Have you ever regretted dressing inappropriately for a situation? It can be acutely embarrassing for us to find that everyone else has dressed in a way that suits an occasion when we haven’t. Bad dreams are often made of such situations.
Choosing appropriate clothing can be particularly tricky at this time of year, when the weather is changing. Many times, I have gone out dressed lightly on a sunny morning, then regretted it in the afternoon when the sky clouded over and a cold wind started to blow. Selecting the right clothing is not only a matter of warmth, though. Consider: clothes carry meanings. They can tell others a lot about who we are. Police and military uniforms, sports team colours, a chef’s outfit or a clerical collar, for example, all tell us something about the person wearing them, even before they have said a word.
Choice of clothing was important to our class-conscious predecessors because clothes indicated social status, and so who should defer to whom. If you were caught wearing clothes above your station in Tudor England, for instance, you could be punished under “sumptuary” laws that were designed to maintain the social hierarchy. Even in Victorian times, dressing above your station made you morally suspect. Attitudes in this area have softened, but a luxury item like a Rolex watch or a pair of Jimmy Choos is still a status symbol, and wearing clothes that send a false message about who we are can still get us into trouble. You may remember the news reports about former teacher Jonathan Carley, who turned up at a Remembrance Sunday service last year wearing a fake Royal Navy rear admiral uniform and medals he had not earned. He was fined £500 plus costs under the 1894 Uniforms Act.
The clothes we choose do more than tell people who we are, however: the effort we put into our appearance also says something about our attitude to those we expect to meet. I imagine most of us were reminded of this regularly by our mothers as they chided us to tuck in our shirts, brush our hair and polish our shoes before going to school or church or a party. Neatness shows respect for others, they would say, while untidiness shows contempt. What we wear can also show respect or contempt.
In the final part of our Gospel reading this Sunday, Jesus tells a parable in which a man finds out that failing to dress properly for an occasion can have regrettable and painful consequences, particularly when your host is a king. He turns up at a royal wedding banquet without the required standard of dress and, being unable or unwilling to offer any excuse for his behaviour, is unceremoniously tied up and thrown out to be punished for the offense he has given the king and his son (Matthew 22:11-13).
It is a parable, so Jesus is not actually teaching about clothes as such in this story. Interpreters agree that the “wedding garment” that the man should have worn represents the righteousness that comes from Christ, which we are all expected to have “put on” for the heavenly banquet in the age to come. Jesus probably drew this metaphor from the prophet Isaiah, who wrote of “garments of salvation” and “a robe of righteousness” in Isaiah 61:10. The apostles later linked clothing with righteousness too (Colossians 3:12; Revelation 19:8-9). We’ll look into the parable in more depth on Sunday.
The wedding garment in the parable is a metaphor rather than an actual item of clothing. But does this mean that God does not care about what we wear, then? Surely, he is only interested in the contents of our hearts, we might suppose! I suggest the answer to that is both yes, in a way, and no. Yes, because God has not given Christians specific laws about what clothes we should wear, unlike the laws he gave to the people of Israel (e.g. Exodus 28; Numbers 15:37-40). But surely also no, insofar as our clothing (or lack of it) sends messages to those around us. The way we dress communicates something about how we view ourselves and about our attitudes towards others. When those around us know us to be Christians our clothes will tell them something – true or false – about Christ, with whose character Christians should always be clothed.
Something to ponder and discuss!
Matthew Briggs
Ministry Team Member