Start:Stop - Re-clothing God?

A facemask on a carving on the refurbished Shrine of Amphibalus in St Alban's Abbey

This week the church celebrates Alban, the first recorded British martyr, who famously sheltered a priest fleeing persecution by the Roman authorities, helping him to evade capture by swapping cloaks. When the Romans found it was Alban beneath the priest’s cloak, he was sentenced to death. 

Little is known about the priest that Alban sheltered, whose life is also celebrated by the church this week. Even his name remains a mystery.  As a result of a medieval mistake, he became known as Amphibalus (a Latin word for 'cloak').

The restoration of a shrine to Amphibalus in St Alban’s Abbey was completed during the lockdown, on which one carving has been reclothed - in a face mask! A small reminder of how we re-clothe stories using familiar images from our own day. 

 

Bible Reading - Galatians 3.26-29

 

For 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. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

 

 

Reflection 

 

Perhaps you’ve been at a party and the weather turns and you are offered a coat by your host; or in recent months - although it’s not at all to be recommended - you’ve had to borrow someone else’s face mask in an emergency dash to the shops? 

 

Putting on someone else’s clothing is an intimate experience. While it might be spotlessly clean, it may retain something of their scent. If it is a well-worn garment, it may retain their shape as it covers yours. Even for those as fashion unconscious as me, clothing contributes to our image – so putting on someone else’s clothing means, in part, taking on their identity. 

 

This intimacy is the result of engaging in “generous hospitality” - both on the part of the one offering the clothing - and the one who receives it. It would be an affront to refuse to wear someone’s coat once offered; just as we might consider it rude not to offer it in the first place.

 

Clothing played an important part in the events that led to the martyrdom of St Alban, the first British saint, who is remembered by the church this week. The mysterious priest who he sheltered and whose example and teaching led to Alban’s request to be baptised, is known simply by the Latin word for ‘cloak’. When the authorities suspected Alban of harboring the priest and the guards were dispatched to Alban’s house, he swapped clothes with the priest to allow Amphibalus to escape, disguised as a Roman. When Alban was revealed from under the priest’s cloak, the Governor sentenced him to death. St Albans Abbey is said to be built on the site of his beheading. 

 

In St Paul’s words, by his baptism, Alban had clothed himself in Christ. Doing so resulted in Alban, like Christ, offering the most generous act of hospitality of all.

 

Etty Hillesum coined the phrase ‘giving hospitality to God’ in her letters and diaries, which document the rediscovery of her faith in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Faced with such barbarity and horror it is not surprising that many there asked “where is God?” By observing the way her starving friends faced their brutal and degrading treatment in the shadow of imminent death, she came to believe that God is only real and visible when a human life offers God hospitality. “When in our being we reject hatred, refuse anger, continue to forgive ourselves and others, God is born again and is present in our compassion,” she wrote. 

 

From a Christian perspective, drawing on the words of St Paul, we might say that in our baptism we give hospitality to God; we have clothed ourselves in Christ. But since then, have we added more layers over Him?  

 

The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was also executed in a concentration camp, thought the church, for the most part, had done so; taking on so many extra layers in fact that it was hard to recognise it as a body that had been clothed in Christ at all. Bonhoeffer observed with dismay, how the church had failed to confront the horrors of Hiter’s regime and argued that the future for the faithful may lie in stripping away “religion” and rediscovering the naked God.

 

How have we “clothed God”? Perhaps He is wrapped in “church” - in liturgy or scripture or art, poetry or music of different forms; hymns and prayers we have learnt by rote. All of which, of course, can bring great joy and spiritual insight. But through all these extra layers, do we still see that we have clothed ourselves with Christ?   

Some today have suggested, like Bonhoeffer, that there is value in stripping away all we have used to clothe God – to rediscover the intimate experience of clothing ourselves in Christ – just as the first disciples experienced Him through personal relationship rather than the wrappings of time and tradition. Others suggest that re-clothing God in the fashion of today is the key ensuring that the Good News is told in a language that can be understood– like the carving with the face mask on the new shrine of Amphibalus in St Albans.

 

Whichever option we prefer, perhaps all can gain inspiration from Alban; who took off his own, familiar cloak, before re-clothing himself in the cloak of another. May we draw strength and joy from the words of St Paul; that in baptism we have clothed ourselves with Christ; a garment that at once celebrates the oneness and diversity of all; one that fits each of us perfectly.

 

 

Silent Reflection 

 

 

Prayers

 

Lord of all,

Clothe us with compassion.

Help us to step back from the drama of our self-concern

and offer our lives to those in need.

As we rest in your presence,

enliven our desire to act as agents of peace and justice in this world.

 

Lord of all,

Clothe us with humility.

Help us to acknowledge our interdependence;

that all your faithful are clothed in Christ.

As we wrap ourselves in new fashions,

let us forever relish in our one, true identity.

Lord of all,

Clothe us with thankfulness.

May we celebrate the diversity of life which dances around us;

Enable us to be effective stewards of your wondrous creation;

Help us to see your love at work in the world;

and to share the joy of knowing you with our families, friends and neighbours;

 

 

Blessing

 

Let us, those who have been clothed in Christ, serve not ourselves, 

but others;

Not for personal glory,

but to the glory of God the Father. 

so that all we are and all we do makes Him known in the world.

Let us bless the Lord!

Thanks be to God.


Links : The Shrine of St Amphibalus