Robed

Last week I had the pleasure of preaching at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in downtown Toronto. Yorkminster hosts the Lester Randall Preaching Conference each fall, and having attended these conferences for some years now, I’ve grown rather fond of this old, stately, liturgical church and its deeply hospitable congregation.

I had preached at Yorkminster last summer as well, and on that occasion, I told a story of visiting my relative’s church in the Netherlands when I was living there for a summer in college. Unbeknownst to me, my family attended what my family affectionately calls a “Black Stocking Church.” The men wore dark suits. The women wore navy or black skirts and jackets, black stockings, black shoes, and a hat. I showed up in pants, flip flops, an unadorned head, and the brightest, frilliest, pinkest short-sleeved top you could imagine.

As the service began, the elders processed in with the minister and took their seats on the platform, looking out at the congregation. It wasn’t long before eight pairs of eyes found the pink buoy in the sea of black and navy. Those eyes flashed my way again when the minister invited us to stand for the prayer, and I jumped up along with all the men in the room. My relatives made no mention of my unorthodox clothing or liturgical faux pas and were lovely and hospitable. Nevertheless, I wanted to crawl under the pew and disappear.

Two years later I was back in the Netherlands on an interim trip, spending a weekend at the home of Gert-Jan, Rianne, and their three daughters. Having not budgeted enough time for laundry before the weekend, the only clean clothing I had left were dresses. So that’s what I wore the entire weekend, and when I walked downstairs in a dress on the third day, Gert-Jan exclaimed, “Now, Laura is a girly-girl!”

I remember being flustered by this. I liked dresses as much as the next person, but I wouldn’t have called myself a girly-girl. Recalling my experience at the Black Stocking Church, I was also uncomfortable with the idea that someone might think I belonged to a more conservative branch of the Reformed church. Ironically, wearing dresses for three days in a row made me feel as though I might be judged or mis-identified in two different directions, either for being too frilly or too conservative.

I was thinking a lot about identity during this period of my life. I knew I wanted to go to seminary and that I wanted to be a pastor. I grew up at a church where I regularly heard women preach (I vividly remember one woman who did so in silver flats and a sequined pencil skirt and that my ten-year-old self thought that was awesome), and while I knew there were churches that didn’t ordain women, I wasn’t really confronted by that reality until going to Calvin and discovering that the CRC was, on the whole, more conservative than my little corner of it had been. When I entered seminary, eight months after that homestay weekend in Amersfoort, I did so wondering what this journey would be like as a woman.

That first semester we had a pastoral care class taught by the wise and gentle Ron Nydam. One day, a few weeks in, Ron brought his black preaching robe to class. We were talking about the weight of the office, the idea that as a pastor we were stepping into something, acting not just as Laura or Bob or Bailey, but as minister, with all the weight and expectations (fair or unfair) that came with that call. Ron had us put on the robe, a physical manifestation of the role we would soon take on.

Ron asked how students felt when they put it on. They said things like, “empowered,” “humbled,” “excited.”

But when I put on the robe, all I felt was a sense of panic. My chest still tightens when I think about it. It felt claustrophobic and suffocating. Ron asked how I felt. “Smothered,” I replied, as I hastily shucked the robe from my shoulders.

There’s probably some work I could yet do with a therapist to unpack everything that was going on in that moment. But I know that, at the very least, donning that robe made me feel like I was hiding myself, like I had to hide myself, in order to be taken seriously. There are a lot of reasons to wear a robe. It lends authority, it creates uniformity, it makes it easier to get dressed on Sunday, it designates the office, and you can have fun with different stoles and liturgical vestments.

But I’ve never forgotten that first experience of wearing a robe and the feeling of having to hide myself. I don’t want to hide myself. I want to stand in the pulpit as myself, as a fully embodied woman called to this task of ministry, who is herself whether she wears pants or a dress or a sequined pencil skirt.

Last year when I preached at Yorkminster, I wore a robe along with the rest of the service leaders. I didn’t panic or feel claustrophobic – after a few years in ministry I feel comfortable enough in my own skin to not feel overwhelmed by the thought of hiding it. But this past Sunday I asked Paula, one of the pastors and the liturgist for that Sunday, if I could forgo the robe. “Of course,” she said.

So I gathered for prayer with Paula and the other participants, them in robes, myself in a dress. Paula prayed for the service and gave thanks to God, in a voice that surely held a smile within it, for those leading the service that Sunday – preacher, liturgist, children’s worship leader, organist, and soloists – all of whom were women. And out we stepped, through heavy oak doors, each of us responding to the call.