Christian Clothing

You are God's chosen people. You are holy and dearly loved. So put on tender mercy and kindness as if they were your clothes. Don't be proud. Be gentle and patient. Put up with one another. Forgive one another if you are holding something against someone. Forgive, just as the Lord forgave you. And over all these good things put on love. Love holds them all together perfectly as if they were one (Colossians 3:12-14). Contemporary Testimony: Our World Belongs to God: The church is a gathering of forgiven sinners called to be holy. Saved by the patient grace of God, we deal patiently with others and together confess our need for grace and forgiveness (39). Imagine with me: what does the typical Christian look like? How does this person behave? What stands out as the driving motivation of their life? Hang on to these questions and images for a moment. Yesterday's Hamilton Spectator included an opinion piece by Michael Cohen. It was more of a rant. It began with Canadian census data which indicates that the number of people claiming to be Christian is steadily declining. Michael wondered why Christian leaders are alarmed by this. "There are seemingly endless stories of abuse, examples of hypocrisy, gruesome tales of historic oppression, anti-vaccination hysteria, mobs proclaiming their faith as they scream support for Donald Trump…" he writes. He does not want to be identified with this expression of Christianity. Many who think like him refuse to check Christian on the census form. I've ranted about this myself. And then I wonder if I am partially at fault. Maybe I have not lived grace well enough. Maybe I have not preached grace well enough. I've long believed that there is only one topic for preaching, and that is grace, God's grace. And the church needs to hear it now more than ever. Passages like our text frequently catch me up short. Why are they not front and centre in our churches? It tells us what Christians should look like: merciful, kind, gentle, patient, quick to forgive, not holding grudges, loving. When others think Christian, this is the image that ought to come to their minds. The Contemporary Testimony gets it right: "saved by the patient grace of God, we deal patiently with others and together confess our need for grace and forgiveness". Why, if this is our confession, is it not deeply engrained in our communities? As I was growing up, each Sunday evening I heard a sermon based on the Heidelberg Catechism which begins with these brilliant words, "I am not my own, but belong-body and soul, in life and in death-to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ…Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him." This catches the content of our text quite well. Once we know that we are God's chosen people, our lives can begin to change. Again, I wonder, why are Christians not known for this. Who wouldn't want to be part of this kind of community? What do we do about it? There is only one thing to do. Begin at home, in one's own life. This week's prayer practice is called the 'Welcoming Prayer.' It invites us to be mindful of all the times we face temptations to grasp for 'security, affection or control'. And when faced with such, we then surrender ourselves to Jesus, believing that he offers all the security and affection that we need, and we give control of ourselves to him. We release ourselves to Jesus and welcome him in. We are the ones who can change the image other folks have of Christianity.