The Right Attire

The Right Attire--August 28, 2018

"Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters, and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying out,

    'Hallelujah!

     For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

     Let us exult and rejoice and give him the glory,

     for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

       and his bride has made herself ready;

     to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linens, bright and pure--'

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, 'Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.' And he said to me, 'These are true words of God'." [Revelation 19:6-9]

In this life, it is a good rule of thumb to dress for the occasion.  

Not to earn your way in to an event.  Not even because you will be turned away if you didn't have the right clothes (even fancy restaurants often have a couple of spare blazers to give to guests who have not come in their own sportscoats or suits).  But you dress for the occasion in life, especially a big party like a wedding, as a way of fully joining in the celebration and honoring the people who invited you.

So, even if you think that tuxedos and cummerbunds are stuffy and uncomfortable, if you have been asked to be a groomsman in a wedding where all the other groomsmen are wearing them, too, my guess is that you'll do it, too.  You'll show up in the suit they acquired for you, whether or not it is your personal style, because you want to honor the bride and groom, and because they are the real center of attention at their wedding.

And similarly, if the couple getting married are a cowboy-boots-and-jeans sort of couple, you will dress accordingly so that you can join in the line dances in the barn where the reception will be... not because it is your personal preference in wedding attire, but because you want to be dressed for the kind of party it is going to be.

And if the bride-to-be tells you that all the bridesmaids are going to be wearing bright turquoise chiffon dresses with puffy sleeves, and then asks you to be one, too, my guess is that you will set aside your own fashion tastes for a day to wear the outfit that is provided for you, exactly because you know that the bride's favorite color is turquoise and it is important that the wedding ceremony "fit" with the character, style, and personalities of the couple getting married.

For that matter, when a ninety-odd-year old pillar of your congregation invites you to a birthday party and gives everyone plastic bead necklaces as part of his party, you darn well better put your bead necklace on, too, regardless of whether it "goes" with your outfit or feels a bit silly, because in that moment, it's not really about you.  It's about celebrating and honoring the one at the center.

In other words, in this life, we dress for the occasion--knowing when to dress up, when to go casual, and when to wear plastic bead necklaces--less as a way of "earning" something, and more as a way of honoring the people (whom you love and care for) at the center of the day's celebration.  Because it matters to the host of the party, or the guest of honor, it matters to you.  You dress up, not trying to impress anybody or win anyone's approval, but rather because, well, sometimes love looks like puffy chiffon sleeves.  And maybe you do it because it just seems... fitting (no pun intended) for the people at the center of the party.  The boots and jeans wedding reception "fits" with the couple who loves life in the country and whose lifestyle fits with dancing in a refurbished barn.  The tuxedo-clad wedding party fits with your sophisticated friends who radiate class and refinement.  And the beads, well, they just "fit" with the need to celebrate a birthday of anybody after nine decades of life.

So if that much is true--that we dress for the occasion in life because a particular outfit will "fit" with the character of the party and the character of the party-throwers--then think about what it means that at the grand wedding party for Christ the slain-but-risen Lamb, the right apparel for the day is "the righteous deeds of the saints"? 

Or maybe we even need to take a moment to hear that phase rightly, too.  Because "righteous deeds of the saints" can sound a lot like there is some special, select group of holy people who do "holy" things like extra praying, or going to church more, or fasting, or taking other ascetic kinds of vows, and that all of their extra... religiosity... as it were, was the thing that God really liked about them.  To be very honest, that sort of thinking was exactly the institutional Church's party line for almost a thousand years in the medieval era, as people came to hear "saint" as a sort of religious elite, and "righteous" as a synonym for "shows of religiosity."

But neither of those is what the book we call Revelation has in mind.  For one, the word that gets translated "righteousness" is the same word for "justice" in the Greek of the New Testament.  And when you hear "justice," you are less likely to picture things that are confined to prayers chanted from behind stained glass walls.  When we hear "justice," we picture the day to day actions of treating people rightly, of regarding people with fairness and equity.  We will hear in our minds the voices who speak up when someone else is being stepped on or being taken advantage of.  We will picture those who, like the prophets of old, can tell the king when he is corrupt, or when the people have forgotten the commandments to care for those in need.  "Doing justice," after all is what the prophet Micah once said that God was all about after all--along with "loving mercy" and "walking humbly with your God."  

Well, now, we might be in a better position to hear what the book of Revelation was saying all along. Instead of suggesting that God needed monks and friars and nuns to all go hide in the desert or at some monastery or abbey somewhere where they could perform "righteous deeds" in seclusion like they are banking up extra heaven-points, Revelation says that the right dress for God's big wedding party is simply "doing justice."  The fine linen of the bride of the Lamb is nothing more and nothing less than "the actions of justice that the followers of Jesus have made as their way of life."

And the reason that "doing justice" is the appropriate attire for the big celebration of the Lamb is that God's character all along has been one of justice... which is to say, of putting things right.  Justice is so much bigger and wider a notion than we often imagine--we often think of it only as punishing crimes and prosecuting criminals.  But in the biblical sense, justice is more fully about mending what is torn, repairing what is broken, setting right what has gone awry, sharing God-given abundance, lifting up those who have been stepped on, and yes, holding to account those who step on others.  All of that is what justice looks like.  And so in a very real sense, every time a relationship is reconciled... justice is done.  And every time someone takes the risk of telling an uncomfortable but necessary truth... justice is done.  And every time people offer up their own lives for the sake of protecting someone else in danger... justice is done.  And even in its widest sense, every act of compassion to bind up the brokenhearted, to lift up those who have been pushed aside, and to put things right, these are all an important part of what it looks like to "do justice."

So there at the grand divine wedding party that John the Seer of Revelation envisions, the dress for the day is no more and no less than... doing justice.  There is no other accessorizing needed--no checking of your status or class on earth, no language requirement or history tests, not even a requirement that you wear a cross necklace and matching earrings or a WWJD bracelet.  The wedding party, as John sees it, are all dressed simply in "doing justice," which always allows for more freedom of motion than puffy chiffon sleeves and turquoise cummerbunds.

But, in an important sense like those bridesmaids dresses and tuxedos, the proper attire for God's grand celebration is not really a condition for entrance--it is something the host of the party gives you to wear precisely because it fits with the style and character of the couple at the head table.  The bride doesn't just tell her bridesmaids to wear the turquoise dress with the puffy sleeves as a dare or as a condition to earn her friendship or belonging in the bridal party--she gives them the dresses to wear that will "fit "with what she is wearing, and because the style fits with her own style.  And so in an important sense, Christ doesn't say, "Unless you have done fifty-seven deeds of religiosity, you cannot come to the party."  Nor does he say, "Until you have helped ten grannies across the street, cleared a wrongly-accused criminal from jail time, and then picked up litter on the highway five times, you do not belong in my club."  Almost the opposite--Christ says, "Justice is the theme of God's Reign and this party, so I've gotten you a way of life to walk in that will fit with the character of the celebration.  Why don't you try it on?"  Justice becomes the gift that the host of the party gives us to wear, not as a condition for being accepted, but because we've already been included among the bridal party... and because justice "fits" with the character of the God whose party it is.

Sometimes we get very confused about how it will all work when we get to glory.  We have heard plenty of voices around us tell us that there will be a great evaluation to see if we've done enough good stuff to earn a place at the table, or if we've avoided enough bad stuff to stay off the "uninvited list."  At the same time, anybody who has spent much time in the New Testament has heard the notion that we are saved by grace through faith apart from what we've done... and then we are left wondering, "Does that mean God doesn't care about how I treat other people, how I use my life, or how I respond to suffering in the world?"  Because sometimes we church folks (especially we Lutherans) end up sounding like all God cares about is memorizing some theological formulas and then we are off the hook for doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly... which is what Micah had said God was really after in the first place.

So maybe this passage helps put things in the right perspective.  Doing justice is all the apparel we'll need... but like the beaded necklace at the nonagenarian's birthday party, it is handed to you to wear as a gift, and you put it on because you know it is a way of fully celebrating with everybody else around.

Today, we'll be given the chance to try on the garb for the party.  We don't need to worry at all about impressing anybody, or what anybody else thinks of our outfit.  When you are in the bridal party after all, you don't care about what anybody else thinks of the puffy sleeves--you are wearing them because you love the host of the party, who has handed them dresses out to make the celebration complete.  Today, doing justice--even in seemingly small acts of putting things right and lifting up the stepped-on--that is all the attire we need for the occasion.  Like they say about wearing black, justice goes with everything.

Lord God, because of the promised day when we will be gathered at your table for the supper of the Lamb, grant us to do justice today.