Skip to main content

what's in a shirt?

awww. here is our little caedmon in a great onesie (read: t-shirt for really tiny people) that has a picture of a bulldog on it and says tough guy. it's adorable. it really is. but it's wrong.

he's not so tough. i mean, think about it. he weighs something like 8 pounds. his fingers are the size of that little spring rod that holds your watch strap to your watch (you know the one that is nearly impossible to fix when it breaks because your adult fingers, big as hot dogs, aren't able to hold it properly...). if his arm swings and strikes you, it feels, if you feel anything, like a medium-sized gnat settled on your skin. are you getting my point? he's not a tough guy.

his shirt just says he is.

here is another little dude. this is jackson a long time ago, blessed with incredible super powers. he can fly, fix things with only his vision, and bring peace to the world.

actually, his powers are quite limited to running away from you at speeds you could not imagine those little legs going, breaking anything in sight, and bringing chaos to the home. now, while this may seem incredible, its really not. he is not a superhero.

his shirt just says he is.

i was thinking about this yesterday when i went golfing. well, to be honest, i use the word golfing very loosely. more accurately, i used long metal sticks to swing at little white balls which i sometimes actually hit. when i hit them, they usually went flying into places where i couldn't find them. i did all of this while wearing a white glove on my left hand. only my left hand, mind you. why i did this, i don't know, except that this is supposedly what people who play golf do, and maybe it helps you to find your little white ball more easily when you hit it into the environmentally protected wetlands. so there i was, standing in these vast rolling hills of unnaturally short grass, ripping up the beautiful earth with my metal stick, all in an effort to put a ball in an ever-evasive hole. we humans come up with the weirdest ideas.

anyway, i digress. three of us went to the course to golf (or to wear a shnazzy left-hand-only glove to look like you are golfing, in my case) but before we started the 18-hole walk of shame, they gave us another golfer who would be going with us. now you have to understand that our group consisted of galen, the senior pastor of our church, joel, the director of youth and young adult ministries, myself, the associate pastor, and, at the last minute, joe, the very tanned, italian-looking man with a colorful vocabulary. and by colorful i mean that i'm pretty sure that he covered all the bases: every foul word i can think of he used (in a more or less complete sentence).

now, to be honest, i really don't have a big problem with this. it doesn't bother me or offend me like it does some people. i have, at some level, come to terms with a culture who speaks this way more often than it doesn't. we could debate this some other time. what struck me as interesting was that i was wearing my clinton united methodist shirt. i clearly wasn't wearing my "i'm an awesome golfer shirt," as evidenced by my continual trots into the thick forest to waste time looking in vain for lost golf balls. i also was not wearing my, "please feel free to speak with a broad range of profanity around me" shirt. but i was wearing a shirt that used the word 'church' and had a cross on it. it didn't stop joe from heavily using one end of the language spectrum. which was fine by me because i hate when people change their behaviour when they find out i'm a pastor. i'd really just rather people be real with me. but, i digress.

i am preaching this sunday about how we are known to others: to our community, to our co-workers, and to our friends. what is our reputation as followers of christ? this is a topic that has walked with me through the years, as i have grown into new ideas and a more mature faith. i used to think that people would know i was a christian because of the way i dressed. all i needed was a cross or a scripture, or a catchy saying, and i would be an effective witness for jesus christ. back in those days, i would have worn something like this little beauty that i googled this morning:


wow. we humans come up with the weirdest ideas. like maybe, if we put an image of christ's hand being pierced as he died for us on a 50/50 cotton blend t-shirt, we will make a difference.

caedmon is not a tough guy. jackson is not a superhero. i am not a golfer, and none of us are defined by our clothing, no matter how much we might wish we were. we will be known by our relationships, how we interact with our families, with our friends, with our neighbors, with the 'others' in our lives. we will be known by how we show love (or fail to). actions speak louder than t-shirts. or left-hand only gloves.

peace,

greg.

Comments

cathyq said…
So true. I think the scripture about knowing us by our fruits is appropriate here. I mean if putting on a stretchy suit with a cape would give us super powers, we would all be sporting red and blue. Likewise, if wearing a WWJD bracelet or silver cross made us Christians...etc. i think we get the wrapping mixed up with the gift. When will we ever learn that fancy exteriors or various assundry adornments do not indicate the state of the interior? The lesson of the pharisees is still relevant today. Would our God call us whited sepulchers too? I fear so.

On a lighter note...the boys are too cute and they have super powers to melt my heart for sure!
Anonymous said…
you know some day we will have to go golfing, I think I could show you a few words of my own!!! love the blog man, makes me feel like I am still seeing you guys everyday!!! see ya soon
Anonymous said…
oh yea, I have some really neat shirts with some great words...................... "but I digress"
Anonymous said…
reminds me of that bible study i went to. Where all the guys were wearing the dorky christian t's. In this case it matched up quite nicely...dorky and yet christians...in any case they made me not want to go back. now i will go and hang my judgemental head in shame.
Crafty P said…
We have so many of those little onesies with messages on them- including that one! cade is too cute. great job making another beautiful little child.

great post as well.

i'm finally getting back to posting something sometime today... I hope.

Popular posts from this blog

bad haircuts (for a laugh)

everybody needs to laugh.  one good way i have found to make that happen is to do a simple google image search for 'bad haircut.'  when you do so, some of the following gems show up.  thankfully, my 9th grade school picture does NOT show up.  otherwise, it would certianly make this list!  please laugh freely and without inhibition.  thank you and have a nice day. 

happiness is dry underwear

we started potty training jack on thursday. we followed a program called POTTY TRAIN IN ONE DAY, which, by the way, i think is kind of crazy. i mean, if someone were to offer you a book called, "ACHIEVE WORLD PEACE IN ONE DAY" i don't think you would take it seriously. and yet here we are, trying to accomplish an equally daunting task in one 24-hour period. it is intense. the day is shrouded in a lie because as soon as your happily diapered child wakes up you tell him that it is a big party. we had balloons and streamers and noisemakers and silly string - all the trappings of a legitimate party. but it is most certainly not a party. it is a hellishly exhausting day. as soon as jack got out of bed, we gave him a present: an anatomically correct doll that wets himself. jack named him quincy. several times quincy successfully peed in the potty and even had an accident or two in his "big boy underwear." he also dropped a deuce that looked and smelled sus

the crucifixion of Robert Lewis

  "the crucifixion of Robert Lewis" mixed media collage with leaves, acrylic paint, and found objects by gregory a milinovich october 2023 this october i was invited to participate in a three day trip which was called a "pilgrimage of pain and hope."  while that may not sound super exciting to many of you, it actually really intrigued me.  i am the kind of person that wants to feel big feelings, and i am drawn to the deep places, so  i was interested in traveling to the scranton area, where the trip was planned, to see what it might look like to be a pilgrim that was wide-eyed and listening to the pain and the hope in the stories of others.   this trip included hearing the stories of immigrants to the northeastern pennsylvania area, and the work in the coal mines that many of them did.  it included hearing from folks who are working for housing justice and equity in downtown scranton.  it included hearing from those indigenous people who first inhabited that land.