Jack Hardaway
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You know that sound.
Clothes hangers sliding back and forth on the clothes rod. That soft screech.
Dresser drawers opening and shutting. That muffled slide.
The sounds of getting dressed.
What will I wear today?
The first thing I see? Just grab something? Or maybe more thoughtful, mixing and matching? It depends. Am I cutting the grass or going out to a nice dinner?
What will I wear?
The letter to the Ephesians tells us to dress up.
To dress for conflict. Armor. Weapons.
The apostle Paul dresses us up with ironic vocabulary, the clothing of contradiction.
With armor and weapons that are not violent. Truth, righteousness, peace, and faith, these are what we wear to the confrontation with our heart and soul.
The irony of armor that is disarming.
The irony of weapons that heal.
The irony of peace that troubles.
A conflict to bring peace to a world that only understands aggression and violence.
To bring good news to a bad news world is to be in conflict, in contradiction.
Paul calls the gospel of peace a mystery. A mystery that we wear, that we proclaim with boldness, that the world will see as inappropriate attire for the occasion.
The irony of bringing good news and peace and being rejected.
Paul ties on the final bit of clothing at the end of todays reading, his own chains, his imprisonment for the sake of bringing good news and peace to a bad news violent world.
He loses his freedom so that the whole world may know the freedom of the good news.
Paul tells us to dress up. But he is wearing chains.
We weaponize everything.
Our country, our culture, we weaponize everything.
Ideas. Vaccines. Masks. Gender. Race. Faith. Children. Schools. Democracy. Politics. Elections.
We are told to weaponize all of it.
Everything becomes a weapon.
We fall for that trap so easily. “If you don’t agree with me then you are the problem.” That is how we are told to dress.
They are violent words from violent hearts. Words and hearts that always ends up with the violence of shattered lives and broken bodies.
Murder always begins in the heart that festers on violence and anger and resentment.
Dressed to kill.
Know our hearts. Face the violence there. Bring peace to those who are trapped in the thoughts of their hearts.
Bring good news to those trapped in bad news and violence.
The Gospel of peace.
That is what we wear.
We wear God. We wear Jesus.
We are disarmed by the suffering Messiah, we are lifted up with the risen Lord.
The violence of the cross sets us free from the chains of violence, from the abuse of words, the brutalizing of bodies, what Paul calls the flaming arrows of the evil one, deceiving our minds and hearts.
Be dressed for conflict, a different kind of conflict.
The peace that Jesus breathes into us.
The joy that the cross brings to the world.
That kind of conflict. That kind of contradiction.
God holds us. Like armor, like clothing, like chains, like flesh and skin.
We are held.
That sound.
You know that sound.
Clothes hangers sliding back and forth on the clothes rod. That soft screech.
Dresser drawers opening and shutting. That muffled slide.
The sounds of getting dressed.
What will we wear?
God wears nothing, naked and vulnerable, the strength that is weakness, the armor that disarms, the weapons that heal, the peace that troubles. Nailed to a tree on the side of a busy street.
What will we wear?