Christmas Clothes

Colossians 3:12-17; Psalm 148; Luke 2:41-52

Did anyone get new clothes for Christmas? Keeping up our tradition buying each other something very similar or exactly alike, Paula and I surprised each other with Cleveland Cavaliers tee shirts this year. Recently the hosts of “Good Morning America” had an ugly Christmas sweater contest. It was hilarious. Michael, the pre-teen in the newspaper comic strip “For Better or for Worse,” said yesterday that it was a good Christmas because he didn’t get any books, educational toys, or clothes.

Clothes given at Christmas often take a lot of guff. After all, for many of us socks, underwear, ties, and other items of clothing are not exciting in a world of toys, books (some of us are avid readers), video games, and other electronic gadgets.

Clothing is important. Some clothing is occupational, like the armor Paul talks about in his Ephesian letter. Some clothing sets the tone for a particular setting, such as the business suit, the little black dress, the overalls. Some clothing is simply comfortable, convenient, or useful. Luke was sure to mention the swaddling clothes or baby blanket in which the newborn Jesus was wrapped.

We are still celebrating Jesus’ birth, but for a moment, let’s fast forward in his life to the scene Luke has given us of the twelve-year-old Jesus. Can you imagine this story in today’s world? I expect the teenage Jesus would be wearing jeans and a tee shirt. I wonder what would be on his tee shirt. Would it be a logo for a pop band? Would it be a number jersey for some sports team? Would his shirt have some cryptic or pithy saying on it? I can’t imagine him wearing a polo shirt with designer’s logo on it. He might have a “Life’s Good” shirt. I think he would agree with that.

Given today’s marketing and advertising emphasis, we could almost imagine Paul offering a line of tee shirts with the list of clothing attributes which he gave the Colossian believers: “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Paul had just gotten done writing to the church about all things that they needed to give up or take off like dirty clothing. Then he told them that in Christ they have clothed themselves “with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator” (3:11).

Paul did not give the Colossian church members a fashion dress code for what to wear to church. The apostle is not concerned as we so often are with whether blue jeans have any place in the sanctuary. The apostle is concerned with the way we dress our souls.

When Paul refers to taking off old clothing and putting on the new, he is not only writing metaphorically. His image reflects an early Christian practice of baptism. Individuals coming to be baptized would remove their old clothing before entering the baptismal waters. When they came out of the water, they were clothed in a new robe, signifying the new life they had received in Christ.

This new clothing confirms and shapes the unity of all believers in Christ. The virtues that the epistle commends are entirely social. Right dress is not a matter of individual piety; it is a matter of how we relate to one another in Christ (since of course Christ is all in all).(1)

David L. Bartlett, in his Feasting on the Word commentary on this section of Paul’s letter, says that the first half of this section offers three great realities that make possible the well-dressed congregation.(2)  First of all, believers are “God’s choice”; that is, “God chose you to be the holy people he loves” (New Living Translation). The call of God cannot be ignored. There is nothing like it. It is not like when teams were being chosen in junior high gym class and we were the last to be selected. God has chosen us from the beginning, not the end. We are God’s.

The second reality in Bartlett’s view is that of Christian love. In some ways Paul wrote more explicitly here than he did in the poetic images about love in1 Corinthians 13. Those were directed to the individual. To the Colossian believers Paul spoke about community and the harmony which incorporates forbearance, positiveness, and forgiveness. As God’s chosen, they are to imitate Christ’s compassionate, forgiving attitude, let love guide their lives, let the peace of God rule in their hearts, be thankful in all things, and keep God’s Word in them at all times.

Bartlett’s third reality is Christ’s peace—Christ’s shalom. Colossians picks up the familiar Pauline symbol of the church as the body and here makes clear what binds the members together: the peace that can only be the gift of God. To live in peace would not suddenly eliminate all differences of opinion, but it would require that everyone work together despite their differences. Human effort won’t accomplish this. It requires God’s help to arbitrate and enable people to get along. God calms our troubled hearts so that we can better relate to others.

The word “control,” or “rule” as found in other translations, comes from the language of athletics: Paul wanted the believers to let Christ’s peace be an umpire or referee in their hearts. Peace would arbitrate and thereby restrain any of the passions of the old nature that might try to resurface. Peace would settle any friction and strife so the believers could remain strong and unified. If peace rules believers’ hearts, then it will govern their entire lives and, by extension, the life of the church.(3)

So our Christmas clothes, the clothes Christ gave us through his birth, ministry, death, and resurrection have three aspects. God chose us, not we chose God; love connects everyone; and peace must begin within us in order to exist between us.

Clothes have another aspect. Remember having paper dolls on which you could put different outfits. In this high tech age, they still make paper dolls. Paula and I saw some while shopping this month. Jesus is not to be treated as a paper doll to be dressed as we want him to be dressed. There are a number of outfits that people dress Jesus in which don’t match up with the Jesus of scripture.

Some dress Jesus as the guru, a wise, winsome, slightly supernatural figure who fits nicely alongside other religious titans like Buddha, Mohammed, Vishnu, and others. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is far more than a wise person. He wears the clothes of salvation.

Some people dress Jesus in the red-letter style, devoid of the righteous God of the Old Testament. But there’s more to Jesus than nice stories and pithy statements. His words and actions beyond the red letters align him closely with the God who demands self-sacrificial living over ritual sacrifices of grain and animals. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, wears the clothes of deeply revealing truth.

Others dress Jesus in red, white, and blue. He will usher in a revival which will return us to the perceived glory of days gone by. Unfortunately the Jesus of the gospels doesn’t point to the past but forward to the fulfillment of the kingdom. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is clothed in future kingdom glory.

There are those who dress Jesus as if he were Dr. Phil, a fix-whatever-is-wrong-with-you Jesus. The problem is that what we want fixed isn’t what is wrong is us, only a symptom. A Jesus who will fix your marriage, shape you up for your next job interview, or ensure your kids make it into Harvard is, in the end, a disappointing deity preaching a moralistic, therapeutic deism that doesn’t save. The real Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is not dressed in a costume of principles, but is dressed in wholeness and honesty.

There are lots of other costumes people put on Jesus. But because our Christmas clothes are woven with God’s initiating love for us, our connecting love for each other, and with Christ’s peace reigning in our hearts, the Christmas clothing that Christ gets to wear is the eternal joy of having us as part of the faithful community singing, “Gloria in excelsis deo,” and telling everyone who will listen what happened in our hearts the night Jesus was born.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

(1) David L. Bartlett, “Colossians 3:12-17 - Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) Year C, Volume 1, 159, 161.
(2) Bartlett, ibid., 161.
(3) Life Application Bible Commentary – Philippians, Colossians, & Philemon (Carol Stream IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), 218

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.