanest. And then at the end of the week, one load of laundry resets the whole situation and you can begin again on Monday.

But for others, getting dressed is FUN. There’s a creativity involved that allows us to match colours and patterns and fabrics. Even in the winter, a fashion-excited (and weather-savvy) person can check the temperature and think “Minus 15. Right. That means either the black or green cardigan. Am I feeling sleek and mysterious today, or do I need a pop of colour? You know what? It’s going to be grey all day, so green it is. Which means the white button up, and… I can wear my teal plaid pants with the brown boots. Great. I love these boots!” For some, calculating an outfit can be as exciting as redesigning a room in one’s house, or choosing a subject and colour palate for a new painting, and we can spend as much time as we are afforded on exploring all the possibilities. Not to mention the bonus of the endorphin rush that comes with shopping for more and more possibilities.

Each of us in the room will fall at various places along this spectrum of how we feel about dressing ourselves every day. And we might even harbour some judgements about people who approach it differently to us. And I hope you don’t expect me to tell you who is right. I don’t believe in a Biblical dress code, so far as what is appropriate to wear. Because I don’t think it matters. Frankly I am far more interested in WHY we dress the way we do. Because whether the wardrobe you have is styled after Johnny Cash or Moira Rose, it is a sad fact that many people wear their clothes as a means of covering up more than just their bare, cold skin.

Some of us are covering up bodies we hate -or at least bodies we think could be better. Men, women, and non-binary people alike, for so many different reasons, often desire different bodies than the ones we have, and while things like exercise, diet and plastic surgeries can (for better or worse) help us change those bodies, in the interim, clothing allows us to deal with the ways we feel our bodies are falling short.

Brenda mentioned in this week’s email that I spent a long time working in retail -and it’s true. For over 10 years I worked as a bra-fitter, working with people of all shapes and sizes, and I saw, in a very intimate way, how impacted we are by the expectations of how we think we should look. But I actually want to tell a personal story, from long before my bra-fitting years. All the way back to my adolescence.

I went to high school in the 90s, and I was a grunge-era, artsy kid. I was a girl who didn’t feel beautiful. I was bigger than the pretty girls. I didn’t fit into any of the trendy clothes at the mall. So I wore baggy jeans and tshirts. That was my uniform. Even at summer camp, because I didn’t want anyone to see my arms or legs. I LOVED being in the water, but I dreaded those few seconds it took me to remove my outer layers and get my bathing-suited self into the obscurity of the water. I was so ashamed of my body.

When I was 17, I got a solo in one of our school variety shows and the number required me to wear a look that was more formal than I was used to. The director told me to bring in 2 or 3 dress options and she and my dance teacher would decide which was best. I had nothing at home, I was sure, that would be appropriate, so my mom took me shopping and we found a few long dresses that would cover up my legs, and were very in style, and even though they made me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable and awkward, I took them to school and shuffled out onto the stage in one dress after the other, while the program director and the dance teacher hemmed and hawed over them, from the safety of the seats in the back.

I can’t remember what I ended up wearing in that show, but I remember as clear as if it were yesterday, what happened next. My dance teacher, Ms. Frid, a gorgeous and toned woman with full, luscious dark hair rolling down her back, waved me to the back of the auditorium so she could speak to me privately. It was just the two of us, and she was careful and kind, but very direct: “I can see that these outfits you’ve been showing us are very different to what you wear from day to day, and that it’s making you a little uncomfortable, so I just wanted to encourage you a bit. You wear a lot of oversized, baggier clothes, and if that’s for the sake of comfort or intentional style, then more power to you. But if you are trying to hide a body that you think is ugly, please hear me when I tell you it is not. What I just saw up there on that stage is a body that is strong and feminine and beautiful and if you want to, you are allowed to show it off.”

Well. It was one of the most vulnerable and important moments in all my life. The idea of being beautiful was so bone alien to me. So I muttered, “Ok thank you.” And then ran to the bathroom where I locked myself into a stall and bawled my eyes out. Part of me was scared, part of me was confused, and most miraculously, part of me wondered if Ms. Frid could be right. Maybe I wasn’t hideous. Thank God I was already in counselling, and had someone to talk to about it. And I am thankful, every day, for that turning point where the voice of the Holy Spirit, through a perceptive dance teacher, was able to break through the walls I’d built up around myself. I was hiding more than just a body behind all those baggy clothes. I was also hiding a lot of anxiety and self-loathing. But still, all of a sudden, that voice reached into the heart of me and asked:

“Who told you you were ugly?”

I had fallen victem to all the voices that surround us every day, telling us we aren’t acceptable the way we are. We need to be smarter. Faster. Prettier. Stronger. Have more followers. Be married. Have children. Play the game. Wow the judges -no matter who you need to step over or throw under the bus. It’s been a long time since I was a teen-ager, and I’m sorry to say that none of these lying, incessant voices have gone away. But I have learned to distinguish God’s voice from the din, because God doesn’t talk like them. God doesn’t need me to do, say, achieve, wear or look like anything in order to be a beloved child in the Kingdom. But the transformation that can happen when we accept that we already belong… it is life-changing. And, in fact, it comes with a functional and gorgeous new wardrobe.

“The Great Spirit has chosen you to be his holy and deeply loved children, so put on the new regalia he has provided for you. Put on the deep feeling for the pain of others, kindness, humbleness of heart, gentleness of spirit, and be patient with one another. Learn to forgive. Be thankful.”

God doesn’t just hold out unconditional, affectionate loving kindness; God wraps us in it. We wear it like a warm coat. And as we come across those who are shivering, naked, and hiding in the bushes, we need to do our best to coax them to come out so we. In turn, can wrap that loving kindness around them. When we’re not worrying over ourselves and whether or not we measure up, we are free to move through the world with an ease that will make any outfit sing, and more importantly it frees us up to care for one another. To beckon and welcome more people to the Kingdom and to put on all this stunning regalia.

This is how the Kingdom gets built. With the very fabric of compassion and empathy. With humility and gentleness of spirit and gratitude. These are things that mark Christ-followers and set us apart from a world that wants us to compete with one another, to cover up our faults, to hide our true selves. God doesn’t want us to hide. He wants us to be transformed. We’re already made in God’s image, what we’re shedding is the façade that we create when we give into the pressures of earthly Kingdoms. We’re becoming more and more like God as we are renewed. More like the selves we were always meant to be. Creation is not something of the past. It is still happening, because God is still at work in us.

Even so, I’m afraid to say, clothing is still not optional. One of my favourite writers, journalist Caitlin Moran, wrote an article about women and clothing once and pointed out something that I don’t think you have to be a woman to relate to. She says that when we stand in front of our closets thinking “I have nothing to wear!” what we are actually saying is “I have nothing that looks like who I am supposed to be today!” While we do need to figure out what will be appropriate for the lives we lead from day to day -here on campus, in offices, in churches, travelling around town- I hope that urgency to demonstrate ourselves can be curbed, as Christ-followers, by knowing that the main thing we wear is our strengthening Christ-like character, that regalia God has given to us. It may seem like just a white t-shirt and jeans. Or a vintage dress. Or a jacket and tie. But how you move in those things, the confidence and kindness you show in those outfits, the forgiveness or encouragement you can give to people who don’t expect it, these are what will make people look at you twice and wonder what makes you different. It’s the royal attire we wear from the inside out, giving us our holy beauty. That is what will stop people in their tracks.

Prayers for Mark 3

Prayers for Wisdom