The Religious Leaders’ Fashion Show (Matthew 23:1-12)

There are two garments that I avoid wearing, if at all possible, that if I do end up wearing them, I feel like I’ve lost a part of the game of life – wet suits and clergy robes. The wet suit thing stems purely from my own vanity. To pull an obscure 2000s comedy reference, I may not be a fat man, but I am certainly made of shapes. A wet suit has a powerful way of accentuating those shapes in ways that I find wildly unappealing. I look bad in a wet suit. Also, you can only put them on by struggling into them, and then, you have to struggle out of them because they suction onto your skin by design. Also, if you find yourself in a group of people all wearing wet suits and helmets, you look like a bobsled team. Maybe, that particular issue isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t match with my aesthetic goals. Not since my days as a seven year old playing Olympics on a particularly steep driveway in our neighborhood have I looked my friends and desired to resemble four, cold, Scandinavian men named Sven.

The clergy robe thing stems from a related but more complicated set of factors. I fundamentally get the arguments why formal clergy robes still exist in the 21st Century. Theologically, to wear the robes places the authority on your office, as pastor, rather than on yourself as a Christian. You wear the uniform that says, “this is a pastor,” so that you can make clear that your ability to live into the calling comes from God choosing you rather than your particular skill at the Christian walk. You don’t have to live in an endless cycle of needing to prove your authenticity, and in that way, perhaps, make the proceedings more about God. Also, particularly for female clergy, your body and your choice of clothes come under less observation and thus less scrutiny by congregation members. One might think that this happens less in the Year of Our Lord, 2023, but ask any of my female colleagues, and they all have horror stories. Robes handily avoid a lot of that.

So, like the wet suit issue, the problem lies with me. I don’t feel like myself in clergy robes. It feels like a costume and an attention getting one at that. I grew up on stage, wearing costumes. When I put on a costume, I seek to draw the audience’s attention. I put on a performance. Your street clothes, in theatre parlance, are what you change out of and back into after, not what you wear on stage. For me, wearing robes turns the whole thing into a performance. I take on the character for the moment, and then, I change back into myself. It makes me feel inauthentic, so I’d rather be in my street clothes. On top of that, worship services are not like graduations, where everyone wears robes. Clergy robes deliberately, visually, set you apart, and for me, it feels like putting on an act of being super holy or holier than everyone else.

For me personally, not for others generally, clergy robes fall into the broad phylacteries and long fringe trap. Phylacteries, boxes containing scripture that get lashed to the body, and fringed shawls remain a part of Jewish worship to this day. The issue that Jesus takes up with the Pharisees is that they use their commitment to these practices to heap attention on themselves for their powerful and overt holiness. The issues lie not with the phylactery or fringe but with the particular wearer of the phylactery or fringe.

Jesus offers up humility as a key marker of holiness and sets it off against a performance. Thus, humility becomes another one of those aspects of a Godly life about motivation and not simply action. It involves interrogating why we do something – not simply what we do. For me, I feel closest to God, when I lean into the fact that I’m just a punk kid from the suburbs, who has maybe learned a thing or two along the way, and not someone with titles and robes. I can claim a lot of fancy things for myself, but deep down, I know that in doing so, I’m putting on a show. I separate myself from the rest of the Body of Christ rather than nestling in with everyone else. I feel the same temptation to spiritual grandeur as the Pharisees and seek ways to push that away. Robes get wrapped up in that struggle, and I embrace a more informal way of being.

Avoiding the world of the religious leaders’ fashion probably isn’t everyone’s struggle. However, we live in an era where more and more and more of life exists for show. Clothes, parenting, daily living, morning routines, makeup techniques, the best moments of life, the worst moments of life, workouts, leisure activities, spirituality, and literally everything else within human life have been subsumed into the forever on stage, forever online life of social media. Turning our faith life into another performance for our followers to see (and thus think well of us) stands as a real temptation. Jesus’s words hold a powerful truth that us and our modern age need desperately to hear.

“The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:11-12 NRSV)