“Is the dress black and blue or white and gold?”
That’s the question asked by one of the internet’s viral sensations of 2015, “The Dress.”
Do you remember?
It all started when a woman named Cecilia went dress shopping.
She was looking for something to wear to her daughter’s upcoming wedding, and the soon-to-be mother of the bride found it in a lovely blue number with black stripes from the retailer Roman Originals.
Cecilia bought the dress and sent a picture of it to her daughter, Grace.
And Grace looked at the picture and thought, “Mom just bought a white dress with gold stripes.”
But Cecilia knew that she had just purchased a blue dress with black stripes.
And that’s where things got weird.
Grace showed the picture to her friends.
Some saw black and blue.
Some white and gold.
That trend continued when she put the picture on Facebook.
Even at the wedding, where mom was clearly wearing a black and blue dress, many guests couldn’t believe that it was the same dress in the photo.
Not long after the ceremony, one of Grace’s friends posted the picture on her blog.
The when “The Dress” became a phenomenon.
I know it seems like a quaint memory from the distant past, but there once was a time when the internet could make us laugh and smile about silly things rather than filling our lives with rage bait, pseudo-science, and AI generated nonsense.
That’s what happened when “The Dress” went viral.
At its peak, the friend’s blog “was receiving 14,000 views a second.”
An online poll about “The Dress” set a record with more than 670,000 people viewing it at the same time.
And on Twitter, debate about the dress inspired competing hashtags—"#whiteandgold", "#blueandblack"—and was ultimately “the subject of 4.4 million tweets within 24 hours.”
More than ten years later, “The Dress” remains something of an enigma. Scientific studies have found connections between the viewer’s age, gender, even the time at which they usually wake up and the colors they saw, but there’s no consensus explanation for why people perceive the colors of the dress differently.
So “The Dress” lives on in our culture’s memory like something of an optical illusion, a trick of the mind, another example of light’s fascinating movements and properties.
And it is fascinating, this science of light—how white sunlight becomes a rainbow, how we see the stars in our nighttime sky as they existed thousands of years ago, how two people can see the same object in different colors.
I thought about light often this week in preparation for this service–the science of light, but also the various meanings we ascribe to it.
From the familiar lights of the places we call home to candles lit in memory of a loved one, we look to light for comfort, clarity, and direction.
Literally and figuratively, light helps us understand our surroundings and shows us where to go.
Light plays a prominent role in our faith tradition, too, as there are numerous scriptures that describe light as embodying the qualities, character, and even the presence of God.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation;” confessed the writer of Psalm 27, “whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1)
Or, in Psalm 119, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105)
Or, in the Prologue to John’s Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:4)
Then there’s Jesus, and what he had to say about light.
Again Jesus spoke to them saying,“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
This is the passage that’s at the heart of our worship today because there’s an essential link between what Jesus said, what we understand about light, and Pride Sunday.
You see, when all the colors of the rainbow are together and unified, like on a sunny day—when their wavelengths are unimpeded–when the colors are, if you will, free—then light is clear and we have our best opportunity to accurately assess our surroundings, what we’re looking at, and where we’re going.
But when colors are filtered or blocked, when the wavelengths of colors are manipulated, our perceptions are less about the object before us and more about whatever is filtering the light.
Now when we go to a show on Broadway, a good lighting designer can block and filter colors to create a mood or atmosphere that enhances the overall production, but just ask my costume designing wife what bad lighting can do to beautiful clothes.
In bad light, that which is bright and colorful becomes shadowed and altered. Bad lighting can even make something disappear altogether.
So when Jesus says that he is the light, I understand that, on one hand, he is taking upon himself the hopes and dreams of people like the Psalmists and other faithful hearts. He is declaring himself to be a source of wisdom and clarity, comfort, hope, and so much more.
But on the other hand, when Jesus says “I am the light,” he is also telling us something about how he expects us to look at the world and our neighbors.
He is empowering us to reject and set aside all the filters and barriers with which we try to manipulate our surroundings and turn people into something that they are not.
If bad lighting can ruin a good costume design, then God knows that casting our neighbors in an unflattering light is a threat to the ties that bind us together, the common good, and dreams of Beloved Community.
I mean let’s be honest, the filter of homophobia cast a shadow over almost everything in the United Methodist Church for fifty years, a shadow that twisted reality, tried to make us believe all sorts of pernicious things about LGBT individuals, and, in the end, made most of our global gatherings feel like we were lost in the dark rather than walking in the light.
What Pride Sunday offers us, however, is an invitation to be centered in the grace and truth that makes for genuine community.
No shadows.
No filters.
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body,” said Saint Paul, “so it is with Christ.” (1 Cor. 12:12)
“If we walk in the light,” said Saint John, “as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)
Or as our call to worship reminded us, “The colors of the rainbow are distinct, but they all shine together to make one light.”
Friends, we can’t walk in the light of God when we’re throwing shade at others.
That’s true about homophobia, racism, classism, or anything that makes us believe that we are inherently superior to anybody else.
Those are light blocking filters that play tricks with our minds.
That’s the kind of stuff Jesus tells us to get rid of if we want to see others as he sees us.
This week I found something really interesting in our church’s archives. It was an announcement for a community Lenten service that would take place here at Asbury on March 11, 1960. The guest preacher was Rev. Martin Niemoeller.
That caught my attention because Niemoller is remembered as one of the prominent voices of Christian resistance to the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany. He even spent several years in a concentration camp for running afoul of the regime that he once supported.
What he is most well known for today, though, is a quote that, for me, illustrates what happens when we allow the sahdows of our prejudices and self-centeredness to block God’s light and obscure the worth and dignity of others.
About the Nazis, Niemoeller said,
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.Niemoeller learned that those who cast shadows on their neighbors will end up in the dark.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
We can’t walk in the light of God when we’re throwing shade at others.
But Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”
May we always walk in the light.
Amen.
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