I made a comment about dress in the previous post, so let me explain.
In many, if not most, churches today, the person leading the worship is wearing a robe. In many of those churches the people assisting the leader are also wearing robes.
There is a lot of variety in the robes, especially the robes worn by the leader. White is a common color, so is black, but I have also seen red, blue, gold, purple and brown (I don’t recall any plaid). If the assistants wear robes they usually are white.
The difference between the people up front and the people in the pews is visible, obvious and immediate.
It wasn’t always this way, and in some churches today it isn’t this way.
When the church began after Jesus’s resurrection, Luke said the believers met at the temple and listened to the apostles, prayed and “broke bread” [Acts 2:46]. Everyone was in their everyday clothes, primarily because no one had (or could afford) special clothes for any special occasion.
There were two notable exceptions to this pattern. The Jewish priests and the Roman officials wore clothes that reflected their role and status in the community and culture. Special dress for Jewish priests was part of the Mosaic law [you can check Lev 8 and 16 for the details], and had been in place for more than 1200 years. Roman officials wore special tunics or robes that indicated their position in government or the army. The differences from everyday clothing were deliberate. The priests and Roman officials wanted people to recognize and acknowledge their importance.
When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire in 325 it was a “natural” step for the church leaders to adopt the Roman concept of special clothing for special leaders. This practice continued through the reformation into our modern era.
The dress of religious leaders is similar to the uniforms that law enforcement and military folks wear. Their clothing makes them instantly recognizable and marks them as different than the general population.
But that is not how Jesus dressed or acted – or taught.
Jesus looked very much like other people who lived in the Middle East 2,000 years ago. He dressed like other common people dressed. And in most respects he acted like other people living in Palestine at that time acted.
When he began his ministry and called a dozen people to follow him, he dressed, talked, acted, ate and slept just like they did. And he made it clear they are not different than his other followers. In a dramatic act just before his death he washed the disciples’ feet (which was a task slaves usually performed) and then told them they needed to do the same: wash each other’s feet [get the details at John 11:12-20].
Authentic worship experience does not separate people into “more important” and “less important” groups.
Okay. But you may be wondering why this discussion began with the physical layout of the church and the dress of worship leaders. These two factors seem peripheral, but they have an outsized effect on our response to the other aspects of the worship experience.
Think about all the TV commercials for drugs. They show you the advantages of using the specific medication, but when they tell you all the possible bad effects of their product they show you very positive scenes of children or animals or enjoyable but unrelated activities. Because they don’t want you to pay attention to the negative possibilities of their drug.
The producers of these commercials know that words contribute less than 10% of the meaning of a given message. Affect – things like tone of voice, expression, gestures, posture, volume – adds about 35% to understanding. If you’re doing the math, you realize more than half of the meaning comes from things like the rituals, practices, protocols and setting in which the message is received.
Visual things – a fence, a robe, a child playing with a cute puppy – affect how we respond to all the other metaphors of our worship experience. And because these “inputs” are not verbal, not intellectual, not processed “above the neck,” their impact is often more significant and lasting.
If I leave a worship experience with the sense that I’m not as important as other folks who were there, is this an accurate understanding of God’s grace? Is this an authentic metaphor of Jesus Christ’s love?