Wednesday • 5/29/2024 •

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago. 

Undressed for Church

Jesus tells a parable about a man who accepts a king’s invitation to a wedding banquet but who shows up without clothes appropriate to the occasion (Matthew 22:11-14). Noticed by the king, he is kicked out.

Whenever I read the parable, I think of myself in the early and woefully immature days of my faith – and of how my first pastor, Mort Whitman, related to me. I think of the several times I sensed in Mort’s sad eyes the King’s expectation: “Do you understand Who invited you? And to what an amazing occasion it is that you have been invited?” There were both sadness and tenderness — both a rebuke and a further invitation — in Mort’s gaze.

Room to Grow

Every time I caught that look, I felt undressed, and was reduced (as was the fellow in the parable) to silence. Unlike the parable, though, strong arms didn’t grab me and throw me out. Happily, the King gave me time and space to move from a sullen to a teachable silence. Over time, the kindness with which Mort’s eyes answered my spiritual childishness melted my cold heart.

Mort welcomed me past the entrance, and into the expansive living spaces of God’s Kingdom palace. He did so by reminding me of the worth of the faith that I had embraced – or that had embraced me (I’ve never fully sorted that out).

Early Church

Mort’s method was a lot like that of Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem (mid-4th century). In Cyril’s Jerusalem, becoming a Christian was the “deal.” The huge and elegant Church of the Holy Sepulchre had just been built over the site of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection (replacing a pagan temple to Venus).

The city was awash with pilgrims and new residents. Many were flirting with the faith. Many sought baptism, the prerequisite for inclusion at the Christian Feast (Communion). Some sought baptism because they genuinely believed; some because they thought baptism might help them get a job; some because they thought baptism might help them find a mate; and some out of sheer curiosity.

Cyril asked candidates for baptism a cautionary question: “Do you expect to see without being seen? Do you think that you can be curious about what is going on without God being curious about your heart?” (Procatechesis 2).*

This is not just any occasion, so not any old clothes will do. The One in whose honor this feast is being held, after all, is “Bridegroom of souls.” Cyril reminds the candidates of the parable of the man who dressed wrongly for the king’s wedding feast: “If your soul is dressed in avarice, change your clothes before you come in…. Take off fornication and impurity, and put on the shining white garment of chastity.”

Overdressed

Cyril wasn’t asking people to clean themselves up so God would accept them. As they would eventually discover, no matter what they wore, on the day of their baptism they were going to have to strip – yes, literally (in the dark, men and women separately) — and undergo baptism without benefit of any clothing! As Christ hung naked in his crucifixion, Cyril explained, so we go naked into the baptismal waters where we share our co-crucifixion with Christ. As Adam and Eve were originally garbed in nothing but their innocence, so, in Christ, we rise as those to whom innocence has been restored! Cyril’s message was: don’t think you can take your greed and impurity with you into the baptismal waters; he loves you too much to let you hold on to that stuff!

When the newly baptized emerged naked from the waters, they were wrapped with new, white robes. The message: in place of whatever clothes we start with, Christ offers “a shining garment,” “the garment of salvation,” and “the tunic of gladness.”** The newly baptized wore those robes during the next week, when they received daily teaching about the mysteries they had just experienced and about the baptized life that now lay before them.

Welcome to Transformation

The King has sent for everybody, “the evil and the good” (Matthew 22:10). But the One who invites insists on meddling. He refuses to rubber-stamp the attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs we bring with us. Our “Bridegroom of souls” insists we surrender the right to define who we are – all of who we are: our occupational, our musical, our political, our sexual selves. Jesus, insists Cyril, calls us to welcome people all the way into baptismal waters, where grace transforms everything.

My take-away from Mort’s penetrating gaze and Cyril’s challenging words: worship worthy of the Feast is welcoming worship that helps us all understand that a change of clothes will be necessary.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

* References are from Edward Yarnold, S.J., Cyril of Jerusalem (Routledge, 2000), pp. 79,80,85,180-181.

** (Procatechesis 16; Mystagogy 4.8; the latter two phrases, quoting Isaiah 61:10)