A lost joy. . .

The advent of the come as you are culture has certainly made it easier but has it improved anything?  Go to any funeral or wedding or any other major event and you see that folks have taken this idea to heart.  Shorts, khakis, t-shirts with advertising, jeans with holes, and worn polos are the rule of the day.  Gone is the day when you might expect a suit or sport coat or dress.  Even when men wear a sport coat it is likely worn without a collar shirt or tie and probably over jeans.  Women wear comfortable clothing as well and the dresses of the day are more often than not casual and not formal.  Kids are likewise dressed or play more than formality.  We all feel better about it, right?

You see, that is the problem.  All our informality has not exactly increased our joy.  In fact it may have done the opposite.  Dressing down (even to the point of sleepwear that now functions as out and about clothing) brings with it the inevitable reduction of expectation and joy in the event itself.  Certainly there is a loss of solemn even when it is not sad but noble.  The fact that we hunger for such things can be seen in the way we gleefully watch as the English royals put on their best and historic duds for the occasion and the way we watch to see what Hollywood royalty are wearing on the red carpet.  But somehow we have distanced ourselves from all of this.  I fear it has cost us.

I grew up in a lower middle class home.  My parents never had much in the way of money but their lives were rich.  They dressed well.  So did my brother and I.  We had matching overcoats, hats, and suits so that we looked like little adult men on Sunday morning and for the great and festive gatherings of family and life.  Girls had their own version of dress up which was not put on but a reflection of the values attached to the occasion and not simply an attempt to look good.  Everyone wore their best to church, weddings, and funerals.  Everyone acted their best, too.

In most churches, at most weddings, and at most funerals anymore you would not know that these were either solemn or festive occasions.  We look like we always look and nothing from our dress or demeanor signals anything different.  Our decorum leaves much to be desired.  We seem unable to shut up or observe silence even during prayer.  We carry our ever present water bottles or coffee cups and we never seem to know how to turn off the ringers of our electronic devices.  Our comfort and our connection to the world is more important than what is going on before our eyes.  That is the problem.

When we give out the white baptismal napkin it is quaint but not relevant.  We do not dress up for much of anything anymore and so it does not make much sense to us that God has deigned to cover us with the perfect white robe of Christ's righteousness.  At the other end of it all, the pall over the casket seems more like a table cloth than a reflection of the completion of God's work begun in us in our baptism as the dead now wait in Christ for the new bodies of the resurrection.  The paraments on the altar and pulpit and lectern are, well, quaint but largely misunderstood.  The vestments worn by the pastor are seen as attention getting and strange vesture rather than a reflection of anything belonging to Christ.  With our loss has come a lack of joy and awe, reverence and wonder.  It is all too plain and ordinary and so are we and therefore so must God also be.  There we have it wrong for sure.

Does there have to be an explanation or a reason for reverence, respect, awe, or wonder?  I hope not.  These are not utilitarian but special.  If the time comes when we rediscover this idea and begin to appreciate what it means to be dressed up for the occasion rather than dressed down for comfort, then we just might learn what it means to stand on the holy ground of God's presence or the holy fear of a sinful people whom God invites to stand before Him.  Then we just might also recover the joy that once accompanied on the inside the attention given to the outside.  But it may take a very long time to get this back and perhaps way longer than I have.