In some ways, this isn't a bad thing.  When in the corporate world, I enjoyed casual Friday's as much as the next cubicle-inmate.  The formality of dressing for church on Sunday mornings as a child was gladly given up when I found a campus ministry that assumed that college kids weren't going to dress up for worship.  My wife and I struggle with getting our children to address adults as "Mr. Vang" or "Miss Andrea" or "Mrs. Pederson".  It's a struggle in part because most of these folks, although they were likely raised in a culture that expected such formalities, aren't concerned about reinforcing them with younger generations.  And so the formalities get lost.

For a long time, I thought this was a good thing.  We're all created equal, right?  Why should we be hampered by formality in addressing one another, or in dressing a certain way for certain occasions and situations?  Why not just let it all hang out, so to speak?  Does it matter if a pastor is robed, or wearing a clerical, or wearing a trendy t-shirt with jeans exactingly faded to convey the proper attitude of not caring how faded the jeans are?

But I think more and more that people like formality.  Not simply like it, they crave it in some ways.  Note how fervently the British fawn over their royalty.  More at home, note how fans seem to go nuts for the pomp and circumstance, the tradition deliberately preserved in the rites and rituals of something like baseball:

(props to my colleague Chris at http://habakkukscomplaint.blogspot.com/ for providing the above link)

Note the very deliberate pomp and circumstance.  The men in their red blazers.  The formality of the moment.  The president is an impressive figure, yet even he becomes simply a part of a larger drama that has been played out season after season after season since well before he was born.  Pomp and circumstance provides a context, wherein we are not the be-all and end-all of things.  It helps remind us that we are so fleeting, and the extraordinary emphasis the world places on our sense of self-worth and self-importance is ultimately damaging and misleading in so many ways.

If people are willing to accept such formality in a baseball stadium, why do so many balk at it in a church?  Or why do so many people assume that people will balk at it in a church?

Perhaps our incessant focus in the church on the individual as consumer, rather than the individual as recipient, has a lot to do with this.  There's part of me that would be much happier in Levi's on a Sunday morning.  But there's another part of me - a growing part of me - that knows that this isn't entirely true.  When I wear the clerical and the robe on Sunday morning, I'm contextualizing myself.  I am not simply Me.  I am not the focus.  I am simply the latest in a long line of mouthpieces that stretches back to the prophets of the Old Testament, to the judges of the Old Testament, to Moses, to Joseph, to Abraham.  Simple people made extraordinary not by their own accomplishments and abilities, but because the Creator of the Universe supported them, walked beside them, fed them strength and power and words that were always known to be His, not theirs.  

Wearing my Levi's on Sunday morning, attempting to just be 'one of the crowd', denies the fact that I have been called to be out of the crowd, and that this is not only expected, it's good.  That whether it's the scape goat or the prophet or the pastor, God utilizes people pulled out of one context and placed into another.  The pomp and circumstance and formality ultimately is not there to elevate the pastor, but rather to diminish him (or her, in some quarters).  To keep them mindful that they are like the grass of the field that is here today and gone tomorrow.  That it doesn't matter how many people are in your congregation, or how many books you've sold, or how many conferences you keynote - what matters is that your life is prostrated before God, so that when others see you, they realize that there *has* to be a God, because you're so completely incapable on your own.

As painful as that position of prostration can be, that's what I pray for.  Because regardless of what the TV or the radio or the movies tell me, I'm really not that big a deal.  Not really.  I'm just a child of God that is deeply blessed beyond my ability to adequately acknowledge and give thanks for it.  Someone who loves the knowledge that I'm part of something bigger and deeper and more pervasive than the short span of my lifetime.  Maybe this is what worship is intended to do - not to focus us on our act of worship, but to contextualize us as part of a long, long history of God sustaining and feeding and forgiving His people.  

Maybe that's worth dressing up for, regardless of which side of the altar you're standing on.