Alisa and I are the parents of three young children—two girls and one boy.  The two girls are the older sisters of the “little brother.”  Needless to say, there is never a dull moment in our house.

 

One of the current debates centers on colors.  The children want to know what a “girl color” is and what a “boy color” is.  As parents, Alisa and I have tried to dissuade them from thinking of colors in gender-specific terms.  However, the children (as children are wont to do) have minds of their own.  They have all but decided that pink—since it is our middle child’s favorite color and is the color of one of the female Power Rangers—is a girl color.  From there they are open to debate.

 

Green, blue, and red tend to be boy colors since they are part of the costumes of Green Lantern, Spiderman, and Superman.  The Yellow Power Ranger is a woman, so yellow tends toward being a girl color.  Orange leans toward being a boy color since The Thing is orange.  (If you can’t tell, superheroes make many appearances in our home.)

 

As I mentioned above, I am loath to enter the arguments over color—except on one instance.  I am convinced that real men don’t wear purple.  That’s right.  Real men avoid purple.

 

You may ask how I have come to this conviction.  First, let me assure you that it has nothing to do with gender issues or questions of sexuality. It has everything to do with my reading of the Bible.  I must confess that I reached this decision from reading the New Testament.  Yes.  Sacred Scripture has informed my conscience to the eschewal of purple.

 

Where—might you ask—did I discover this divine directive?   Let me assure your skeptical mind that I, indeed, did read this blessed instruction in the Gospels according to Mark, chapter the fifteenth, verses seventeen through twenty.

 

“And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.”

 

Right here in the Passion of the Christ, at the crucifixion scene, Jesus is stripped of his purple garments.  That, my friends, is warrant enough for me.  Real men do not wear purple.

 

In case you don’t know—which you probably do—purple in ancient times was reserved for royalty.  Only monarchs could wear purple.  The masses, ordinary folks, and commoners were forbidden the wearing of Tyrian purple.  So, when we encounter Lydia in Acts 16, we can be sure she was a wealthy, well-connected businesswoman because she was a dealer in purple.

 

Back to Jesus.  It is highly paradoxical that Jesus allows himself to be stripped of the purple robe.  He stood before the Roman court.  Governor Pilate and his crew would have understood the significance of wearing purple.  That’s why they not only clothed him with a purple robe, but they twisted a crown of thorns to smash on his head.  They are mocking the one whom they will soon crucify as the King of the Jews.  The Messiah.  The Son of David.  The one through whom the reign of God would come to its fullness.

 

But they do not allow the purple to remain on him.  They took off the purple royal robe, and led him out to crucify him.

 

I say it is paradoxical that Jesus allows himself to be stripped.  Paradoxical, because I believe Jesus to be the Messiah.  He came announcing the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God.  And the way we normally think of kings and kingdoms, we suppose that monarchs deserve to wear all of the finery.  To be a king, you must look like a king.  Symbolism is important—especially to the powerful.  Can you imagine the President of the United States (whoever he or she happens to be) standing in front of a crowd without the seal of the President or the American flag highly visible?

 

It is also paradoxical because if anyone deserved to wear purple, it was Jesus.  He could have insisted on his right to wear purple.  Imagine the significance of Jesus—the one the Bible proclaims “The King of Kings” (Revelation 17:14)—not wearing the royal garb on purpose.  Picture him not answering his accusers with blatant appeals to his right to wear the purple.  Instead, he answers not a word.  He does not fight.  He refuses to grasp the robe.  He chooses not to wear purple.

 

What might that tell us about what kind of king he is?  About what kind of God God is?

 

In his book, The Weakness of God, John D. Caputo deconstructs the kingdom of God.  (In case this makes you a little anxious, let not your heart be troubled.  Caputo is out to deconstruct our poor thinking about and living out the kingdom of God.)  He advocates for a kingdom where “no one enjoys special royal privileges or privileged access in the corridors of power, and there is not a purple or royal robe anywhere to be found” (p. 29).

 

What we find in Jesus is the emptying of self, rights, and power.  And this was no false humility.  “I’ll empty myself now so I can get all of the power later and take it out on all of the people who doubted me.”  That would be nothing less that ego by another name, grandiosity by other means.  It would be delayed self-gratification—I’ll be naked now so I can wear the purple later.

 

Such an approach would not subvert kingdoms of power, force, and violence.  It would only swap them for another brand.  And perhaps, over the millennia, that is precisely what the religious establishment has done.  You must think the right thoughts, or you will be excommunicated or tortured or killed or all three.

 

It is not just institutionalized religion that assumes to don the purple in the name of God.  It is all of us.  Whenever we assert our privileges over others, to the injury of others, to feed the beast that is our ego, to gain an advantage, to profit at someone else’s loss, to make ourselves look or feel or appear anything other that what we are—then we have put on the purple.

 

We have sought to claim monarchial privileges, yet this kind of monarchy does not fit in the mode of Christ; it is not in the fashion of God.  Purple is not a boy color or a girl color.  It is the color of kings and queens who attempt to rule their petty fiefdoms with regal authoritarianism. 

 

Christ refused to wear purple, and he is the “Last Adam.”  The ultimate human.  The life-giving spirit (1Cor. 15:45).  Maybe I’m way off here, but it seems to me that we might take a cue from him.  In experiencing the true gift of humanity, the gift of the divine image, we would be well-served to stop wearing purple.

 

 

URL: http://www.presence.tv/cms/per-realmenpurple.php

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