(58) What Would Jesus Wear?

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for What Would Jesus Wear?, originally shared on October 22, 2020. It was the fifty-eighth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What would Jesus wear? Today, we’re going to consider our changing habits of dress during the pandemic and how Jesus can help us with that.

   We’re at a point in the Coronavirus pandemic where things are starting to wear down on us. There’s a certain malaise setting in, I think, a resignation to a difficult future for most Americans. Maybe we’re just lowering our expectations given what we anticipate will be a volatile national life following the November presidential election, no matter who wins, which may not be known for some time, prolonging everybody’s anxiety.

   Maybe we’re anticipating the cooler wetter weather that will push people inside, and the coming flu season, that could push an otherwise stable LA County and surrounding areas, into a second wave as most of the rest of the country is now experiencing.

   Maybe it’s the gray skies and the fact that the Dodgers lost the second game of the World Series last night.

   On the other hand, we are adapting to the “new normal” and there’s every reason to think that Americans are and will continue to be a resilient people. We’ll adapt and overcome, as we have so many times before.

   With most of us at home more, and even working from home, would it be safe to say that our dress has adapted, that it has become more “informal” than usual? I can’t remember the last time I wore a clergy collar. I wore dress pants to an online fundraising non-dinner that Sally and I support every year; I think that was the first time in 6-months. I usually wear jeans or ratty cargoes. Our yard is my gym now, and I’ve worn one set of grubby outdoor work clothes to threads and am on my second set.

   Even if you’re working from home and have to dress up a little bit, though, you don’t have to completely dress-up. Although now, maybe you do.

   You’ve seen the memes and watched the embarrassing Zoom moments, the breakdowns and lapses of judgement. Mainstream TV commercials now spoof this Zoom dubious dress code.

   Mark Twain, via Shakespeare, said that “clothes make the man”, or the person. That is, we feel a certain way when we wear certain clothes. And, people judge who we are based, in part, on what we are wearing.

   Sally and I were talking about using my collection of silly hats for one of these videos the other day, and I got to thinking about whether Jesus wore a hat. I couldn’t think of any reference in the Bible, so I Googled it. “Did Jesus wear a hat?”

   I didn’t find much help, but I did find a very interesting article on what Jesus wore. Here’s a link: https://theconversation.com/what-did-jesus-wear-90783

   The article described recent interest in Jesus’ appearance, referencing the 2011 BBC documentary “Son of God” in which a skull from 1^st century Israel was reconstructed, CSI style, with flesh and tendons, etc. to give a picture of what Jesus might have looked like. The author pointed out that the olive skin tone, and black, shortish hair and beard were correct, but everything else was just a guess.

   That observation bears some reflection. We speak, sometimes, of the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith. The Jesus of history was a dark skinned, middle eastern Jew. Some things about that can be known, and some things are reasonable guesses. The Jesus of faith is like me, can relate to me, understands me, loves me. That is why Jesus looks Asian in Asian Christian art, African in African Christian art, European in European Christian art, and so on. Jesus was not likely taller, blonder, more blue-eyed, or more white than his contemporaries; that is an image of European art, not of history.

   Jesus’ clothes are also not what we are used to seeing. They were not likely based around a single robe, always white, and not long. And, they were embarrassing.

   The Bible indicates that Jesus likely wore a mantle, which men preferred to be undyed, and sandals. (Mark 6:56; Matthew 3:11)

   He wore a tunic, which for men stopped just below the knee, not at the ankles. Only rich men wore long tunics.

   Jesus’ tunic was also made in one piece. I had believed that this was rare and expensive. The soldiers at the cross are described as gambling to see who would get Jesus tunic. In fact, I heard a preacher once saying that this was evidence that Jesus wasn’t poor, having a one-piece tunic.

   Apparently this is not the case. The author, Joan Taylor, Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism, King’s College London, points out that, “One-piece tunics in first-century Judaea were normally thin undergarments or children’s wear. We shouldn’t think of contemporary underwear, but wearing a one-piece on its own was probably not good form. It was extremely basic.”

   A critic of Christianity later remembered that Jesus’ clothes were shabby and that he “obtained his means of livelihood in a disgraceful and importunate way” that is, the author observes, by begging or receiving donations.

   When Christian author Origen argued against this critic, he did not dispute these things.

   Jesus “wore a basic tunic that others wore as an undergarment” Professor Taylor writes, bluntly.

   Jesus identified with the poor. Why? Because he wanted to romanticize poverty? Because it’s best to be poor? I don’t think so.

   I think it was because the poor have no options. That’s what it means to be poor. No options meant that they had nothing to turn to in order to distract them from the living relationship with the living God, the Kingdom of God, that Jesus came to offer all.

   Jesus emptied himself of everything to give us eternity, here and in the world to come. We, in response, are cheerfully generous.

   Jesus said,

*Matthew 6:25-33

   What is our most important garment?

*Galatians 3:27

   That is the streams of living water. God, God’s self within us.

   What would Jesus wear? Jesus wore a crown of thorns. He wore a mantle of blood on the cross. He did it for us, for our Sin, that is, all that separates us from God. And we wear Jesus.