by Pastor Douglas Brauner

Our True Clothing

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take.”
Mark 15:24 English Standard Version

You lose all sense of modesty when you’re in the hospital.

It was 1982 and I was in my last quarter of my seminary education. I got sick on a Sunday night and finally went to the hospital on Thursday morning. My appendix decided it was done doing whatever it’s supposed to do. It burst and I spent ten days in the hospital.

For ten days I wore a hospital gown.

There were advantages to wearing a hospital gown. It made it easier for the nurse to give me my morphine shot and to go to the bathroom. It also made it easier to leave nothing to the imagination.

We live in world where we’re “exposed” all the time. Our lives are captured on cellphones. We find our image posted without permission on social media. Worse than our pictures, are the times that our behavior is exposed.

How did Jesus feel about being exposed on the cross, not a stitch of clothing that lay on his body? Completely exposed. Completely ridiculed. Completely alone.

He was exposed to our sin and to the Father’s wrath. His clothing, no long of fine linen, was woven by the weaving of waywardness. When he came off the cross, he was once again wrapped in a linen cloth covering his humiliation, his death.

However, even that cloth could not hold him. His new clothing would be that of triumph as he rose from the dead. The linen cloth that had wrapped his lifeless body now lay to the side.

His righteous clothing has become our dress.

No matter how exposed we feel in this world, the righteousness of Christ is our true clothing, it is your true clothing. You are no longer exposed to the humiliation of your sin, but to the all embracing love of God.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado