Mark 5:14-17
The men taking care of the pigs ran to the town and the farms to spread the news. Then the people came out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had once been full of demons. He was sitting there with his clothes on and in his right mind, and they were terrified. Everyone who had seen what had happened told about the man and the pigs.
I have not been in a mall for years. Maybe even decades. I confess, the longer I stay away from malls, the more anxious I get about going inside one. There is a stimulation overload that elevates my anxiety, and I find I can't breathe until I get out.
Just hearing that little bit, you might insist I have an anxiety disorder like agoraphobia or claustrophobia. But it isn't that at all. It's all the clothes. All the racks and racks and racks of new clothes. Each store with so many racks of new clothes. It just bugs me. Frazzles my nerves.
The essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson (whom I am related to, by the way), once wrote in an essay, titled "Letters and Social Aims,"
...the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.
When I read that I said, out loud to myself, "What!?" The clothes we wear, and being "well-dressed", whatever that is, gives a person inner peace!!?? I thought, If that is true, then that's the reason there are so many racks of clothing in malls--our psychological search for "inward tranquility" through our clothing. That's what the clothing makers are preying on. It made me want to stay away from malls and clothing stores with even more vigor and anxiety.
I have tried to be a simple dresser. Because of my height, there aren't a whole lot of choices anyway. I don't have that many clothes. In fact, one of the things I like about Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, is that he wore the same thing every day. He had a kind of uniform--his black mock turtle necks, his jeans, his New Balance athletic shoes. That's all he had in his clothes closet. I've been trying to figure out some similar sort of basic clothing uniform.
I've been getting rid of a lot of my clothes I've had for years. Even though, like I said, I don't have many clothes, I have even less now. I've heard from a number of you that you also are trying to pare down the amount of clothes in your closets. One couple is turning all their closet hangers one direction. When they wear something, they turn the hanger the opposite direction. After a month's time they will see what and what not they are actually wearing--and get rid of things accordingly.
What is intriguing to me is that, in contradiction to Emerson's quote that I just mentioned, I've also found this quote by Charles Dickens in his book, Great Expectations: "Probably every new and eagerly expected garment ever put on since clothes came in fell a trifle short of the wearer's expectation." So what we have, when we make Dickens' quote and Emerson's quote come face-to-face is that even though we may be looking to our clothing for this sense of "inner tranquility," we never quite get there. We are searching for something that we think our clothing will give us, but it never quite happens.
It's just part of our sad human condition. We grasp at surface solutions to cover up our deeper brokenness. But it never quite does the trick.
Maybe we need both. We certainly need our inner confusion to be dealt with and healed. And then dressed in an outer simplicity that portrays that healing and strength. The wild man, after confronting Jesus, and himself being confronted, ended up "clothed and in his right mind." Both.
What do you assume the once naked, wild man was clothed with? Where did the man's clothes come from? Did the disciples happen to carry second hand clothes with them wherever they went? Or did they each carry suitcases when they rowed back and forth across the lake? Where did the clothes come from that the wild man put on after Jesus pulled the madness out of him and pushed it into the herd of pigs? We don't know. It's one of the many mysterious details the story doesn't tell us.
But what if Jesus gave the wild man, now in his right mind, the clothes off his back? Or at least his outer tunic? How much of an impact would that have made for Jesus to take care of the inner and outer man? It certainly isn't out of line with the way God acts.
Remember the creation story in Genesis? Adam and Eve have sinned. What do they do after they sinned? They hid. After finding them, God has a truth telling conversation with them. Tells them what the consequences are going to be of going against God’s wishes. But then what happens? Anybody remember?
And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21)
Isn't that an interesting, odd, gracious thing for God to do. God got out the needle and thread and made the first human beings their first set of clothes. God took care of their internal waywardness, then clothed them. What if Jesus--the Son of God--did the same thing for the wild man. Took care of the man's wildness, then gave him his own clothes. Something so powerful for the once wild man to receive--his sanity, then the very clothes of Christ. To be clothed by Christ. To have your shame reclothed by Christ himself. Just as God did for Adam and Eve. Sewed them clothes to dress them in something other than their own naked shame.
That's why new clothes are such a powerful image in the Bible for what God does for us. The image of putting on new clothes means to put on the new life of Christ. Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthian church: "For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Corinthians 5:4, ESV)
Being unclothed--naked--especially in public was a gross social and religious violation to the Jews. This violation of being unclothed in public was used by Paul as a metaphor for the deep violation that we commit before God. The naked self is another way of saying the false self that we wantonly display to God and the world. We need new clothes--the clothes of Christ--to replace our nakedness, or our false self.
Putting on the new clothes of Christ is another way of saying the life of holiness. The book we are reading, The Deeper Journey, says it this way: "It is the flowering of the very nature of our true being within ...To put on the new nature is the ultimate death blow to the false self" (page 120). Being clothed, and in our right mind. Our clothes, so to speak, dress up and portray our selves to the world. To be clothed in Christ, and in our right mind, is the way we portray our true selves, our Christ selves, to the world, rather than some masquerade or disguise.
Just as everyone saw the man "dressed and in his right mind", our being dressed in Christ, or by Christ, and in our right mind has to be public as well. It is in the messiness of life, the craziness, the wildness, that we need to clearly show the humbled, clothed and sane selves to the world. The impulse of our false selves is to dress for power, to exalt ourselves over others. But to be clothed in Christ is to be clothed in humility where we kneel before others in the clothing of Christ.
In our chapter for this week, the true self, the Christ self, being clothed in Christ, is demonstrated in five qualities: compassion, kindness, lowliness, gentleness, and patience. Let's take each of those five qualities and make sure you are clothed by Christ.
First, compassion, which the author describes as loving immersion in the life of others. The opposite--being clothed with power, or for power--is the way we dress ourselves, not so we can immerse ourselves in the lives of others, but so can try to force them to orbit around our sun. We want them to see we are large and in charge, rather than being dressed for servanthood, as Christ was.
A nurse during WWII became infamous because she would wander away from the medical camp onto the battlefield itself. She would personally drag in a soldier who was in dire need of medical attention. More than once she was reprimanded because she brought in not only American soldiers, but also soldiers of the enemy. One day, an officer discovered her, again, on the battlefield. He asked her, in a powerful and demanding tone, what she was doing there. Her answer: "I'm looking for the wounded. That's my job." She was immersing herself in other's lives, because she was dressed in the compassionate clothes of Christ.
The second quality, kindness, the author describes as sincere consideration and sensitivity for another person and their weakness.
One older woman I knew from the church in Hickman, Nebraska, always went to the post office in Hickman, even though she lived 15 miles away in Lincoln. She said she did that because the postal lady there was always friendly. Someone told her she could just go to one of the big post offices in Lincoln and use a stamp machine in the lobby. “I know,” she said, "but the machine won’t ask me about my arthritis.”
Kindness, I think, has to do with being genuinely interested in others stories. People are stories. Life is about people's stories. And taking the time to be interested in others stories. That's what Jesus did with the wild man. He took some time to hear a part of the man's story, to really listen, and then figure out how to use that kindness to put the man in his right mind and clothe him.
The third quality of being clothed in the clothes of Christ for others is lowliness. Lowliness, according to our chapter, considers others of inestimable value.
Despite his busy schedule during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln often visited the hospitals to cheer the wounded. On one occasion he saw a young man who was near death. “Is there anything I can do for you?” asked the compassionate President.
“Please write a letter to my mother,” came the reply. Unrecognized by the soldier, the President sat down and wrote as the youth told him what to say.
The letter read, “My Dearest Mother, I was badly hurt while doing my duty, and I won’t recover. Don’t sorrow too much for me. May God bless you and Father. Kiss Mary and John for me.” The young man was too weak to go on, so Lincoln signed the letter for him and then added this postscript: “Written for your son by Abraham Lincoln.”
Asking to see the note, the soldier was astonished to discover who had shown him such kindness. “Are you really our President?” he asked.
“Yes,” was the quiet answer. “Now, is there anything else I can do?”
The young man replied, with a weak voice, “Will you please hold my hand? I think it would help to see me through to the end.” The tall, gaunt President granted his request, offering warm words of encouragement until death stole the soldiers life away.
President Lincoln knew the inestimable value of each life that died in the Civil War, on both sides of the battle lines. Each one was dear and important, and he treated each one as such.
Gentleness is the fourth quality of the clothes of Christ. Gentleness is the freedom from being defensive, ego-protective, and ego-promoting. Gentleness is the quality of showing an unlimited grace in our relationships.
Here’s another Abraham Lincoln story. At the height of the Civil War, President Lincoln and his Secretary of War visited the home of General George McClellan. After a short wait, the General returned home, but making no acknowledgement of the President and his Secretary, he marched straight upstairs to his room. Thinking he would be right back down, they continued to wait. Finally, they questioned the housemaid who said, "I'm sorry, Mr. President, but the General asked me to tell you that he is tired and has gone to bed."
The Secretary of War was astonished and said, "Mr. President, this is unacceptable. You should relieve this man of his command." Lincoln thought a moment and said, "No, I will not relieve him; that man wins battles. I would hold his horse and wash the dirt from his boots if he could shorten this bloodshed by one hour."
That's what gentleness is. As I said, we are more apt to dress ourselves in power. Push our own power. President Lincoln could have. History has proven President Lincoln as one of the great leaders of our country. But it wasn't by pushing power. He saw how power gets in the way, how always being defensive or promoting his own misguided ego was not going to win the day. Only by being clothed in the gentleness of Christ would that happen.
The final quality of being clothed in Christ is patience. Patience is the quality of Christ's clothing of not needing to always be pushing our own agenda. Patience is allowing God to work in God's way and in God's own time.
One afternoon a father too his children to the movies. One of the sons, Scott, who was seven years old at the time, was anxious for the movie to begin. As the different advertisements appeared on the screen, Scott leaned over and whispered, "Dad, when's the movie going to start?"
"In a few minutes."
One minute later he again asked, "Dad, when is it going to start?"
"In just a little bit."
After he asked the third time, the father said, "Scott, don't ask me that question again. Just sit there and wait."
The boy, who was a quiet and obedient child, fidgeted and tried to be patient. Finally he leaned over and whispered a different question. "Dad, can you make time go faster?"
Likewise we say to God, "Father, can you make time go faster? I'm so tired of waiting. I'm anxious for my prayer to be answered. Please make it arrive sooner." We don't want God's work to unfold in God's time but in the anxiety of what we think is our own best timing.
It’s time for a change of clothes. Or maybe not a change as much as a whole new set of clothes. To be put in our right mind, and then clothed by Christ. New life outfits made from patience, gentleness, lowliness, kindness and compassion.
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