The Well Dressed Christian

February 14, 1988

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Scripture: Ephesians 6:10-17

First, he waggled a stubby finger in my face, and then he looked at me, hard, like

he really meant business.

And out it poured.... “Do you know”, he said, “what’s wrong with you preachers? Do

you know the main trouble with the whole pile of you?”

And I thought, “Oh, good grief. What do you suppose he’s found out NOW?” Maybe it’s a natural defensiveness, maybe it’s paranoia, I don’t know, but I confess I get a little edgy when people begin a conversation that belligerently, especially when it’s directed toward the ministry. I’m just glad they don’t usually know more than they do. Then they’d really have something to talk about.

But I covered all that up as best I could behind a smiling countenance (preachers learn to do that in Seminary---It’s a course we take...usually second year...Smiling Countenance 205)....I covered all that up as best I could and replied  in my sweetest voice, “Why, no, what is wrong with us preachers?”

Well, I’ll tell you what’s wrong”, he answered, and I was quite sure he would....“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you. You’re always telling us WHAT, but you never tell us HOW.

Now, that drew sort of a blank as far as I was concerned, so I hastily requested an elucidation. “Huh?” I think was the way I put it.

So he told me again, this time in a little more detail....You preachers, he said, you ministers, you professional piety peddlers (and I thought I caught just the slightest touch of slur in his tone....) You’re always expounding the content of Christianity, you’re always telling us WHAT it says, and WHAT it stands for, You’re always telling us to believe and have faith, and trust, and all the rest, but you never tell us HOW to experience these things you talk about so glibly. If it’s really so good and so true, maybe some of the rest of us would like to get in on it.

And then he said this....If you do know how, if you’re not just dressed up in some kind of costume, for heaven’s sake, why don’t you come across and share it with everybody. Don’t just tell us WHAT, tell us HOW.

Isn’t it interesting how you can always think of the right thing to say after the right time to say it is gone forever? Have you ever been in that boat? I’m excellent at it, always have been, and this occasion, alas, was no exception.

I’m not going to tell you what I really said, because you’d giggle....I blew it, that’s all....I’m not going to tell you what I really said. I’m going to tell you instead how I wish I’d answered him. If only I had been quick and sensitive, which I’m not, instead of hopelessly Neanderthal, which I am, I’d have said something like this:

Costume? Why of course I’m dressed up in some kind of costume....Of course I’m decked out in a disguise. All beginning Christians are, and right there is the clue to the solution of your problem.

And then I would have said, by way of explanation....if I’d thought of it----You see, you don’t just come into the Christian life fully matured. You don’t just leap into it knowing all the answers. You don’t move in one sudden jump from practical paganism to pristine sanctity....NOBODY DOES....That’s just not the way it happens for most people.

Bishop Hazen Werner wrote a book a few years ago entitled NO SAINTS SUDDENLY, and I’m sure that’s right.

Christianity, in the beginning at least, is something which in a sense you do put on, almost the way you would a coat or a pair of pants, until, as Thomas Carlyle says, “The clothes make the man.”

And then I would have said, if I’d thought of it, “Remember now, we’re talking about the HOW of Christianity.....HOW you can come to know something of its riches, its depths, its vitality....PUT IT ON, that’s the way....Try it on for size, Wear it around for a while, and the first thing you know, it won’t be an adornment any longer, it won’t be just an accessory, it will be a part of you, an essential integral part of your very being, just as much a part of you, in fact, as the very air you breathe into your body.

That’s what I would have said, or something like it, if only I had been able to think of it.

And as a matter of fact, if I had said something like that, I wouldn’t have been saying anything especially new at all. All I would have been doing is simply paraphrasing something the Apostle Paul said nearly 2000 years ago.

Read the 6th Chapter of Ephesians....I just read a part of it for our scripture lesson.

Put on the whole armor of God, Paul writes, and not only that, but grid your loins with truth, cover your chest with the breastplate of righteousness. Shod your feet with the gospel, and carry with you the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation.

“Put them on”, says Paul, and I’m taking a few liberties with the actual wording, but not, I think, with the essential spirit of it.... “Put them on and wear them around.”

Now, isn’t Paul saying here, at least in part, that the way to know God, the way to come into the Christian life and experience it...the HOW of Christianity, is to dress yourself up in godly attire.....Adorn yourself, garb yourself, clothe yourself in godly practices... assume, even pretend, if you have to, that you’re going to be as Christlike as possible, maybe just for a day, maybe just for an hour at first, and then see if after a few efforts, you don’t actually find yourself moving in that direction.

You know, there’s a theory in psychology, an old theory...so old I studied it when I was in college. Maybe you did, too. It was taught to me as the James-Lange theory. It was named, at least the first half of it was named for William James, the great psychologist and philosopher, and it’s a pretty interesting hypothesis.

It says, in essence, that an emotional feeling is not the CAUSE of a physical body response, it’s the RESULT of a physical body response.

That is, your knees don’t shake because you’re scared...it’s the other way around. You’re scared because your knees are shaking. It’s not the feeling that produces the reaction, it’s the reaction that produces the feeling.

Now, you scoff, you smirk, and it does sound pretty strange, but let me tell you, there’s something to it.

The other day I was in a terrible mood. I mean, just a terrible mood. My wife knows about these things and she can vouch for it.

Everything had gone wrong....the coffee that morning was too weak, I nicked myself on the chin shaving, somebody had used up the last shot of deodorant...I was supposed to have 24 hour protection, and here I was plunging into the 2nd day, unprotected and already giving off signals.

Then I stubbed my toe, and spilled my diet-Coke....on the rug in the parsonage, for heaven’s sake, and, so help me, one of the kids came in to report that there was a flat tire on the car. IT WAS ONE OF THOSE DAYS....Maybe you’ve had one.

And then, right then in this scenario, on top of everything else, there came over the radio this sweet, treacly, smooth voice, just nauseatingly pleasant, and it said, I promise, it said: “Are you downhearted? Well then, smile.”

That dumb radio never knew how close it came to being belted into smithereens. I almost...but then, for some reason, I had a second thought. I said to myself, “Tom...(that’s what I call myself. We’re on a first name basis now....) I said, Tom, what have you got to lose?

And I formed the corners of my mouth into a kind of cheerful grimace. And, do you know, by golly, I did feel better. It was fantastic. It really worked. No sooner did I make myself smile than a sensation of beatitude went surging through the corridors of my morose body. I never heard my wife let out a more heartful sigh of relief. The whole dark day began to lighten. Even that empty deodorant can took in a more agreeable hue.

It wasn’t the feeling that produced the reaction. It was the reaction that produced the feeling. YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE IT, THEN DO IT. You do it, and then you feel like it.

Well, it’s this way in dealing with people...like husbands and wives. Today is Valentine’s Day. Did you remember? I hope you did.

Before they’re married, the bride and groom are always kissing and carrying on. Most of you remember and understand. After marriage, I’ll just tell you, it tends to taper off after a while and you ask a man,

“How is it that when you come home from work in the afternoon you never kiss your wife?”

And he says, if he’s like most husbands, anyway, he says, “Well, I’m too busy...I’ve got too much on my mind....all these reports to make out, all this work to do....And you say, “Yes, but you really ought to kiss your wife, you know.” And he says, “But if I kiss her when I don’t feel like it, I’m not being sincere.”

Well, I’m here to tell you, and I hope you’ll remember this...I’m here to tell you that as far as Christianity is concerned, sincerity is an overrated virtue. 

Don’t hear me wrong on this. Don’t misquote me. Don’t go out of here and write the Bishop that the Minister of Preaching said that sincerity was a bad thing...I didn’t say that.

Sincerity’s all right, in its place, It’s a perfectly good, upstanding quality, and we don’t need any less of it, but it’s not the most important quality in the Christian hierarchy of values. A person can be overwhelmingly sincere, and be sincerely wrong, sincerely mistaken, even sincerely demonic....I suppose no people in history were more sincere than the people who burned Joan of Arc at the stake...or crucified Jesus of Nazareth.

Sincerity’s not enough, not just by itself. It really is overrated. In interpersonal relations, the important thing is not so much to be sincere, but to do the deeds of love, to put them into practice in concrete situations.

The husband when he comes home from work, whether he feels like it or not, ought to kiss his wife, and the beautiful thing about it is that when he’s done it, he’ll feel more like doing it again. It’s not the feeling that produces the reaction, it’s the reaction that produces the feeling.

Now, from here you can move out into all kinds of areas. Let me pick one close to where I live...pastoral visitation.

House to house calling was a very big thing with Mr. Wesley, and it’s indelibly etched on the ministerial requirements for preachers. It’s something we took a vow to do regularly.

And, frankly, it’s not always easy. There are times when after a nice corn beef sandwich for lunch, you just don’t feel like going out.

Or, there’s something else you’d rather do....And in pour the alibis.... Gosh, this is a terrible day for visiting. Look at that cloud up there. If that isn’t a rain cloud, I never saw one. Hasn’t it rained every afternoon this week? And besides, I was just out two days ago.... Good grief, they’ll get cocky if I’m always coming around, and there’s certainly nothing worse than a cocky congregation. Make ‘em appreciate you....

And on and on it goes...the excuses keep piling up.

But you know, once you start, once you get going, once you get into somebody’s home, where there is need, or loneliness, or heartache, or anxiety....and you see reflected in somebody’s face an expression of gratitude for the coming of someone who represents God, even in the feeble way that you often represent Him, you wonder what in the world kept you away so long.

I have never been out to do pastoral visitation, I’m confident this is true.... I have never been out to do pastoral visitation but that I was glad when I came back that I had gone. You don’t feel like it, then do it...you do it, whether you feel like it or not, and then you find that you do feel like it, after all.

And this is the clue, I’m convinced of it, to the HOW of Christianity. Paul was aware of it, way back in the First Century.

Put on the whole armor of God....Dress yourself up in godliness, Make yourself, if need be, do the deeds of love, and after you’ve done a few, see if something isn’t happening to you, see if you aren’t more excited about future possibilities than you’ve ever been before.

One of the most exciting things to be about the Gospel is that anybody who really wants to can begin to live by it, starting right where he is at the particular moment. Oh, of course you won’t be an Albert Schweitzer[1] overnight....Albert Schweitzer wasn’t an Albert Schweitzer overnight. Nobody becomes theologically and spiritually mature in just a few hours.

Of course you’ll have setbacks, and failures...There’ll be times when you’ll think you’re worse off than when you started. Everyone on the Christian pilgrimage has this experience.

BUT YOU CAN BEGIN. YOU CAN START....You can begin right now, by doing the deeds of Jesus, by dressing up in His will, and by keeping yourself open to whatever future direction and guidance He might offer.

THERE’S NOT A ONE OF US ALIVE WHO DOESN’T KNOW MORE GOOD THAN HE OR SHE IS ACTUALLY PUTTING INTO PRACTICE. And by acting on what we do know, and already believe, the way opens up for almost unlimited possibilities. INDEED, THE POSSIBILITIES ARE LIMITED ONLY BY THE EXTENT OF OUR DEDICATION.

Isn’t this, after all, the way Jesus Himself called people into His service? Look at the Gospel record...He didn’t first test people on their knowledge of theology. That’s not how He began. He didn’t make them show their membership cards, or their pedigree, or ask them what they thought about the Graf-Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis[2]....For Him, Christianity was a way of life, It was an attitude, an acceptance, a relationship, something you did and thought and practiced.

One day He met James and John on the shores of Lake Tiberias....They didn’t have anything much to recommend them...just fisherman, no training, no education, no Bible courses.... FISHERMEN, without a shred of aptitude, to speak of, for the spiritual life. And Jesus said, “Hey, listen. I have a new way of life, a new way of getting along with people...I dare you, I challenge you.... FOLLOW ME, and see what you can do with it.

One night He has having supper with a sawed-off, little tax collector. You know he didn’t have any promise. Why, tax collectors were lower even than...politicians. They weren’t even people. They were traitors, Roman puppets, men who sold out and bled their own people, just to get a dime.

And Jesus said to him, “Zacchaeus, you’re not leading the best kind of life, and you know you’re not. You’re selfish and greedy and contemptuous. Why don’t you give it up and try it my way?”

Remember what happened then? Zacchaeus made his decision. “All right, Lord, I’ll do it. The half of my goods I’ll give to the poor, right here and now, and if I have cheated anyone, I’ll give it back fourfold.” And Jesus said, “Good for you, Zacchaeus. That’s a great beginning. Today salvation has come to this house.”

Now, please don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say. Oh I’m not suggesting that what Zacchaeus said and did that day is all there is to Christianity....Of course it’s not.

There’s more to this Faith of ours than any of us knows. There’s a depth to it, and a height, and a breadth about it that I suppose we’ll never comprehend even if we live to be a thousand.

But you don’t have to comprehend all of Christianity to begin. That’s the wonderful thing about it....You don’t have to understand all of it to start living by it. YOU CAN START RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, AND YOU can begin immediately to experience something of what Jesus referred to as “abundant living.”

This is the answer to the HOW of Christianity. THERE’S NO BETTER WAY IN THE WORLD TO COME TO KNOW GOD THAN TO GO TO WORK FOR HIM.

And I promise you this. As you do go to work for Him, as you do submit yourself to God’s call to do His will, to dress up in His clothing, just see if it doesn’t begin to happen. His presence in your life will become more real, and your relationship with His Son will become more precious.

Now I close with this. Have you read William Barrett’s novel, The Left Hand of God?

It was made into a movie after it was published, and Humphrey Bogart played the starring role. Not too long ago it was on the late, late movie.

It’s the story of an American flyer, Jim Carmody, who finds himself in China, during those turbulent days of communist takeover following the 2nd World War.

He’s not a religious man, Carmody isn’t....In fact, he’s a rather embittered cynic in many respects, but in order to escape detection and capture by his enemies, he assumes the role of a murdered Roman Catholic priest, a man, who, before his death had been the rector of a little mountain mission.

Carmody dresses himself up in the dead priest’s robe and cassock totally changing his identity, and goes through the motions of performing the priestly functions, just as if he were the priest in actual fact.

It has no effect on him at first, this masquerade. He had been raised a Catholic, he knew the part well enough, he knew enough words and motions to get by. It didn’t disturb his conscience at all. It was simply a matter of survival.

But little by little something begins to happen to him...something begins to change inside. He begins to think about those holy words he’s saying, and about those sacraments he’s dispensing.....

He begins to remember some training he had had back in his childhood. He begins to doubt some of his own doubts, and to wonder about the possibilities of something better, something finer, something bigger than himself.

He begins to brood on who he really is, and what the real purpose is of his being born in the first place.

And one night it all comes to a head...one night it happens to him...one night in the visiting room of an old, dilapidated hospital. It happens as he waits with a distraught family, trying to give them some word of comfort as they sit agonizingly through an operation on the father....

Even as he is attempting to express love without thinking of himself, THE LEFT HAND OF GOD, Barrett calls it, sneaks up on his blind side, and enters with a sense of overwhelming peace, into the depths of his soul.

It all started through the playing of a role, through performing, even at first without conviction, the deeds of love in a concrete situation.

But it quickly led from that to something profounder, as a man in the dress of a Christian, found that he had become one.

Put on the whole armor of God, Paul tells us...it’s the clue to the “how” of Christianity. Dress yourself up like a Christian, even if its dreams and demands are beyond you right now...

Try it. Do as much as you can do. Get started. Determine to be loving, and sympathetic, and patient, and Christ-like...just for today, if no longer, and pray that God will help you to wear your costume worthily.

It just could be for you the beginning of the greatest adventure conceivable.

--

[1] Albert Schweitzer was a French-German physician, theologian, musician, and philosopher(1875-1965).

[2] A theory in Biblical hermeneutics