"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.”
Matthew 23:13
Something happened at church Sunday evening that took me back twenty-five years to when my husband and I were first married…
We joined a church close to our apartment in the Aldine area of Houston Houston Heights
We never felt welcomed into the church. The new member’s class we were put in consisted of an eighty plus year old teacher, several mature singles, and a few couples who could have been our parent’s age. Needless to say, there was no class unity.
The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back happened when a visiting missionary was asked to take the stage and speak. He stepping up to the pulpit, scanned the audience, tugged at the collar of his plaid shirt and proclaimed, “Man, I’ve been away so long I forgot you can’t wear jeans on a Sunday morning.” I looked down at my precious husband’s Levi jeans…the nicest thing he owned. His eyes told me how he felt. We didn’t return and subsequently didn’t bother finding another church home.
Skip ahead twenty-five years. We’ve attended the perfect church for fourteen years. It’s the middle of summer and my darling husband decides to wears a pair of cargo shorts to Sunday evening service. This decision earns him the ridicule of not one, but two of the more “mature” male members of the church.
Hubby let it roll off his back…but I can’t. You see my husband wasn’t going to evening church in the first place because he had work he needed to get done before Monday morning. But he did it for me; and his reward…abuse from a couple modern day Pharisees!
What about you? Is there a Pharisee in your church? Or perhaps it’s you. Are your closed minded, old fashioned ideas causing someone to stay home from service, skip a week because their finest clothes are at the cleaners, or just stay away from church all together? There’s just no place for that stuff in God’s house.
Thankfully my husband is grounded enough in his faith that codgerly comments don’t affect him. I can’t help but think that it might have been a different story had the comments been made to a brand new baby Christian. I think there’s something in the Bible about causing new Christian’s to stumble. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be that guy.
2 comments:
Annette, I so love this article!!! The requirements that we put on one another for dress have upset me for years.
It reminds me of how we took in two families after Hurricane Katrina. One of the young ladies came to church with us in one of the two outfits she managed to bring out of flooded New Orleans. One of our older church members commented on how she was not dressed appropriately. My husband told him to buy her some new clothes. The man who made the comment silently walked away. I really don't think Jesus cares what we wear as long as we are modest.
Thanks for your comment Dwan. That's a great story. Isn't it unbelievable how important clothes are to some people's worship. LOL. If they had their way we would have to wear uniforms like at school!
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