Pentecost 12
August 23, 2009
Ephesians 6:10-20
The first time I ever volunteered to work with a youth group was at my old church in Atlanta. We had enough volunteers that the paid youth leader broke us into small groups to be responsible for planning some of the weeks’ activities. She passed out some books with titles like “Best-Ever Games for Youth Ministry” and “Help! I’m a Church Youth Worker!” We paged through them looking for activities that might hold the teens’ interest and dog-eared some corners.
One of the ones we decided to use was based on our reading for this morning from Ephesians about putting on the armor of God. I wasn’t wild about the reading, but the activity looked like fun. And so, following the book’s instructions, we divided the kids up into teams and had them dress up according to the Ephesians’ description of God’s armor. Using things like toilet paper, tin cans, newspapers, old cereal boxes, and paper towel rolls, each had to create a belt of truth, a breastplate of righteousness, shoes of peace, a shield of faith, a helmet of salvation, and a sword of the spirit. Then, once the kids were all “armored”, each side got to pelt the other side with marshmallows.
The whole thing was more complicated than I’d expected. The kids found it hard to move around once all that stuff was on and had trouble keeping it all from falling off. Looking back now, it reminds me of that story about young David going into the fields and offering to fight the giant Goliath when everyone else was too scared. And the king offers David his armor and his sword and shield to protect him. But all that stuff is too big and heavy for David and makes it so he can’t even move. The kids looked like that – covered from head to toe with so much stuff that they could barely throw a marshmallow.
They had fun anyway – what kids wouldn’t enjoy concocting crazy outfits and then throwing things at one another? But I remember very distinctly feeling like I’d let those kids down. None of the leaders had any idea what the reading meant, and we weren’t prepared to talk about what those items of “armor” were all about, or how they applied to our lives. Probably the kids were left with a vague impression that being Christian has something to do with acting violently and being burdened by a bunch of extra junk.
I hadn’t thought much about that reading since. But when I read today’s readings to think about what I might preach about, I found I still had that nagging guilt that I’d failed with those kids. Maybe this was a chance for me to redeem myself from that marshmallow incident! Unfortunately, I still was not wild about the reading. In fact, when I read it, two things popped out at me that made me want to dismiss it completely.
For one thing, I’m uncomfortable with the dualistic-seeming vision of this cosmic battle between Good and Evil, with the wily Devil poking at us from every side. In my faith view, God has already won whatever battle there was to win. “The strife is o’er, the battle done.”
And yet, to give credit to the reading, there clearly still is evil in the world. And we are undeniably still vulnerable to it, either as victims or as perpetrators. I felt the presence of evil when I read last week about the rapes of women in the Congo – so prevalent that women bar their doors when alone and cannot safely go outside without armed protectors. There’s no way to avoid talking about evil when subjects like the Nazi concentration camps or genocide come up. The kind of evil that somehow turns otherwise sensible, decent people into people that commit atrocities, or stand by while others do.
And in a smaller sense, there’s the evil that Paul talks about in his letter to the Romans: “For what I do is not the good I want to do, but the evil that I do not want to do.” We’ve all got those pieces of life where despite our best intentions, we find ourselves unable to be the person we want to be. Whether it’s a parent losing her patience at a child, or an addict’s unsuccessful fight against alcohol or drugs, or some other temptation or fear that gets the better of us. The language I would use for all of these things wouldn’t be devils or Satan, but there does seem to exist something malignant and outside our control. So maybe there is a need for this recipe for standing fast.
The other thing about this reading from Ephesians that made me want to dismiss it on its face is its militaristic vision of being a Christian, armed and ready for battle. It’s such old language – a dated and potentially dangerous way of thinking about the world and our spiritual lives that has led to such dim pieces of our Christian heritage as the Crusades.
And yet, in a way, perhaps this metaphor is a helpful reminder that we Christians should not become complacent. Even though in this time and place being a Christian doesn’t endanger our lives or expose us to persecution, if we are serious about it, Christianity ought to cause us real struggle in our lives as we resist all that draws us away from God, wrestle against all that pushes us toward doing what is wrong, and fight all that prevents us from loving God and our neighbor.
And so, fairly early on in my sermon preparation, I managed to overcome for myself my two real objections to this passage. But what I now believe is the heart of this passage, what makes me affirmatively buy into this passage, is something altogether different.
At the end of our Monday evening prayer group last week the small group gathered prayed Compline together. And I had this “aha” moment as we read the little portion of Matthew’s Gospel that is included in the service: Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
The armor that we hear about in Ephesians isn’t heavy, bulky stuff like what King Saul tried to give David to battle Goliath. This armor – truthfulness, justice, peace, faith, salvation and prayer – won’t weigh us down. This armor won’t make it hard for us to move around. It’s just the opposite. This armor is like when David discovered that with God on his side all he needed to down Goliath was his homemade slingshot. This “armor” is our true identity as Christians – putting it on is how we become fully and truly human, how we become who we already are in Christ, how we find rest for our souls. It is the most natural thing ever.
Frederick Buechner in The Magnificent Defeat described the war waged in our Ephesians reading as “the war to become whole and at peace inside our skins” – the war “to liberate that dimension of selfhood which has somehow become lost, that dimension of selfhood that involves the capacity to forgive and to will the good not only of the self but of all other selves.”
For a war like that, we need the whole armor of God.
And so we fasten around our waists the belt of truth. The truth that in Christ, we know what it means to be human; and that in Christ we know more about who God is. The truth that in the cross we know what the darkness is, in us and in our world; and that in the cross we also know what the love of God is, in us and in our world.
We put on the breastplate of righteousness. Which is love, not love as an emotion but as an act of the will. Love as the act of willing another’s good even though we may despise the darkness in him just as we will our own good even though we despise the darkness in ourselves.
On our feet we don the shoes of peace. This is the peace of God that grounds us no matter how un-peaceful the world around us might be and no matter how un-peaceful we may feel.
We take up the shield of faith. This faith isn’t belief in this or that particular doctrine, but a willingness to listen for the voice that calls us and then to try to follow it, wherever it may lead.
We put on the helmet of salvation. This is the hope of God’s abiding and eternal love for us that goes above, beyond and around any obstacle.
We hold the sword of the spirit. This is the Word of God that has been revealed throughout time and which continues to reveal itself in each of our lives today.
And we pray – always we pray. No matter how hard it may be or how irrelevant it may feel, we keep in touch with the only one who can give us rest for our souls and enable us to deal with everything raging within us and around us.
Sure beats dressing up and throwing marshmallows. Amen.
Elizabeth Rees