The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Proper 18, Year A, September 4, 2011, St. Anselm’s Church Nashville

“Put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14).

“Puttin’ on the Ritz”: it’s a slang expression from the 1920s for getting dressed up in your best clothes and going out on the town. The “Ritz” was a fashionable hotel, a destination for folks who were wearing their best and looking for a good time. Irving Berlin wrote the popular song of the same name which still gets recorded today, part of the “Great American Songbook.” Taco had a big hit with it back in the 1980s, Ella Fitzgerald recorded it before that and Fred Astaire even before that. Part of the notion in “Puttin’ on the Ritz” is that even poor folks can put on their party clothes and have a ball: not a bad message for the Great Depression. Berlin’s original lyric celebrated the vibrant life of Harlem in the late '20s (I didn’t know that when I started to write this sermon; it’s amazing what you learn writing sermons), a lyric that later got changed, but you can still catch from the song a sense of people from all different neighborhoods together out on the street and having a good time, “putting on the Ritz” in a way probably not too different from Nashville this weekend in places where people know how to have fun.

Today the Apostle Paul uses this same idea of putting on our party clothes in our second reading. “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Rom. 13:12), he writes; “instruments” or “weapons” would be other translations, but in any case they are put on, worn as protection and as a sign of a new reality. Paul’s telling the Christians in Rome that they are supposed to be living a new life, the new life of the Kingdom of God, which is still in the future but powerfully present in the world right now through Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead. So they should be breaking out their best clothes, getting ready to celebrate, living that life now so that it will be present today.

“The armor of light” sounds pretty cool, very George Lucas in fact, but Paul gives us a bigger picture in the next verse when he writes, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ”. Now anyone can wear these party clothes; this is your Sunday best for sure. The Apostle is telling us that we’re not just putting on a new suit of clothes but a new identity. When you “put on the Ritz” you’re just pretending; at the end of the night you still have to shuck off those clothes and send them to the laundry. But when you “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” there’s no pretend because it’s Jesus Christ who lives in us; he’s our new reality and our new identity.

All God’s People share this identity, people from all walks of life and from every neighborhood, everyone who is found “in Christ” as Paul puts it over and over again in the New Testament. There’s no separation between people who have a common identity in Christ. That’s where we want to be found, in him, and so Paul says, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ”.

So you may wonder how you can be found “in him”, in party clothes supplied by the Lord. Three points, just to get us started; you can fill in others for yourselves. First, baptism. Paul says earlier in Romans that those who are baptized are buried with Christ into his death and then raised with him to new resurrection life. Remember how the sign of the cross is made on the forehead of everyone baptized in the Episcopal Church. We’re identified as Christians with Christ from the very beginnings of the Christian life. We take on his name as we’re called “Christians.” This is the identity we share, all of us. Second, “Holy Communion”: when we come to the altar rail we’re coming to eat and drink Christ’s Body and Blood, the signs of his life within each and every one of us, a life that will endure forever. Third, the Lord’s Prayer: here we actually “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” by approaching the throne of grace and calling God “Father”, using the words of Jesus, claiming his own status as Son and the very paternity of his Father. We are his brothers and sisters, common children of one Father. When we say this prayer we truly are putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus is gathering us together, taking us out into the world in our party clothes, getting us into line and moving us out on parade. We’re hitting the streets, the world God made and for which Jesus gave his life, and the streets of this world will become the streets of the city of God. We can see where this party is headed, where this parade is going, straight to the Kingdom . We’re putting on the armor of light, putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, puttin’ on the Ritz.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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