Reflection February 11, 2018; 2 King 2; Mark 9

Dressed for Success

 LeGarrett Blount knows how to dress for success.  LeGarrett Blount is a running back, one of those super muscular runner with a low center of gravity who can run through people with the football.  Last year her performed that task for the New England Patriots as they came from far behind to beat the Atlanta Falcons to win the Super Bowl.  This year he was told to take a pay cut and opted instead to go to the Philadelphia Eagles who played, guess what, the Patriots in the Super bowl. He had the satisfaction of barreling through the defense made up of his old teammates on his way to a touchdown. Last year a New England jersey. This year a Philadelphia jersey.  He sure knows how to dress for success. Two Super Bowl victories in a row with two different teams.  Can you pick your clothes any better? His quarterback,  Nick Foles, who was a back-up to an injured star probably was also very happy that he did not retire a few years early as for three games he was in the right place and a right time to win the highest honor in his sport, the Super Bowl most valuable player. Again, he was dressed for success, wearing the right shirt.  He acted out a cinderella story, winding up in the dazzling lights of news cameras where, it must be said, he acknowledged God above his teammates. They are now talking about renaming the city “Foledelphia.” Never in his life will he have a career moment like this again. It’s all downhill from here., in one form or another.

For Jesus it’s sort of all down hill from here also. In Mark, Jesus finds himself on top of the mountain in Northern Israel as he slips from a miraculous mortal to a dazzling apparition. The disciples are stunned and frightened. Did they really know this Jesus who wanted then to go up the mountain with him.  They feel a connection to the whole of Hebrew history, taken in by a mysterious world.  In the scene in Kings is a mother dreamlike one.  The great Elijah, mentioned in the Mark text, is taken up in a dazzling scene, leaving his disciple Elisha equally stunned and frightened.

Friends, you have heard about the significance of clothes in these texts.  There is Elisha tearing his clothes. There is the mantle he picks up from Elijah, creating one of the great expressions in the English language :”taking on the mantle.”  Then there are Jesus’ clothes that become dazzling.  His clothes symbolize His power and the fulfillment of His role. Heaven and earth, divine and human come together in this moment.  But these clothes, once they stop reflecting the blinding dreamlike light, go back to normal and they become just like anybodies clothes, probably overdue for a wash after a long dusty walk.  Elisha has no more use for his own clothes perhaps and trusts the mantle will give him the power he feels he lacks.  But in the end that is not where the power comes from. That would just be sheer magic,  something out of a blockbuster movie, even though the vision of his experience stays with him.

Friends, there used to be this brief Masterpiece Mystery series on TV about Inspector Zen, a Venetian cop working in the corrupt Roman police force played by heartthrob Rufus Sewell. It had this supercool trailer where the very human Zen has just the right look, just the right hair, just the right suit and just the right sunglasses accompanied by just the right music.  This is what trailers and commercials should be doing. They make you think that if you looked just like that and had that music, your life’s success would be guaranteed.  We get fooled that way, but only because we want to be fooled.

Friends, clothes do make a difference. The authors of our texts know that. They know that the symbolism of clothes strikes a chord.  Clothes do change how we are perceived. Old rock and roll stars never wear a three-piece suit and have a conservative haircut. They have to keep the image going. So they have the funky T-shirts and the piercing etc.  At my age how I am dressed at the Starbuck’s makes the difference between being seen as a guy at a power age with the stock market behind him (except not this last week) or a homeless guy who wants a hand-out.  But clothes are really about first glance. Sooner or later there has to be substance to you, there has to be content, there has to be something you can bring to the world or you’re just going to be an empty suit…or an abandoned mantle.

So friends, we know success is not guaranteed. Dress and mostly hard work and perseverance will help, but a lot of it is just being fortunate, being in the right place at the right time.  Or in Christian light: being where God wants us to be when God wants us there.  Paul tells us to wear the “armor of light.”  In other words, to dress such a way that God can use us. For goodness. That is not something exterior, but something of the heart. It means dress casually or at least dress in layers as we do not know what will be asked of us.  Fortunately it won’t be up to us to measure the success. Thanks be to God.