What not to wear
We do love our clothes, don’t we? The clothes may be beautiful, but what are we hiding? The easy answer is that we are covering our nakedness because, after all, we are modest and proper. But there is more to it than that. In God’s eyes, garments, and clothing serve to cover shame.
Where does shame come from? Like most things do, shame finds it beginning in Adam and Eve. Our first mother – our first father – they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, their eyes were opened, and they saw their sin. They realize their nakedness. They took the goodness that God had created and twisted it to meet their own sensibilities. It didn’t turn out how they imagined. Confronted with the stark nakedness of their sin, they were ashamed. So, they sewed together fig leaves lest the Lord God see their shame, lest He discover their sin as He walked through the garden.
It didn’t work, of course. They used the wrong kind of fabric. God, their Creator, saw right through it.
Not much has changed since Adam and Eve tried their best to hide their sin from God. We too wear our beautiful clothes to hide from prying eyes. Too often, we actually dare to believe that we can deceive God. We dare to think that He will not take note of our shame. Too often, we try to salvage the brokenness that stares back at us in the mirror. We try to be responsible and cover up our sin.
It doesn’t work, of course. We’re using the wrong kind of fabric. We stand before God, and He sees it all. He sees right through us. He sees our hearts.
Hearts that are filled with sin and shame. If the desires of our heart were laid bare for all to see, we would have good reason to be ashamed. Evil thoughts, adulterous desires, selfish wants, impure motives, jealousy, anger, envy, drunkenness, strife, idolatry; need I go on? No. I don’t think I do. You know what’s there. You know what you are coving up.
This is the condition of our heart, of our inner being that we seek to hide, to cover with our man-made clothing. Yet, we’re not able. We’re not capable of hiding the truth from God. We may fool those around us, and we may be fooled by those around us, but the Lord God sees the condition of all hearts.
He sees the truth. He sees His broken creation desperately trying to save itself. He sees us scrambling to escape the dust and ash of this broken creation – dust and ash, the only thing left after sin has had its way with the world. But we too, have been broken by sin. We too, are dust. We are dust scrambling to escape dust.
From dust we came, and to dust we shall return. Man is born into this world a sinner, and his journey of sin leads back to the ground, back to dust. All of our attempts to cover up our sin, every effort to pay up always results in the same destination: dust. We are dust, and to dust we shall return.
It is into a similar sorry spiritual state of affairs that the prophet Joel speaks. The people of Israel have wandered away from their God. They have been unfaithful in word and deed. They have sought other gods and sold themselves to whims of the nations. So the Lord will turn them over to disaster. They will be oppressed and downtrodden. They will suffer want and they will weep in their distress.
Therefore, Joel calls out in the second chapter of his book, “Rend your hearts and not your garments.” The ancient tradition was to express terrible anxiety and distress by tearing your garments. To rend your garments was to reveal the depth of your state of sorrow. But Joel knows that the rending of garments will only reveal the problem: a corrupt and sinful heart. While a torn garment shows the problem, a torn heart begins to heal the problem. A torn body seals the deal.
The cross – it is an instrument of torture and death and the means by which God cleansed our hearts and exchanged our garments. The cross – it is the place where Jesus is raised up in our place. The cross – it is the place where Jesus is stripped of His garments and all of our sin is revealed as He hangs naked in our stead. For He who knew no sin became sin for us. We are in the business of attempting to cover our sin, but Jesus is in the business of revealing it. He reveals it so that it might be washed away by His blood. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrow.
A gracious and merciful God has offered up His only-begotten Son so that the sin that has exiled us from His presence might be washed away and we might be restored to His presence. And where does this journey end? Not at the cross, not even at the empty tomb; the journey ends in the completed work of Jesus’ restoration done on the cross. The journey ends in the glory of the resurrection and the joy of the new creation to come.
Listen to the words of St. John as he describes those who are gathered around the throne of the Lamb:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
See the great multitude who wave palm branches as they worship their Savior. What are they wearing? These are no fig leaves they wear; they are not adorned in filthy rags. They aren’t scrambling to cover up with fabric that will hide their brokenness. They are clothed in white robes, robes that have been cleansed, washed in the blood of the Lamb. Their garments of sackcloth have been exchanged for robes of righteousness.
The sackcloth and ashes are gone, for Christ’s journey to the cross clothes His Bride, the Church. The blood of Jesus washes our robes and makes them white. It is the blood of Jesus that washes away sin. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all unrighteousness. The exile is over, the journey is finished. We are returned to the presence of our God, and we rejoice in the robes the Bridegroom has provided for His Bride.