The Wedding Gown:

Simply Elegant

(#7 in the series “Try THIS on for Size!”)

 Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready;
to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure –
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

(Revelation 19:7-9)

 A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on Trinity Sunday, June 3, 2007

Kathryn Fanning tells of finishing college in the 1960s and accepting her first teaching job.  She found herself in those first months spending most of her salary on new clothes.  Regarding her passion for new clothes as wasteful, her father urged her to open a savings account instead.  She argued that clothes were a good investment.  Half jokingly she told her dad that she had to look sharp for any man to become interested.  When the discussion reached an impasse, she asked the advice of her brother.  “What do you think?  Savings account, or new clothes?”

Kathryn’s brother offered a hard-to-beat solution.  “Whichever draws the most interest!”

Clothes draw interest.  The series of sermons we conclude today has used clothing in an effort to attract your interest, not by appealing to your sense of fashion, but in the same way a museum arouses interest.  Museums know that clothing draws interest, both the clothing habits of ancient cultures and, in modern times, of famous people and events.  Perhaps you’ve seen a museum display of a dress worn by a First Lady at a Presidential inauguration, a uniform worn by a Hall of Fame athlete, or perhaps a jacket worn by a celebrity in the production of a famous film. 

This series has sought to be a museum of biblical clothing.  By surveying the clothing of the bible, we have sought to anchor ourselves within our Judeo-Christian history.  As we have examined the clothing of biblical figures, and Tried them on for Size, we have been made aware of the people, places, and events which have contributed to our own spiritual formation. 

Gunilla Norris, in an essay titled “Before All This,” tells of a very special dress which reminds her of her family origin in Northern Sweden.  This dress (sketched out on the back page of this sermon) belonged to her mother and grandmother.  The apron is decorated with fine embroidery and woven silver bands.  We see the date stitched in, 1901, the date her grandmother entered finishing school.  The red sash has the words, Varend, Anno 1935, the date and place of her mother’s marriage, and Cambridge, Anno 1958, the place and date of her own marriage.  The dress preserves family history.   It’s 100 years old, she tells us, but the pattern is much older, conceived when people didn’t have many clothes, when one’s best and perhaps only dress lasted a lifetime and was passed on to another generation.  “The dress is acquiring a patina.  It has been lived in.  I can feel my mother and my grandmother in it.  There is much history in this dress, it tells me I am part of specific places, people, and events.  It is my best dress and I am very careful of it as I want to pass it on one day.  In . . . my dress I feel defined and rooted.  I feel an obligation to tradition.”   Likewise, my intent in this series, “Trying on for Size” the clothing of the bible, has been to help you to “feel” the ancestors of your faith, thus being defined and rooted in your faith tradition. 

Today we look, not to the past, but forward, to the church’s Wedding Gown.  Before we look forward, though, I want to take a moment to remember.  This sermon falls with perfect timing for my family, as today, June 3, is the first anniversary of our daughter, Ashley’s, wedding to Brad Wagnon.  One year ago today we stood on a beautiful beach on the island of Turks and Caicos and Sherry took the picture you see on the back page as I walked Ashley, beautiful in her wedding gown, down a flower-lined path to be married overlooking the Caribbean.  It was a singular event in our family, one that we will always remember.

The Wedding Gown of the bible, as described in Revelation 19, overlooks an apocalyptic scene.  The gown is the symbol of the ultimate glory of the church, the church’s eternal joy.  The church militant has become the church triumphant, following the one who wears a robe dipped in blood, upon which is written, “King of kings, and Lord of lords.”  How fitting, then, to conclude this worship service by singing “Crown Him with Many Crowns.”

Today we share in the Eucharist celebration.  Also wonderfully fitting, since the description of the church in its Wedding Gown is connected immediately to a feast.  “And the angel to me, ‘Write this:  Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’”   Our celebration of Holy Communion is a foretaste of that marriage feast of the Lamb, a nuptial event in which the church, for a sacred moment, shares oneness with Christ.  

As our sermon series has spanned Genesis to Revelation, so also this teaching of nuptial oneness. In Genesis 2:24 we read, “A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they become one flesh.”   On the back page is an image which looks like an eclipse.  The shaded area where two circles overlap is an important Christian symbol called the mandorla Imagine, for a moment, that the two circles represent a man and a woman.  At the point of overlapping, they become one, marriage becoming the fusion in which one’s identity is lost in another.  Writes Peter Feldmeier, “I am not the other, for love requires two, and yet I am not distinct from the other.”   Feldmeier then quotes physician Thomas Lewis, “When somebody loses a partner and says that part of him is gone, he is more right than he thinks.  A portion of his neural activity depends of the presence of that other living brain . . . Lovers hold keys to each other’s identities.”

So unique and precious is this oneness that God casts his relationship to his people in precisely these terms.   “For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you”  (Isaiah 62:5).   One sees in this passage, that the focus of our union with God is cast with nuptial imagery.

The mandorla, though, is also a symbol of Jesus Christ.  Now imagine those two circles to be the divine and human spheres.  Only a God/Man might then occupy the mandorla, the place of overlap, thus only Christ can sit in the mandorla.  Again, on the back page is an image of Christ in the Mandorla, from a stained glass window of a European church. 

Now imagine the two circles to be God, and you.  In a very real sense, this altar represents that mandorla of our oneness with Christ.  Imagine a circle dipping from heaven to earth, and a circle from earth reaching upwards toward heaven.  The overlap is here, this altar upon which we have the Body and Blood of Christ, suspended as it were between heaven and earth, the mandorla. 

This mandorla shares precisely the same shape as the early Christian symbol of the fish, a symbol in which we find the Greek word, icthus, meaning “fish.”  Icthus was an ancient acronym meaning, “Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior” (Iesu Christos Theou Huios Soter).  The fish, then, is Christ in the mandorla, Christ our spiritual food. 

We’ve all heard it said, “You are what you eat.”  So St. Augustine wrote, “He has entrusted to us in this Sacrament his Body and Blood . . . and by his mercy we are that which we receive.”  You see, at this table, the church, too, enters the mandorla, experiencing oneness with the Christ who said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them”  (John 6:53-56).

Perhaps Paul had this Eucharistic oneness in mind when he wrote, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ . . . you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:27-28).   And on that note let us conclude our series, “Try THIS on for Size!”  Through the sacraments we are “clothed” with Christ, One with God through Christ. 

Sources and notes:

Kathryn Fanning’s story is from “Life in These United States,” in Reader’s Digest, March 1965.

Casting the Eucharist celebration as nuptial in context is suggested by Peter Feldmeier, Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas, in an excellent essay titled “Sex and Spiritual Transformation” in PARABOLA (Volume 32, Number 2; Summer 2007).