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Sermon for Pentecost 17 – October 9, 2011
“Marry on Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesday the best day of all; Thursday for crosses, Friday for losses, and Saturday for no luck at all.” So ran a popular bit of extra light English verse in the 19th century. The Victorians were keen on catchy, proverbial poetry. Another exploring the same theme ran: “Marry in May and rue the day,” but “Marry in September’s shine and your living will be rich and fine.”
For a proper young lady of that time, her wedding day was the most important day in her life, one her mother had prepared her for since the moment she was born. In an era in which women exercised little control over the course of their lives, planning their wedding was a notable, and eagerly anticipated, exception.
The first task for the bride to be was choosing the month and day of her nuptials. As we’ve seen, she had some rhymes to guide her, but she was also guided by ancient, pre-Christian customs. June, as it is now, was the most popular month for a wedding. Part of its appeal came from the name, after the Roman goddess Juno, whom I’ve mentioned before, believed to watch after women and who promised prosperity and happiness to all who wed in her month. June also had the advantage of arriving after Lent, when one was free to party; not to mention the fact that the arrival of warm weather meant that it was time to shed all those heavy winter clothes and partake in the annual bath. (Both parties probably appreciated that.)
After picking the day, the bride moved on to tackle an equally important decision: what to wear. Now, brides have not always worn white for their marriage ceremonies. In fact, in the 16th and 17th centuries, girls in their teens wore pale green, a sign of fertility. A girl in her twenties would wear a brown dress, and older women even wore black. For centuries, only poorer brides came to their wedding dressed in white, a public statement that she brought nothing with her to the marriage.
That was all to change after the 21 year old Alexandrina Victoria of England wed Albert Francis Charles Augustus Emmanuel of Germany on February 11, 1840 in London, shocking the world with her choice of gowns. A witness writes: “The queen’s dress was a rich white satin, trimmed with orange blossoms, and upon her head she wore a wreath of the same beautiful flowers…Her twelve bridesmaids were attired in similar taste, and they were all young ladies of remarkable beauty.” Of course they were.
Thus a trend was born, and white, for the bride and her attendants, was the only shade to be seen at formal weddings during this period. As few people paid any attention to the groom, then as now, what he wore was of lesser consequence. At Victoria’s wedding, Prince Albert was decked out in the uniform of a British Field Marshal. Hardly conventional attire for your average middle to upper class grooms who were content with frock coats or morning coats, always blue; black was for the other kind of mourning.
Towards the end of the Victorian Era, the father of the bride dressed like the groom and groomsmen, their wardrobe determined by the time of day for the wedding. While much has changed since the days Britannia ruled the waves, this particular custom remains in practice.
As “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Etiquette” puts it succinctly in the chapter “What to wear to a wedding: “The time of day dictates the sort of attire guests wear.” Indeed, all sources, from Emily Post to Miss Manners to the New York Times agree on this point. Yea, though we live in a time of declining dress codes, when bridal parties and their guests walk – or sometimes dance - thanks to You Tube – down the aisle through of the shadow of, shall we say, questionable taste, a few rules remain in play when it comes to one’s attire.
Basically, what you wear depends on the time of day. To sum up what I’ve learned – but not always seen practiced in years of uniting happy couples – for an informal, daytime wedding, women may wear a short dress or suit, with business attire acceptable for morning services; the men may wear dress shirt and pants along with a sports jacket. As the day goes on, the wardrobe becomes more and more ceremonious. The Idiot’s Guide – which I doubt was needed in Victoria’s time – puts it this way: “For formal daytime weddings, women guests wear cocktail dresses or long skirts and festive blouses or sweaters. Men wear suits for formal daytime weddings as well as for evening weddings.” It’s much easier for men, isn’t it? “If an evening wedding is very formal, men wear dinner jackets and women wear dressy cocktail suits or dresses or long dresses.” Miss Manners adds the following advice: “A polite bridegroom takes care not to be more eye-catching than the bride.”
Here are a couple of more tips, in case you’ve got an invitation to that cousin’s wedding under a magnet on your refrigerator. For her: Don’t wear white because it competes with the bride. For him: Do wear a dark suit, with a tie if the wedding is after 6 PM and does not specify “Black Tie.”
Why so many rules? Why can’t we just wear what we want when we want to? Well, the answer is simple, when it comes to a wedding: It’s not about you. To acquire maturity is to come to the awareness that the world and everyone in it does not exist solely to satisfy our own desires. What we wear to an event reveals our regard not just for the significance of the event itself, but also for the people hosting it.
So when the king saw that one of the guests invited to his son’s reception was not what we would call properly attired, his reaction is understandable. “Friend,” he asks - the ancient Near East equivalent of “Buddy” – “How did you get in here without a wedding robe?” In other words, “Why are you ridiculing my hospitality? Why are you insulting my son? Why are you mocking my joy?”
These are the questions that lie behind a seemingly snobbish snit over someone failing to be dressed correctly at a royal wedding. This is a story about failing to be appropriately attired in the Kingdom, in which there is indeed a dress code, only it has nothing to do with jackets or ties, long or short skirts.
“As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ,” Paul tells the Galatians. “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.” At this banquet, the king is saying, that’s the only robe that counts. As the old African American spiritual says, “I got a robe, you got a robe, all God’s children got a robe. When I get to heaven gonna put on my robe. Gonna shout all over God’s heaven.” And then this joyous hand-clapper ends on a slightly ominous note: “Everybody talking about heaven ain’t going there.”
“For many are called but few are chosen.” Those who are called by God, who are guided by the Spirit, who are baptized into Christ Jesus “have stripped off the old self with its practices,” Paul told the Colossians, “and have clothed (themselves) with the new self.” Clothing imagery was a favorite of Paul’s; to “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ” his preferred image for the transformation which occurs in a believer through baptism by water and the spirit. “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self,” he wrote the Ephesians, “and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
And there we are back again to bearing the fruit of righteousness by wearing the clothing of the kingdom; or, put another way, wearing the clothing of righteousness by bearing the fruit of the kingdom. To gain entrance to the feast, Paul says, we are to “clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.” But above all, he says, “Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony…and with gratitude in your hearts sing…to God.” So, yes, at this wedding reception feel free to sing along with the band, even joining in a rousing chorus of “Celebrate Good Times, Come On.” (But I fervently pray that the “chicken dance” is banned in heaven.)
It is indeed a celebration – this new life in the kingdom – and one wears festive clothes for a festive occasion. Although, until we are all robed in white - as Revelations describes the wardrobe in the New Jerusalem – waving branches and singing to God in that final banquet, we are guided by another dress code; one that is a bit more practical and serviceable than a white robe which is so easily stained; this earthly code being more Sears denim than Saks satin; clothing suitable for the sometimes messy, sometimes difficult daily task of living as a Christian while we wait for the joy of the final washing.
Our invitation to such a life might take its text from this 15th century hymn: “Let holy charity/Mine outward vesture be/And lowliness become mine inner clothing/True lowliness of heart/Which takes the humbler part.”
Queen Victoria caused quite a stir by walking down the aisle in what was seen as a humble white dress; just as she caused quite a stir in her choice of husbands. Unusual for that time, she married for love. And she remained in love for the 21 years they were married, sinking into a deep depression when Albert died in 1861 at the age of 42, losing a devoted husband and her most trusted advisor in affairs of state. For years she withdrew from the public eye, incurring the hostility of the British people. And while she eventually resumed a more visible role and indeed became a beloved symbol of an Empire and an age, from the time of Albert’s death until her own, almost 40 years later, she wore nothing but black.
After a reign which lasted almost 64 years, the longest in British history, an age associated with industrial expansion, economic progress and an empire on which the sun never set, Victoria died on January 22, 1901 and was buried at Windsor Castle next to Albert in a mausoleum she had built for their final resting place. Above the door are inscribed her words: “Farewell best beloved, here at last I shall rest with thee, with thee in Christ I shall rise again.”
I guess it’s fair to say that our era is anything but Victorian. She belonged to her time and her time is over. The age of Empire is passed and we seem to be reaping some of the less than desirable consequences of industrial expansion and economic progress. And, yes, fashion and the female role have changed dramatically; no more corsets, bustles or hoop skirts; no more spending a whole life waiting to be married . Much has changed but much has not; for which women have little reason to be grateful. According to a recent study, women make up 18 percent of the partners in top law firms; the number is lower for female executives on Wall Street.
We belong to our time and what is important is that we understand the times in which we live and then dress accordingly, putting on whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just. No matter what age we live in, those robes are always of remarkable beauty.