Black Friday

On Good Friday, after the evening service, I went to the store to buy some supplies for the Easter children's sermon. I was still wearing my black clergy shirt, black pants, and black shoes, although I had taken the tab out and had the collar open. As I was checking out, the girl working there asked me why I was wearing black.
I said, "It's Good Friday, the day we remember the death of Jesus, black is the color of death. I am also a pastor, so I wear this as a reminder that Jesus died for us." She said, "Oh." By that time our short transaction was over, the next customer was already waiting, and I had to go.

I wonder a lot about clergy shirts. If I had my way I would wear them all the time, mainly because it would simplify my wardrobe a lot. I would just have one pair of black shoes, two pairs of black pants, and four black shirts, two short sleeved and two long. But life isn't that simple.
Most people don't know what the shirt means and they have been misused. Protestant pastors have stopped wearing them so when I go to the hospital people call me 'Father' and think I am coming to deliver last rites. The shirt has also become associated with all the abuses, hypocrisies, and negligence of bad clergy. Sometimes it scares people. A lot of people have no idea why I am wearing a shirt like that, they just notice that it looks funny. I think these reasons and many more, are why clergy have stopped wearing clergy shirts. Maybe we should just let them go.

But I also think that there is a great significance to wearing a black clergy shirt. It reminds us, and the world, of our humble solidarity with the pain, oppression, violence, and death that surround us every day. That great theologian of the cross, Johnny Cash, explains this better than I ever could:


Maybe we could compromise and just wear black without the collar? I don't know, I haven't figured this out yet.

PS If you want more great theology of the cross from Johnny Cash...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go