So I’m writing this article while watching FOX’s (actually quite entertaining) “The Masked Singer” where famous people dress up in wild costumes that hide their identities, but reveal little aspects of them. These costumes range from an alien to a rabbit to a pigeon to…all sorts of stuff. And it makes me think of Sunday morning. Because I dress up in a “costume” of sorts, and a part of the goal of that costume is to “hide” my identity, but it is also to give a clue as to my identity. Paradox, you say? Not a problem for Lutheran theology – we love paradoxes like sinner/saint, now/not yet, etc. 
My “blacks” – I wear all black on Sundays and days that I’m doing official pastoral ministry stuff. I used to rock the “khakis and different colored clerical shirt” look, which is ok, but I decided that the classic black look was a classic for a reason…but I didn’t know what that reason was. I figured it was something like Johnny Cash’s “Man in Black”, like “I wear black for the poor and beaten down, livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town.” (which, c’mon, that’s an awesome song even if it’s not the real reason).
In actuality, historically it has more to do with not being fancy, something that I’ve long claimed is the ethos of a lot of Lutheran liturgical style. The “blacking” of the clergy happened during a time when no “fancy man” would be caught dead in a drab, black outfit. So the clergy stood out by wearing the “dull” black in the streets. So maybe the Johnny Cash similarity isn’t that far off.
The Collar – There are lots of fun explanations for the collar’s meaning. My favorite is that it resembles a slave’s collar, and should communicate that the wearer is a “slave to the Gospel” or “slave to Christ”. While that sounds really great, and is absolutely true of what a pastor should be, it’s not historically accurate. Instead, the collar is simply a reproduction of the cassock collar, a black long-dress looking garment that was popular with pastors. When pastors started wearing pants (that has to be the favorite beginning of a sentence I’ve written in a while), they wanted to retain the collar look, so they made an attachable/detachable collar that looked like the old cassock. So the clerical collar is something like a pre-tied necktie. Ugh. Sometimes the truth sets us free, other times it lets us down.
But what I wear, especially when I’m in my blacks, should communicate what I’m there to do. If I show up in my collar, I’m showing up in my uniform. It shows that I’m a “man of the cloth”. That line actually hearkens back to a day when pastors and priests would wear their blacks and collars all the time (some guys still do this, but I don’t). The idea was to show that the person was always on call (by the way, the term ‘man of the cloth’ used to designate all sorts of occupations that were on call, including bakers and teachers). It said, “I’ve got a job to do,” and that’s what it should say today when you see me wearing one. That job is to preach the Gospel, to be there for people, and to communicate the words of God for you. I can do this without a collar, but the collar shows that I’m there for that specific reason.
Fortunately or unfortunately, if you’re not a pastor, you don’t get to wear a special uniform on Sunday. And as fun as I think it would be to have you all dress in liturgically appropriate colors throughout the church year (see Pink Candle Sunday), that’s probably going to get pretty old for the twenty-some Sundays after Pentecost of wearing green. So instead, think of whatever you put on for Sunday as being a sign to you, a sign of your freedom in Christ. Christ has made you free by His cross, and you get to reflect that in what you wear. So if you show up wearing all black or a sequined party dress, let it be a reminder to yourself of what Jesus came to do in freeing you.