Growing up as a little boy, I was culturally conditioned against the color pink. That was for girls. It was not for me. I remember one time my grandmother bought me a pink shirt, and when my parents told me I had to wear it – I felt like they might as well had told me I should wear a pinafore and bows in my hair as well. Yuck.
So when I think about the fact that I encourage people to wear pink one Sunday a year, I kind of smile to myself and think of that little boy who would have labeled me a traitor. Of course, I’ve grown up. I’ve noticed that I don’t look half bad in pink. And yeah, I live in an otherwise female only house that has desensitized me to pink.
This upcoming Sunday is called “Gaudete Sunday,” and its color is technically “rose” if you’re into Pantone or Crayola names. The color is meant to be a signal to do something interesting for a religious organization: a call to relax. That might seem odd in some ways. After all, religious fervor is supposed to be about being serious and zealous and severe – and in most world religions, that is sort of all that you get. But in Christianity, while we do have our moments of zealotry, we also occasionally say “relax, stop taking yourself so seriously.”
In an “age of outrage,” when we see people naming every 3rd argument online “a battle for the truth” or “a vast conspiracy against you-name-it”, perhaps exactly what we need is a pink Sunday to say: “Relax. Chill out. Stop taking yourself so seriously.” After all, that’s what I needed to do as a little boy. I needed to learn if I could just relax a little, pink wasn’t so bad. Maybe I could even learn to like it.
In fact, maybe we could let pink be a signal to us of the Gospel. Christ has taken this world’s cares and made them His own. He has paid for my sins and because of that, I don’t *have to* struggle, I *get to* struggle where I feel it is meaningful. And I also get to hand everything over to Him, because God the Father handed the world over to Him, a world that I don’t have to carry on my shoulders because He took it on His shoulders as He was lifted on the Cross.
So I hope you’ll join us in wearing some pink this coming week, especially Sunday, and I hope it serves as a signal color to you to relax a little because Jesus Christ has taken the world upon Himself.