To my contemporaries: Remember when we used to really dress up when we went to church? We had Sunday clothes and Sunday shoes and almost all the men wore suits and ties, and the women wore stockings and high heeled shoes. And hats!!
Thank goodness we’ve moved on.
Maybe in some churches, things are still rather formal. At our church (and in most churches I’ve been in over the past few years), we are a place where church folk can be comfortable and feel at home in more casual clothes. Clothes that are comfortable. Clothes that might cost less than dressy outfits and shoes. Clothes that do not have to be dry-cleaned. I can’t recall the last time I saw a man with a tie.
And, if I wore clothes that had to go to the dry-cleaners regularly, I would not be able to be a Sunday School teacher. A preschool Sunday School room is ‘way too messy for the wearing of silks and woolens.
Over the years, I’ve had the experience of looking down at my skirt, moments before walking up to the platform to read Scripture, and noticing a swath of purple paint across the hem.
I have sat in a pew and reached up to straighten my collar and felt the crusty, dried, results of a runny nose, wiped across my shoulder, deposited by a weeping child who felt left behind when her Mom and Dad went on to their own Sunday School room.
I have held, in my lap, a kid who seemed to be feeling a little poorly, and then felt the warmth of that “feeling poorly” run down my back.
I have, in a pale yellow dress, backed up to our drying rack, which held a painting that, in Early Childhood terms, is called Preschool Brown (the result of painting with great exuberance, using all the colors of paint available).
What’s happened to my clothes?!?
Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’”
Mark 5:25-31 (New Revised Standard Version)
Getting close to folks means that we make a difference in their lives. These days, getting “close” can be more difficult. I feel frustrated by not really being able to smile at people. I’m nodding to people, and sometimes even saying, “I’m smiling at you,” to someone who holds a door for me or nods as we pass.
I was hurrying into Walgreens this morning, wanting to pick up a photo I needed. As I walked from my car, I saw a woman coming out of the store. With her mask on. MASK! I’d rushed out of the car and had forgotten mine. I turned around and went back for it. She’d had several bags to put in the car and was just getting in as I passed her car on my way back. I stopped a second to say, “I’m so glad I saw you coming out. I’d forgotten my mask!” She laughed and said, “Yeah. It’s different now.”
“Who touched my clothes?” “Who touched me?” Those questions seem harder to respond to right now. We’re not supposed to get quite so physically close as we might have a few months ago. No shaking hands. No hugs. Six feet apart seems like quite a distance. We’re being challenged to find ways for contact that are different from the usual. And aren’t we looking forward to the time when we can look back and say, “Wow. That was something, wasn’t it! But we made it through.”
