All one

Rhona Cathcart June 15, 2024 5 6

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Galatians 3: 27 (NRSVA)

27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

Textile art — creating something from the fibres of plants, insects, animals or other materials — has been integral to human life for centuries. Without it we would still be grabbing fig leaves to cover ourselves (although even then presumably the leaves had to be woven together somehow)!

However, for many years textile art has been considered distinct from ‘fine art’ — apparently because it is too practical. Fine art, the argument goes, is used mostly for aesthetic or intellectual purposes. In other words, you can’t also throw it over your knees to keep warm when the nights get chilly.

In the 60s and 70s feminists within the art world began to highlight that textiles were also often categorised as ‘women’s work’ and that this had contributed to its lower status. They began to reintroduce textiles and fibre into the high art world.

In this part of Galatians Paul describes a similar fundamental shift. From a faith dictated by law, watched over by a custodian or guardian who keeps us ‘right’, to a faith which clothes us and keeps us warm. It’s a whole different type of protection — one that moves with us, that fits around us, that provides beauty as well as comfort.

Clothed in Christ, he argues, our ethnicity, our gender, our status become irrelevant. Those threads don’t disappear, they are part of what make each garment unique, each fit individual. But in the end we are cut from the same cloth, woven by the same textile artist, clothed by the same saviour. What could be finer than that?   

Prayer:

Master of loom and life,

You are both artisan and artist

Willing to dive elbow-deep into the messy fibres of our existence

Weaving us into unique shapes and patterns.

You looked at your work and saw that it was good, that it was ‘fine’

And then, that we too might understand and protect the beauty of your art,

You showed us, and dressed us, in your own cloth

In love fine as silk, soft as felt, warm as wool, tough as leather, clean as cotton.

We are draped in Christ, the Weaver’s child.

May we wear him well.

Amen