This
post is about liturgical vestments. Here’s the background. Last week I
“covenanted” with my congregation, Lawrence Park Community Church, to be their
pastor. I’ve actually been doing that work for three years now, but it took
that long to formalize my transfer from the Christian Reformed Church to the
United Church of Canada.
At
the covenanting service, the Presbytery representatives—a Presbytery is a group
of local churches—wore liturgical vestments—albs and stoles, both red and
white.
I
didn’t. I wore a suit.
It
isn’t that I don’t have vestments. More precisely—I have an academic gown. It
is forest green, the colour of my school, Wayne State University. It has three
chevrons—stripes—on the sleeve signifying the fact that I have an earned doctorate.
The stole is gold and grey, the colours of the Speech Communication department I
graduated from.
In
the Presbyterian tradition, in particular, preachers used to wear their
academic gowns in the pulpit. The practice spread to preachers who were not academics
per se. These academic “Genevan”
gowns were usually black. They represented a rejection of the Roman Catholic
(and Eastern Orthodox) practice of wearing a variety of liturgical vestments.
However,
growing up I don’t recall ever seeing a minister wear liturgical gowns, Genevan
or otherwise. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. That changed when, in seminary,
I started attending Church of the Servant CRC in Grand Rapids. I was soon asked
to do the children’s sermon each week. One Advent, the worship committee
decided I should wear a simple alb with four very attractive, hand made stoles,
each embroidered with a symbol that was to be that week’s children’s sermon
subject. The kids—as I recall—loved the stoles, and I had one of those stoles for many
years after, even though I never used it again, in worship. I outgrew the
alb—laterally, that is—and never wore it after seminary.
But
there were those Presbyterian representatives at my covenanting service, in red
and white albs and stoles. What do I make of liturgical vestments now?
We
know, from the Old Testament, that the ancient Israelites wore very elaborate
liturgical vestments. The New Testament, on the other hand, doesn’t mention
liturgical vestments at all.
The New Testament does mention the clothing of a few key figures, a few times. In Matthew 11, for
example, Jesus says that John the Baptist, his cousin the wild-eyed prophet,
did not wear soft robes like those who lived in royal palaces. Instead, we know
from elsewhere that John the Baptist wore clothing made of camel’s hair, which
is coarse, and was mostly used in his day as tent cloth. John the Baptist’s
clothing was only a little less weird, even then, than the fact that he
survived on a diet of locusts and wild honey.
Ironically,
Jesus did wear reasonably soft robes even though he didn’t
live in a palace either. His robe was probably made of linen, and we learn in the
Gospel of John that it didn’t have any seams. Even if not Herod quality, Jesus' robe would have been expensive
and valuable, perhaps on par with a Brooks Brothers business suit now. At
his crucifixion the Roman guards were so impressed by it that they decided to
gamble each other for the right to own it, rather than cut it up to share.
In
the early church the first apostles, deacons and bishops did not wear vestments.
The church was often persecuted, after all, so no one—even those in leadership
positions—went out of his or her way to advertise who they were.
However,
at about the time that the Emperor Constantine made Christianity an official religion
of the Roman Empire, early in the fourth century, things changed. Now it was
quite an honour to be a priest or a bishop. And in short order church officials
started wearing clothing—both in and out of church—that advertised their work
and rank. But rather than wear vestments like those described in the Old
Testament, these early Christian leaders especially modelled their vestments on
the secular uniforms of the day. In particular, clergy adopted the fashions—special
scarves or stoles, robes, hats and colors of the Roman civil service, army, and
judiciary.
However,
as Roman secular fashion changed and evolved, clergy fashion lagged far behind.
In fact, the basic alb, chasuble and stole worn by clergy today still harp back
to the days of ancient Rome, while the rest of Italian fashion has changed
quite a bit!
Now,
before anyone gets the wrong idea, I don’t intend, here, to argue that clergy
should or should not wear vestments. For me it’s a personal decision.
What
interests me about the history of vestments is that clergy started wearing them—in
imitation of the secular counterparts—in part to advertise their calling, their
status, and soon, their wealth. The clergy adopted the clothing of the status
quo to make the point that they had arrived. Choosing to wear vestments was,
originally, a political act, an act that underlined that the church was now a
power to contend with, and that its leaders were people of high status. They
were members of one of the three medieval estates—the one that negotiated the
relation between heaven and earth. Like the pope in Washington this week, clergy
were not to be taken lightly.
I
wonder if that turn, that fundamental change in orientation among clergy was
all good. It hardly seems coincidental that once the church no longer was
itself persecuted, it soon started persecuting Christians who did not agree
with Emperor Constantine and his allies. As soon as the church was legalized by
the Roman Empire, Christians decided that pacifism—their historic
practice—wasn’t going to work anymore, and so Christians were no longer
excommunicated when they joined Rome’s legions. In short, when Constantine
legalized the church, the church turned from being a counter cultural, alternative
for living the good life into an absolutely status
quo institution, one that was used by the Emperor, when convenient, to
quash dissent, extend Roman power, and win the hearts of the people for Roman
political ends. And the adoption, by clergy, of liturgical vestments whose
design mirrored the clothing of ranking Romans was perhaps the most visible
sign of these changes.
Today,
at least in the West, unless you are a ranking Catholic prelate, vestments are
usually worn only in church. The status that Christianity had as one of
Constantine’s levers of power has long dissipated. The pope may draw large
crowds in America, but you can be sure that even among the Catholics most
practice birth control anyway and can’t understand why women are excluded from
ordination. Judging by all the many times the pope has pleaded and prayed for
peace and economic fairness and the environment, he isn’t that influential in
the secular realm either.
So
it is hard to imagine that wearing vestments in church or on the street—as
with a clerical collar, perhaps—is much of a status thing. No, whatever
positive value vestments have in the present has to be connected to the way in
which they communicate the gospel today.
I
think back to when I was in seminary. Those stoles I wore for just a few weeks
during Advent made them a talking point. After church, some of the kids would
track me down for a closer look. Parents wanted to see and finger the stoles
too. They were really cool. They connected with that day's worship. The arts are one of the best ways to bring fresh
attention to the core message of the gospel.
On
the other hand, liturgical vestments that seem to put clergy in a different
class, that suggest clergy have some sort of mystic authority—liturgical vestments
that are a mish mash of impenetrable symbols and special colours that are
rarely, if ever used to communicate the gospel in a fresh and interesting
way—such use of liturgical garments seems off-putting to me. It allies the
employees of the church as institution with our current cultural suspicion of
all institutions. That probably isn’t a good thing. The early church’s use of
secular dress before the Constantinian revolution seems wiser to me, and more
in keeping with the historic Protestant emphasis on the priesthood of all
believers.
They
say the clothes make the man—or woman. I don’t think that’s true in the case of
clergy. It is, rather, a caring heart and behavior, as well as the ability to
share the Christian story with a modicum of grace and conviction that make the
pastor.
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