Tomorrow
night, the winners of this year’s Academy Awards will be announced. But, before
the ceremony officially begins, we’ll have the pre-ceremony, the red carpet
walk. Person after person, especially the celebrities who are women, but
increasingly the men too, will be asked: “Who are you wearing?” Not what, but
who. The radio station I normally listen on my drive into work each morning was
inspired by this, this past week, to ask the same question of people who workin their office, and received such answers as, “I’m wearing H and M” or,
“tonight, I’m wearing Targé(t).” For the record, my alb’s by Patti Schlarb and stole and chasuble by Slabbink. But, the deeper answer, the answer that
St. Paul told the Christians in Corinth, is that we are wearing Adam, and we
will wear Christ.
Wearing
Adam isn’t entirely bad. Adam had his life breathed into him by God, via God blowing
God’s own Spirit through Adam’s nostrils in a messy act of intimacy. Adam was
given a mission, tend the garden; he was given community, Eve to work with and
be with, in a complete partnership of life; and he was given law, don’t eat
this one fruit. Until he broke the law, he seemed to do pretty well at his
mission and he and Eve seemed form a model of community, of communion, of
family. To wear Adam is to have our lives tell that story of Adam. That we have
been tenderly shaped and enlivened by God, that we have a mission to tend this
world, and we are people formed to be in communion, in relationship, formed for
family, whatever shape that takes. It also means we are a people whose actions
matter, who are capable of doing right and doing wrong. And it means we have
done wrong.
But God
does not leave us so. God does not let our wrong have the final word. God
clothes us with Christ. To be clothed with Christ is to let our lives shine with
the story of Christ, the story of sacrifice, the story of a love so powerful it
loved us to the end and then refused to let the end be the end, and rose from
the dead be with us again.
In his
letter to the Romans, Paul described baptism as dying and rising with Christ;
being baptized into Christ’s death that we might be baptized into his
resurrection. The waters of baptism are cleansing, are healing, they wash away
the personal sins of adults and older children and, in infants, wash away that
sin of Adam that inclines us away from the good. They’re waters that wash, but
they’re also burial waters. That’s easier to see maybe with an immersion
baptism but it’s just as sacramentally true with a pouring baptism. Baptism
begins that process of being clothed with Christ by bringing the new Christians
into the baptismal priesthood, equipping them to offer every sorrow of their
lives as a sacrifice joined with Christ’s perfect sacrifice, helping them to
start always choosing love, even when that’s hard.
It’s a
beginning, it’s a first step. That’s why Paul speaks in the future tense, we
will wear Christ, even though Christ embraces now in baptism. Putting on Christ
isn’t like being forced into a straitjacket. It’s a slow process of lovingly fastening
this new identity to ourselves because we delight in it, of becoming who we
wear. It’s a wonderful journey N is just starting out on today. She’ll need the
witness of her parents and godparents in a special way, and of the whole
church. But, today she gets the gift, she gets the outfit she’ll grow into, so
one day she can stand shoulder to shoulder with the saints in heaven, as all delight
to cry out, “We’re wearing Christ.”
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