Arma Christi VI: Easter Day

Reredos, St Thomas' Church New York

Alleluia Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia.

So he is risen; but what is he wearing? Here on Fifth Avenue on Easter Day we need no reminder of the importance of dressing up, whether bonnets or other attire; clothes, we remember, often make us who we are, or make a day or an event what it is.

There have been clothes scattered across the stage of this great story of Jesus' passion and death. We began this great week with a story of people throwing cloaks on the road in front of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem in humble triumph riding on a donkey. In the remembrance of the Last Supper, we recalled Jesus taking off his outer garment and girding himself with a towel to wash the disciples' feet.

During his trial, Jesus was arrayed in a purple robe, and mocked as the upstart King of the Jews.

Then at the cross he was stripped of his garments altogether and the soldiers gambled for them. Much as artistic tradition tends to preserve his modesty, the Gospels imply that Jesus is crucified naked.

Among the Arma Christi or Instruments of the Passion depicted on the vestments and furnishings of the season we have just celebrated, there often features what looks like a tunic or to the modern observer perhaps a T-Shirt, a short-sleeved garment usually understood to represent that last robe stripped off and gambled over.

Here at St Thomas' the robe is depicted on a small shield at the top right hand corner of the frame surrounding the central Cross in the reredos accompanied by a pair of dice; so this is indeed the robe stripped off at the Cross, a removal of Jesus' dignity and property, even of his identity as much or more than of mere clothing, as the authorities attempt to make him the Galilean preacher, the King of the Jews, into no-one and nothing.

There is one more set of clothes however after the robe for which dice were thrown.

The Gospels record efforts made to re-clothe Jesus in death. According to John's Gospel it was the same Nicodemus who had come to Jesus by night, and Joseph of Arimathea whose tomb in which he was to be placed, who "took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with...spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews."

These somber and tender steps reflect a desire to give back to the abused body of Jesus something of what had been figuratively as well as literally stripped from him, the act of mercy that constitutes dignified burial with wound cloths to wrap him in care as he is placed in the tomb.

This final set of clothes features in the Easter stories. Both John's and Luke's accounts of the empty tomb include reference to these, left behind by the risen Jesus - this is mentioned in the last verse of today's Easter Gospel (24:12).

He has left them behind. Somehow the risen body of Jesus does not jibe with these new clothes; the women at the tomb are chided for seeking the living among the dead, not yet understanding how the world has changed, and given that change the clothes of the dead are not the wardrobe for him now.

Given all these references to clothing, including the fact that once again he seems to be left without any, it may seem surprising that Jesus' clothes don't get mentioned again even though he is.

New Testament scholar Michal Beth Dinkler, my colleague at Yale, suggests "Not all of the loose ends are neatly tied up at the end of Luke’s Gospel; on several counts, the narrator simply remains silent...Luke’s loose ends provoke both review of what has gone before (the Gospel story), and anticipation of what might lie ahead." (Silent Statements 173).

What is he wearing? What are we meant to think? The clothing of the two figures in the tomb is described—they are wearing "shining clothes" (24:4)—so Luke has not lost all interest in wardrobe. And intriguingly this description uses similar language to that had been used for the clothing of Jesus much earlier at the Transfiguration, which seems to be a sort of prelude to the Easter appearances.

If you are at all concerned by now, I think we can assume he has some clothes in the scenes that follow I think, but nothing is said of them. I am not convinced however that it just wasn't important enough to mention. We have already seen clothes are referenced repeatedly; and as far as prosaic details are concerned, even the risen Jesus gets found very much in the everyday - he's mistaken for the gardener, invites himself on a fishing trip, more often than not is found eating with people, and we know that there is bread and fish on offer. The earthy incidentals do still seem to matter.

If we don't know what he is wearing or where it came from, clothing does get mentioned one more time in the Easter stories; it's just that it's not his. Here is the very last thing Jesus says in Luke's Gospel, when he does appear to the disciples after the women have gone and reported what they saw: "And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high" (24:49).

So it is the disciples who are being dressed now—and if we track this through into Luke's sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, being dressed with power is a reference to the coming of the Holy Spirit. It is God's presence, Jesus' presence, that will encompass, protect, identify, and clothe them.

This is obviously metaphorical, but it is not incidental. We find the idea not of him being reclothed, but us throwing off the garments of our old lives and being reclothed, then recurring through the literature of the early Christians.

Readers of the Letter to the Colossians are told they "have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator." In the Letter to the Romans Paul tells us to" throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light" (13:12), suggesting shining apparel can be for us too.

Writing to the Galatians, Paul uses this idea of our receiving new clothes from Christ as meaning we are incorporated into him by baptism: "...in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (3:26b-28).

And from some very early point, those who came for baptism in the Church were literally re-clothed after their washing with a white robe that they wore all the following week, this Great Week of Easter, as a sign of the new self they had put on. This is the origin both of the albs and surplices of those who lead worship, and also of the baptismal robe still worn by small children.

The apparent lack of interest in Jesus' final wardrobe presents us with a shift from how clothing creates his identity to how he himself creates ours, how we wear him. We started this week's story with people throwing clothes at him; now he offers the new clothes of new life to us.

It is not our Easter finery that makes us who we are in him, but he himself does, the risen and mysterious one who is close enough to eat with us at this table, even though we cannot quite describe what he is wearing. Yet he can be seen even now; death's clothes have been unable to define him, but he around us here, and out in the street on Fifth Avenue, not just today but on any day, not in the grandest and gaudiest but in every shining act of love that suits the clothes of resurrection.