Wisdom of Saints: St Basil the Great

The Feast of Basil the Great, Doctor, Bishop of Caesarea, Cappadocia, 379

O GOD, who by thy Holy Spirit hast given unto one man a word of wisdom, and to another a word of knowledge, and to another the gift of tongues: We praise thy Name for the gifts of grace manifested in thy servant Basil, and we pray that thy Church may never be destitute of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Third Sunday after Trinity

LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may by thy mighty aid be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

St Basil the Great, one of the Cappadocian fathers and friend of St Gregory of Nazianzus, St Basil is one of the great Doctors of the Church and one of the foremost Christian theologians of the patristic age. St Basil came from a famous Christian family, the son of St Basil the Elder, he and two of his brothers (Peter and St Gregory of Nyssa) were raised to the episcopate alongside St Basil while in addition to St Gregory and St Basil, their sister St Macrina the Younger, was also honoured as a saint.

St Basil himself was born around 329 in Caesarea Cappadocia. He was raised in a well-known Christian household, and from a young age St Basil was instructed in the Christian faith and piety. Though his father died when he was young, the family continued and St Basil received a full education studying in Caesarea, Constantinople and Athens. It was during the course of his education that he first became acquainted with St Gregory of Nazianzus who would become his lifelong friend. After completing his education, he returned to Caesarea to teach.

Upon his return to Caesarea Cappadocia, he was baptised ordained a reader (readers were a minor ordained order in the early Church and remain so to this day in the Christian East) by the Bishop of Cappadocia, Dianius. Another influential figure in St Basil’s life at this time was his sister, St Macrina. While St Basil had travelled far and wide for his education. St Macrina had dedicated herself to founding a religious community among the family’s various holdings. Her witness helped open St Basil’s eyes to the Gospel and in particular to turn away from material concerns of wealth. To pursue Godly perfection, St Basil began exploring monasteries and monastic piety throughout the known world before returning to Pontus, where he had lived after the death of his father, and founded his own monastic community there. Due in large part to this, St Basil became known as the father of Oriental monasticism.

St Basil was convinced to be ordained a priest in 363 by the new Bishop of Caesarea, and was given a prominent position within the administration of the diocese. He was extremely well-regarded within the diocese, earning for himself a particular reputation as the saviour of the poor after supporting them during a famine. The 14th of June 370 he was consecrated Bishop of Caesarea. As Bishop of Caesarea, St Basil was Metropolitan of Cappadocia, a vast ecclesial territory, which ranked in importance behind only the five patriarchates and Ephesus.

St Basil was very active in his ministry, as the over three hundred existent letters profess plainly. His letters are a form of chronology that help illustrate the many challenges faced in his day. Along with St Athanasius the Great, St Basil was a great defender of Christian orthodoxy during a turbulent time in the Church when orthodoxy was under significant attack by Arians, and particular at times when Arian Emperors controlled the Empire.

One of his famous letters, XLVI, To a fallen virgin, helps to illustrate St Basil’s pastoral heart which was the foundation for all his ministry. It is not known exactly who the recipient of the letter was, as is the case with a number of his letters, but it seems she was a Christian who publicly professed virginity but later in some way admitted to St Basil that it was not true. St Basil quotes liberally from Scriptures, focusing largely on the Prophet Jeremiah and then from the New Testament, drawing upon comparisons of the bride of Christ and Israel as God’s bride. In quoting from these passages, St Basil begins his letter by stressing a case for the fallen virgin’s actions being of severe importance. Basil writes:

I used to describe the high dignity of virginity, and, addressing you as a temple of God, used as it were to give wings to your zeal as I strove to lift you to Jesus. Yet through fear of evil I helped you not to fall by the words “if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy.” So by my prayers I tried to make you more secure, if by any means “your body, soul, and spirit might be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Yet all my toil on your behalf has been in vain.

Mirroring Jeremiah’s lament for Israel, St Basil concludes this section by noting his own disappointment, yet it also begins to hint at his pastoral heart as he reminds the recipient that he himself had prayed for her. He uses strong words to show how sincerely he cares for the recipient because of the harm she has done herself:

You have been deceived by the serpent more bitterly than Eve; and not only your mind but also your body has been defiled. Even that last horror has come to pass which I shrink from saying, and yet cannot leave unsaid, for it is as a burning and blazing fire in my bones, and I am undone and cannot endure.

This is again a hint at his pastoral heart. While his words are harsh, he is clearly aggrieved at the sinfulness of what has happened, and laments that he had not been able to do more to prevent it from happening, for the way in which the sin has defiled her soul. Immediately, however, in Chapter 5 of his letter, he turns to the divine remedy:

“Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” You might indeed find many remedies for evil in Scripture, many medicines to save from destruction and lead to health; the mysteries of death and resurrection, the sentences of terrible judgment and everlasting punishment; the doctrines of repentance and of remission of sins; all the countless illustrations of conversion, the piece of money, the sheep, the son who wasted his substance with harlots, who was lost and was found, who was dead and alive again. Let us not use these remedies for ill; by these means let us heal our soul.

St Basil had previously described how her sin was in effect worse than the sin of Eve, yet immediately he points to Holy Scripture, to God’s testimony of love and repentance and makes clear that there is a solution. He continues in Chapter 6, the conclusion of the letter, where he says:

While we can, let us lift ourselves from the fall: let us never despair of ourselves, if only we depart from evil. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. “O come, let us worship and fall down; let us weep before Him.” The Word Who invited us to repentance calls aloud, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” There is, then, a way of salvation, if we will. “Death in his might has swallowed up, but again the Lord hath wiped away tears from off all faces” of them that repent. The Lord is faithful in all His words. He does not lie when He says, “Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool.” The great Physician of souls, Who is the ready liberator, not of you alone, but of all who are enslaved by sin, is ready to heal your sickness.

St Basil concludes his letter with a call to repentance available even to one who had fallen farther than Eve as he described it earlier, and finally ends his letter on a note of assurance as he alludes to the parable of the two sons:

If any of those who think they stand find fault because of your quick reception, the good Father will Himself make answer for you in the words, “It was meet that we should make merry and be glad for this” my daughter “was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.”

On Charisms

The Feast of St John the Apostle and Evangelist

MERCIFUL Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Sunday After Christmas Day

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Nativity of our Lord in Octave

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

St Paul tells us that, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us,” (Rm 5. 5). This love takes not simply the form of adoption through Christ into an intimate and personal relationship with God, but also through a number of gifts of the Spirit.

The Greek word charis is most commonly translated as a gift of grace. As we are told in Holy Scripture, it is the Holy Spirit who pours these gifts of grace upon us, so when we think of the Christian term charismatic, which is derived from the root charis, we can define it as a person who has received the gift and anointing of the Holy Spirit.

In its modern Christian context, charismatics are a particular type of Christian, but when considering the origin of the term, if you are not charismatic, it means you have not received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and in that sense all Christians should strive to be charismatics! In the ancient Church, those who received the Holy Spirit were known as the anointed ones, in Greek Christos, from which we derive Christian.

There remains in modern Christianity a lack of familiarity with the Holy Spirit, and gifts of the Spirit, but there is a treasury of information available, both in Holy Scripture and through the witness of saints in every age.

St Paul in his epistles listed many of the gifts of the Spirit. These include the utterance of wisdom, the utterance of knowledge, the gift of healing, the working of miracles, prophesy, the ability to distinguish between spirits, speaking in tongues and the interpretation of tongues, (I Cor 12. 8-10), service, teaching, exhortation or evangelism, generosity, leadership, mercy (Rm 12. 7, 8), and to this could also be added the fruits of the Spirit which are also gifts of grace granted by the indwelling of the Spirit (Gal 5. 22, 23, 25).

Some of these gifts have fairly straight-forward meanings and interpretations. The gift of leadership, for instance, or even the gift of teaching. We all know what it means to be a leader, and all Christians understand the Holy Spirit’s role in inspiring the teaching we receive when we gather to hear God’s written word. Yet some of the other gifts are a bit more complex. What is the difference, for instance, between the gift of knowledge and the gift of wisdom? What is a prophet and the gift of prophesy, and how does that relate to the office of Prophet?

These types of questions are all natural for anyone who lacks instruction and familiarity with these parts of Holy Scripture, and as with any part of Scripture we must always keep in mind the response of the Ethiopian Eunuch, who asked, “How can I [understand], unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8. 31).

While there are no universally accepted definitions for the exact nature of all gifts—and it should be understood that the Spirit gives these gifts as he wills and does not need to be conformed to earthly definitions—there are some general understandings that can be helpful.

The historic Prophets of the Old Testament were given particular words for God’s chosen people, and were commanded by God to proclaim them. They would preface their statements by saying, “This is what the Lord says,” to make clear that they were messengers for God. For most, their words were not so much prophetic as we think of it in terms of foretelling the future, but rather their words were warnings. They would call God’s people to repentance, pointing out where they had fallen away from God’s law, and explain what calamities would fall upon them if they did not return to God. Whereas the Prophets of the Old Testament received very specific words to say, the gift of prophecy today may involve less specific prophetic words. There has been no accepted or recorded instance of someone being given the specific words of God since the time of Christ. Indeed, some of the prophetic aspects of the office of Prophet have been split into multiple gifts. Some of the references to the gift of prophecy also suggest it may simply refer to the collection of other gifts related to supernatural revelation from God, rather than a specific gift relating to foretelling the future.

The gift of knowledge and the gift of wisdom relate to the office of Prophet. They are other gifts that require some level of explanation as they seemingly refer to the same thing, however there are important distinctions. In both cases they refer to something supernatural and beyond ourselves. In the case of wisdom, it is wisdom from God that cannot be explained as simply the application of our own God-given wisdom. It refers to wisdom for a particular situation, and it can be for ourselves or more often for the situation of another person. Conversely, the gift of knowledge refers to some form of supernatural knowledge. Again the gift of knowledge is often for someone else, and because of that, it can be a complicated gift in that the knowledge does not necessarily make sense to us.

The Rev. Can. Gene Packwood has described a situation in which he received a word of knowledge for a particular woman, “God likes your french fries.” This seemed to him, and indeed to anyone else, a silly word of knowledge. Yet when he shared this word with the woman, it bore deep meaning to her, encouraged her and brought healing to her. She had been moved by the efforts of a youth group and had sought to show her appreciation for them by buying them some french fries. Others within her church had reacted negatively, saying she had sought to draw attention to herself for her charitable act, yet the word given to Gene encouraged the woman to know that God had seen the charity and love in her heart.

The gift of healing and miracles are more easily understood gifts, that involve simply supernatural occurrences of healing or some other unexplainable phenomenon. While it is only natural to level some amount of scepticism towards these events, thinking that they are merely natural phenomena we don’t have the scientific understanding to explain, there are also occurrences in which God’s hand is at work. Holy Scripture tells us to expect them and we should remain open to accepting that in his sovereignty, God continues to intervene supernaturally in our lives.

The gift of tongues is probably one of the gifts the most associated with charismatics due in large part to the Pentecostal movement, and is also a gift that can be misunderstood. Among Pentecostals, it has been the belief in the past that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was predicated on the gift of tongues. In the historic context there have been two forms of the gift of tongues, both in the speaking of an Angelic language, which we are most familiar with today, or the speaking in other human languages which the person does not know. This is the historic first example of the gift of the Spirit when the Apostles began to speak in all tongues after the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

What should always be noted about the gift of tongues is how St Paul explicitly pairs it with the gift of the interpretation of tongues, and even later goes on to say, “For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit,” (I Cor 14. 2) and continues on explaining the need to pray for interpretation.

St Paul’s instructions on the use of the gift of tongues and interpretation in that chapter form a key practical example of the purposes and uses of gifts of the spirit, which ultimately helps further to explain what they are, and will be explored in the next part of this series on the Holy Spirit.

On the Marks of Mission

The Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity

O LORD, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offences; that through thy bountiful goodness we may all be delivered from the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

While the four Marks of the Church, that it is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, might be the four traditional marks used to identify the Church, and which are referenced in the Apostle’s Creed and listed in the Nicene Creed, the Marks of Mission are much more commonly referenced in Church documents in the modern Anglican Church of Canada. The Marks of Mission were articulated by the Anglican Communion in the mid-1980s as a means of describing the central mission of the Anglican Communion as a church. There are five marks, of which only the first two are distinctly Christian, namely to proclaim the Good News of Christ and to teach, baptise and nurture new believers. The remaining three Marks are characterized more as social activism, namely to respond to human need in loving service, to transform unjust power structures in society and to promote peace and reconciliation and finally to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew life on the earth.

To be clear, while there are no Christian distinctives in the majority of the Marks (unless one considers describing the earth in terms of creation as distinctly Christian), that does not mean the Marks of Mission are un-Christian. Far from it. Yet at the same time, when the final three marks are pursued far more vigorously than the first two, it does leave one to pause and question the purposes of the marks and the broader vision of the church in terms of mission.

One could argue that the goal of the Marks is to sanctify society. It envisions a society in which violence is never considered as a tool, there is some form of justice for all, creation is respected, the Gospel is proclaimed and all people are brought to Christ. And yet, centuries before the Marks of Mission were proclaimed, St Francis of Assisi noted that, “if you sanctify yourself, you will sanctify society.”

His point was that the Anglican Church of Canada seems to be doing things backwards: focusing on, as an institutional priority, sanctifying society in some way, or rather advocating for it, while assuming that the sanctification of individuals will come later. It should not be ignored that the first Mark is to proclaim the Gospel, and yet a quick search of ‘mark of mission’ on the Anglican.ca website or on anglicanjournal.ca turns up references almost exclusively to the fourth mark of mission, that of transforming unjust structures of society and opposing violence. One news article describes a church seeking to live out the marks of mission, and its description of that points exclusively to human service, social activism but with no connection to the first two marks, and indeed an emphasis on how they avoid evangelism at their events.

The view that the social justice marks must be persued as a priority places an emphasis on social activism rather than personal sanctification, and thus implies that sanctification is a result of those good works. Yet St Paul suggests in Romans 14 that works that do not proceed from faith proceed from sin (Rm 14. 23b) and this interpretation is supported by the work of the scholastics and Article XIII. This viewpoint seems stringent, but reinforces the fact that without God’s grace, we are slaves to sin. It is in Christ that we are set free from sin, and it is through the strengthening and empowering of the Holy Spirit that we do good works in faith. Just as we are saved by faith and not works, society will be sanctified by our faith, with in turn sanctifies us, and not by our attempts simply to sanctify society through works alone.

It is important to remember this distinction between the individual, the Church and society. To go back to the Marks of the Church, rather than the Marks of Mission, which Mark is it that suggests the Church is meant to be an institution of social change? What part of Holy Scripture describes the goal for a sanctified society for which the Church is working towards?

The only real argument that could be made would be for the society of the law called for in the Old Testament for the Jews, and yet Christ fulfilled the law and the New Testament proclaims freedom from the particular laws of the Jews. The Good News of the Gospel, which the first mark calls to be proclaimed, along with Christ himself, is that there is a route to personal salvation and sanctification through faith in Christ and the reception of the Holy Spirit! It is not something that occurs through the actions of the Church, rather the Church itself is established in order to transmit this Good News and the teachings of Christ to all people in all times. The Great Commission is to do so. The Church was created to fulfil that commission, yet so far as the Anglican Church of Canada is concerned that is a lower priority.

When the Church moves beyond salvation and Scripture, as the church is doing in Canada, it risks its own authority. Looking at the third Mark of Mission, for instance, in some cases it might be clear how we are to respond to human need. Feed the hungry and clothe the poor is a simple enough prospect, but what about more complex issues? By what metric do we determine what is unjust? To some, closed communion is unjust, and yet to others it is for their benefit on the basis of Holy Scripture (I Cor 11. 27-29). Secular views of justice would suggest turning anyone away is unjust, yet Scripture itself suggests that if someone receives communion without proper preparation they receive it to their condemnation and it is therefore just that the church prevent them from receiving without proper preparation.

Exploring deeper issues of poverty, discrimination, criminal justice all go well beyond Biblical teaching and open the door to questions of how the church will base its decisions on what is unjust. It also shows the dangerous precedent of using secular reasoning to inform the Marks of Mission. Scripture makes it clear that we are to care for the poor, but when the Marks demand addressing systematic issues of injustice, it requires proscriptive efforts that go beyond what Scripture teaches. Are priests now to be political scientists and sociologists, working to determine what policies a government ought to apply in order to address issues of injustice in the world? Does it in any way fulfil a Christian calling to simply seek to use institutional powers of the church to draw awareness of outsiders to these issues?

Coming back to St Francis of Assisi it is through the individual that change must occur. It is the invisible church—the gathering of all the faithful—that must make the difference. Good works are the proceeds of faith as the Epistle of James tells us (Jas 2. 26), and it is the individuals who are called to make the difference.

When the Church speaks to outsiders, it is moralizing. When it is the faithful, inspired by their faith and empowered by the Spirit, who act, it is a witness to others. As we are sanctified, we will sanctify society. The Marks of Mission may not be the best guide for the Church, but they remind us of what we as individual Christians are called to do, and in particular the order in which we are to fulfil them, first by coming to faith, being nurtured in it and when it is mature to act upon it and by our good works transform society and be a witness to others that they might come to faith in Christ themselves.

On Modesty

The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

LORD, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

When you invite a guest to come to Church with you, either because you’re hoping to encourage them to come to Christ or because you've invited them to a special occasion such as a Baptism or other event, the response might often look something like, “Sure, I’ll come. What should I wear?”

Outside of controversies surrounding doctrine, there have probably been more words written on the subject of what men and women should wear to church than on any other issue that could be characterised, under last week’s post, as a non-essential. Indeed, it is so important that it was covered in the Book of Homilies in a homily entitled Against Excess of Apparel.

In modern society, what we wear seems to be held as important. It makes a statement about us, to the point where studies have shown that it can have a significant impact on our lives, with workers of equal competency who dress less fashionably being less likely to receive a promotion than their more fashionable, but no more qualified, colleagues.

This reality proclaims the fact that what we wear is a statement, whether or not we intend to make one, and it’s a statement both at work and at church. With respect to what we wear at church, there seems to be a two-fold modern narrative. The first narrative is that we ought to be comfortable, and second is that we, and particularly women, ought to be modest.

Church is not a stuffy, formal place, but rather a place where we meet Christ in person! He’s our pal, so dress comfortably and sit back and relax in the presence of “bro Jesus.” A casual t-shirt or perhaps an untucked button-down shirt paired with jeans or shorts, depending on the weather, are the order of the day. Expectations are much the same for women with the addition of skirts and dresses as well. This seems to be something borne out of the sixties and seventies when Church began to try and address declining attendance by attempting to adapt to popular culture. No need to wear a shirt and tie, come and listen to our top 40 Christian Folk music! No need for your Sunday best, come just as you are and don’t be put out.

The idea of dressing comfortably, then, is one which reflects a desire to not inconvenience someone from attending by the implication that meeting Jesus may move them away from their personal comfort zone or in some way involves transformation in their lives. It doesn't really speak at all to the question of what we say when this becomes the rule of dress for church.

The second aspect of the modern narrative is one of modesty, particularly when applied to women and girls, as opposed to men. Looking back, this would have been made explicit through definition of collars not lower than two inches below the neckline, and skirts that extend below the knee, to take the example from the Roman Catholic Church’s guidelines in the 1950s. In modern times, there is an interesting tension between the idea that people should be comfortable and yet should still display modesty, even though the term is no longer defined in such stringent and observable terms.

There is, it must be said, some merit to the push for modesty, but generally speaking its merit is not in any way related to the reasons modesty has become a part of our modern narrative on dress in church. Usually modesty is promoted because of claims that immodest dress on the part of girls and women is a form of sexual temptation for men and boys who, it is assumed, cannot control themselves.

There are two problems with this. First off, it suggests that, even with the grace and support of God, a Christian man cannot conquer temptation. This is, to use a technical Greek term, hogwash. St Paul tells us in Rom 6. 14 that , “sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” By blaming the dress of others, we are in fact ignoring our own unrighteousness and trying to call out the possible sins of others to distract ourselves from our own falling short. This leads to the second problem. Earlier in his letter to the Romans, St Paul had just warned them against such hypocrisy, to the point where he asked in Rom 2. 3, “Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgement of God?” This is a dangerous form of hypocrisy because it seeks to ignore our own sin by highlighting the perceived sins of others through judgement of them. We have no right to judge, nor does our judging them in any way affect our own sins.

All of this ties up with the false narrative of dress codes in church. The question that should be asked is not whether or not we need to be comfortable to come or whether or not our wardrobe will tempt others to sin. If our clothes say something, then surely what it says should be a message directed to the one we gather to worship when we go to church?

As Anglicans, we affirm the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. If Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, then our manner of dress speaks directly to him, and we must ask ourselves what we say through that.

How would you dress to come before the Prime Minister of Canada or the Queen? A few years ago there was an uproar when Mr Justin Bieber was photographed with the Prime Minister while wearing overalls and a t-shirt. His manner of dress was identified as failing to show due respect for the person he was meeting. How much more should we recognize the need to send a clear message of reverence and respect when we come before Christ?

Does this mean going back to Sunday Best? Does it mean chastising those who don’t meet these standards? Absolutely not. The problem with encouraging people to wear comfortable clothes wasn't so much the informality of the dress, but the fact that the message we’re sending is that you don’t need to have your heart focused on Christ when you choose what you’re going to wear. 1 Sm 16. 7 says, “man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

While the general rule ought to look to some level of formality in dress, because that is how as a society we show respect, what matters is not the judgement of peers or the message we send to them, but the message on our heart we send to God. Someone who is simply used to wearing a suit or who does so out of an improper sense of understanding without doing so with the express intention of honouring God would not be as pleasing to God as the person who dresses quite casually, but for whom those clothes are the best they own and selected in a desire to honour God. For the same reason, modesty does have a place in how we dress for Church simply because of the message it sends to God. The concern, however, should not be about inciting sin in others.

In St Matthew’s Gospel, Christ is recorded as saying, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on,” (6. 25). This seems to contradict the importance of dress, and indeed may well have been used to support the dress code revolution of the sixties and seventies that told us it didn't matter what we wore. At the same time, it should be remembered that just a few verses before in Chapter 5, Christ discussed how it was not the letter of the law that mattered, but the spirit. It is not enough to simply refrain from murder, but that we must avoid anger as well as both are subject to judgement (Mt 5. 22). This mirrors the interpretation of 1 Sm 16. 7 and what is truly being said is, what matters is not what you are wearing, but why you are wearing it.