Wedding Clothes

A Wedding Address based on Colossians 3.12-14

Names have been changed.

At a wedding, more than at most other occasions, clothing is carefully considered and selected, to reflect the importance of the occasion. Our daughter got married last year. And if your family is anything like ours, the bride’s mother will have sweated for months about what she would wear. And the bride’s father will have started wondering if he’s got an ironed shirt at 3:00am the night before.

Jenny and Mark, you didn’t just open your wardrobe doors this morning and say “Right, what shall it be today, smart or casual?” Nor did you just stand around in your dressing gowns and pick out the first clean thing you saw ten minutes before making your way to the church.

You have actually planned for some time what you are wearing today. This suit and this beautiful dress are carefully chosen for this unique occasion in your lives. It’s not everyday apparel.

But when the wedding service is finished and the party is over and the honeymoon has ended and life settles into familiar routines again – when all this is a memory – and the clothes you are in today are hung up in a wardrobe – or returned to the hirer, or sold on eBay… what then?

The second reading you chose for today talks about putting on new clothes. Specifically addressed to Christians, it says, “As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with [and here’s what you see when you open the clothes cupboard] compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” What a wardrobe!

Clothes say so much about who we are. People say, “Oh, I like that hat, it suits you.” Or “Oh, you really look good in blue.” Or “that style is just so you.”

Mind you, a friend of mine from Paris was once in a waiting room in Amsterdam - this is a true story - and a Dutch woman walked over to a complete stranger and said, “You know, red makes you look really fat, you should wear another colour.”

I don’t know if they are as uninhibited and direct where you live as they famously are in the Netherlands. I hope not!

It sounds like that lady could have put on some compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience herself.

What the Bible says here is that our way of thinking and relating to each other are like the clothes we put on. Being petty and critical and impatient is a bit like wearing an outfit that don’t suit you or fit properly or that clashes badly.

But there is a wardrobe that always feels new, with clothes that you want to wear all the time.

Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

These are such excellent attitudes to take into married life. If in every home both husband and wife were always compassionate, kind, humble, gentle and patient with one another there wold only be happy marriages and no divorce. I’m going to spend a couple of minutes going through them.

Firstly, compassion literally means to suffer together. I know today that suffering is the last thing on your minds. But you’ll have bad days. “Be clothed with compassion” means that when your husband or wife is really upset, you feel it too.

I know couples who have grown stronger and closer in times of great stress - after a miscarriage or in a long period of unemployment. That’s because of this compassion, this commitment to love each other not just for better, but also for worse.

The second item of clothing is kindness. We know what kindness means. Don’t you feel special when someone, out of the blue, does something really thoughtful for you? So we know our spouse is going to feel great when we just surprise them with a random act of kindness every now and then.

But that’s not all. Research has shown that acts of kindness actually benefit the giver, as well as the receiver because giving triggers the release of feel-good pheromones in our bodies. Think of how great life would be in a constant virtuous circle of thoughtfulness between a husband and a wife.

Thirdly, humility. People sometimes see humility as a bit of a loser’s virtue. But think of the opposite. Marriages that are full of arrogance and competitiveness, where both want to get their way all the time are never happy ones.

The most expert lovers are those where husband and wife look first of all to please each other instead of gratifying themselves. That’s what humility does in a relationship. It’s a key to real happiness in marriage.

Fourthly, gentleness. This the quality we need when something has gone wrong in the marriage and there’s a need to clear the air. He forgets an anniversary - again; she is intolerably late - not for the first time. When we feel like we want to be harsh or abrasive, when we have something difficult to say, it’s a gentle approach that actually fixes the problem. The severe tone simply makes a bad situation worse.

There’s a brilliant bit of practical wisdom in the Bible that many couples have taken on board. It says, “Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry.” In other words, after a quarrel, decide to climb down from your lofty position of being right and gently make up with each other before you go to bed.That's a good rule of thumb.

And fifthly patience. In every marriage there are days when husband or wife are simply exasperating. People who cultivate patience can accept delay, or tolerate problems, or put up with inconvenience without becoming annoyed.

Think of the patience you need for a bottle of new wine to mature into a classy vintage. Well, Mark, be patient because women are like wine; always charming and they mature with age. Jenny, the truth is that men are like milk… I don't mean they become sour and rancid after a week; I mean that milk can be turned into a delicious cheese that, if you have the patience to let it mature, it goes wonderfully well with good wine.

So they’re the clothes for your wardrobe throughout married life.

Have you ever had a dream in which you’re in a public place and, as the dream goes on, you find yourself to be noticeably underdressed or worse, completely undressed? At first everything seems normal, but as the dream continues, you become more and more conscious that something’s not right and you feel less and less comfortable.

Apparently it’s a very common dream. Some psychoanalysts believe that this dream arises from anxiety about our true selves being exposed – it’s because we’re insecure about who we really are.

In married life, all the masks come down. Our wives and husbands see us unwrapped and unadorned – obviously physically which is beautiful and enjoyable, but also emotionally and in our real personality.

My wife and I know things about one another that nobody else does. She knows I like my butter spread thin and I know she spends exactly two minutes cleaning her teeth. But we both know all about each other’s insecurities and fears and pain from the past too.

Finally, you need lots of love. A modern paraphrase of verse 14 in our reading puts it like this: "Regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it."

When you read the Gospels, you find on every page a fantastic example of a life of love - Jesus.

He healed the sick. He touched untouchables. He forgave sinners. He discharged debtors. He washed dirty feet. He defended the feeble. He blessed the young. He served the unfortunate. He dignified the disgraced.

And he still does. As S.M. Lockridge put it, he's the superlative of everything good that you choose to call him. He still supplies strength for the weak. He's still available for the tempted and the tried. He still sympathizes and he still saves.

So may Christ be your inspiration and your guide as you enter married life together. And long after the clothes you wear today have worn out, may everyone who knows you celebrate the Christian virtues that you display in your married life together.

Address given at a wedding at Saint Mary's Long Newton, 2nd November 2013