What our Sunday clothes say about who we are

The online community at RevGalBlogPals is participating in #NaBloPoMo, encouraging writers to respond to prompts every day throughout the month of November. If you haven’t discovered it yet, RevGalsBlogPals is a network or web of women clergy and their allies who support each other through prayer, fellowship, and conversations about the Sunday lectionary readings. Our virtual community intersects with our face-to-face lives when we find other RevGalBlogPals in our own local communities and networks.

Female clergy colleagues often note people’s propensity to comment on what we are wearing, which makes me chuckle at the first prompt which says:

“Write about what you wear at church (your best clothes, your comfy clothes, robe, stole, etc.) What does the phrase “church clothes” look like in your world?"

On Sundays in my Lutheran church, I am teaching, leading worship and preaching, so I wear a clerical shirt with whatever other clothes I wear that day. On a work day or the day of our annual congregation picnic, that may be blue jeans, but most often, it is business clothes. During worship in my traditional setting, I most often wear a plain white cotton alb with a rope cincture or rope that wraps around my waist, and a liturgical stole that reflects the colors of the season in the church year. On some of the major festival Sundays, including the Nativity of our Lord (Christmas Eve), Easter Sunday and Pentecost, I also wear a chasuble, which is an outer garment that I wear over the alb and stole.

Because the stoles and chasubles reflect where we are in the church year, they help me tell the story of the promises we receive in this gift of faith that God gives each of us. And while this Sunday’s Gospel reading (Mark 12:38-44) says, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes,” I see my vestments, and especially my alb, as a reminder of those promises:

“Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)

“As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” (Galatians 3:27)