The Armor of God
A Sermon by Rev. Mark R. Thomson
Harundale Presbyterian Church
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Scripture: Ephesians 6:10-20
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our
Redeemer.[1] Amen.
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hat
is your level of frustration?
Is
it me, or do we seem to be becoming a nation of very frustrated people?
A father stomps and yells at the umpire who just
called his kid out at little league game.
Fists pound the steering wheel of a car trapped in
rush-hour traffic as another driver cuts them off. You don't have to be a lip-reader to know
what profanity is echoing inside.
Unemployment lines grow while CEO's get big bonuses
for getting the stock price up by getting rid of workers.
Pews empty on Sunday morning.
A person stands outside the Alabama Supreme
Courthouse vehemently yelling, "You won't take my ten commandments!"
I
could go on.
Frustration
is that sense of getting no-where;
of plans
and expectations thwarted;
the rug pulled out from under
you;
a deep sense of disappointment in the way things are going.
Some
frustrations are trivial. Yet we have
seen how even these can lead to violence:
Umpires beat up by parents, and road rage.
But
other frustrations are born out of a deep sense that the world is taking a turn
for the worse and we are powerless to stop it. Like
Sisyphus who was cursed to eternally push a rock up a long steep hill, only to
watch it roll back down to the bottom back where he started, we feel our
efforts are meaningless.
It
is this deep sense of frustration that often boils into anger. A desire wells up within us to reach for the
sword to strike out at those who are the cause of so much angst.
This
is a replica of a Scottish Claymore of the mid 16th to 17th
century, used by my relatives to take out their
frustrations on those who would oppress them either politically,
economically, or of course religiously.
For
thirty years between 1618 and 1648, war ravaged across
Protestants and Catholics killed each other,
then kneeling,
turned their blood soaked swords
to the ground,
and in the name of Jesus Christ
claimed victory.
It
was not unnoticed that a sword such as this turned upside down, looked like a
cross. It wasn't the first religious
war, and it certainly wasn't the last.
How
much violence is born of our frustrations?
Violence done even in the name of God.
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ow
most of us do not respond to the many frustrations in life by picking up a
"sword" so-to-speak. However, frustrations often
elicit, even from the best of us,
gritted teeth,
pounding fists,
angry yelling,
or those tantalizingly simple ideas
that divide the world into "us" verses the "them who are the
cause of our frustration". It's
those Muslims, or those liberals, or those conservatives, or those
gays...the list goes on.
Be
warned though...all of these responses have more in common with the Scottish
Claymore than they do with Christ.
I
don't think the Apostle Paul would approve of any of them. Here is a man well acquainted with
frustration:
He was stoned once (Acts
He was beaten with rods three times (Acts
He was shipwrecked three times (2 Corinthians
He was tried and imprisoned several times (2
Corinthians
You
think you've had it tough! Yet here Paul
sits, an "Ambassador in Chains" he calls himself, sitting bound in a
prison cell writing the letter we read today.
Does he advocate violence? Does
he grit his teeth and pound his fists?
Does he scream and yell at the system?
No,
he transforms the armor of violence into the Armor of God.
Ephesians
6:10-17 is one of my favorite passages of scripture. I have here an artistic rendering of this
passage done for me by my best friend.
You can't see it from there, but it is a picture of a medieval knight,
dressed in full armor, shield and sword at the ready, facing forward prepared
for whatever may come. Written over the
drawing of the knight are the words of Ephesians 6:10-17. This drawing hangs over my desk at home to
inspire me.
for
the rest, brethren, be strengthened in the
Lord
and in the might of his power. Put on
the
Against
the wiles of the devil,
For our wrestling is
Not
against flesh and blood, but against the
Principalities
and the Powers, against the world-rulers
of
this darkness, against the spiritual forces of
Wickedness
on high.
Therefore take up the armor of
God,
that you may be able to resist in the evil
Day,
and stand in all things perfect. Stand,
Therefore,
having girded your loins with truth,
And
having put on the breast plate of justice, and
having
your feet shod with the readiness of the
Gospel
of peace, in all things taking up the shield of
faith,
with which you may be able to quench all
The
fiery darts of the most wicked one. And
take
Unto
you the helmet of salvation and the sword of
The
spirit, that is, the word of God.
Paul
is inspiring his listeners on how to face the many frustrations that lay ahead
in their Christian journey. Paul, the
"ambassador in chains",
sitting locked up in a Roman prison, doesn't advocate violence, but
rather uses the military image to stress that our battle is waged with a
different set of weapons.
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ere
is where we face the Spiritual Crossroads.
In the face of mounting frustration there are two popular
responses:
First, we can get angry and blame somebody, maybe
even try to punish them.
- that's
the "put on your Armor of Steel" option and fight.
Second, we can give up.
- that's
the "take off all armor and run away option".
Paul
defines a third option: Face our
frustrations by putting on the Armor of God
In
1 Thessalonians 5:8 Paul also refers to our Armor saying,
But, since we belong to the day, let us be sober,
and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of
salvation.
The
Armor of God is not that which maims and draws blood but rather that which
strengthens our spirit:
Truth, Justice, Love, the
Gospel of Peace, Faith, Salvation, and the Spirit.
These
are the Armor of God which stand against those powers
that would frustrate us.
By
surrounding ourselves with these, we are armed to face the frustrations of life
without given into the evil of violence, or the apathy of doing nothing.
But
what touches me deeply and inspires me every time a read this passage is that
while the language is military, the spirit is that of a majestic calm in the
presence of chaos.
Another
image that comes to my mind is that of a mighty redwood tree, firmly rooted in
the power of God, standing tall and firm, able to withstand the mightiest of
storms. There is no violence, no
red-faced madness. There is rather a
steadfast resoluteness that in its very calmness is powerful, strong branches
reaching toward the heavens, unshakable.
That
is the Christian Paul wants us to be.
There is strength in
speaking the truth in a world where truth can be bought and sold.
There is strength in
standing up for justice for those who are oppressed, for the poor and outcast.
There is strength in loving
your neighbor, and loving your enemy.
There is strength in knowing
the peace which surpasses all other peace.
There is strength in knowing
that God loves the world so much that God sent God's only son to save us.
There is strength in a faith
that believes and stays the course while storms rage and fiery arrows are fired
at us.
There is strength in the
Spirit of God who works through us.
Christians
are not wishy-washy people who love everyone and simply forget that there is
evil in the world that needs to be exposed and dealt with. But we know that swords of steel cannot
transform the heart. You cannot force
people to turn from evil, you must transform their heart.
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cannot help but think
of Dr. Martin Luther King as the quintessential example of one who put on the
Armor of God and transformed a nation.
The anniversary of his "I have a Dream Speech" has passed us
this week. We remember the strength of
his spirituality as in calmness he spoke the truth in love and worked for
justice, not through violence but through peaceful protest. Like mighty redwoods, people of faith stood
against the beatings and firehouses of those who opposed their cause.
Dr.
King once said that “the means must be coherent with the ends”. What he meant was if you desire is peace, you
can't use violence to achieve it. It's
why the peace process in the
Why
don't we remember Malcolm-X as much as Martin Luther King? I think it's because Dr. King transformed
our hearts with a calm but resolute faith that spoke the truth, stood for
justice, loved everyone (even their enemies), and had the faith and hope to know
that God is indeed working in the world.
Malcolm-X thought it would take swords of steel to change our hearts,
but swords of steel only harden hearts.
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Christians we face an interesting road ahead.
There is happening within our nation a symbolic stripping of God from
public life. I believe this is as
inevitable to fulfill the mandate of our Constitution's First Amendment as it
was for us to abolish slavery to finally prove that all men [all people] are
created equal, words written nearly 100 years before the Emancipation
Proclamation that freed the slaves.
It
does not mean that God can ever be stripped from our hearts. We are free to practice our religion, to
protest those things that go against our religious convictions, and to vote for
those who support morality.
I
support the separation of church and state.
Why? Because
throughout history when the sword of government has been married to religion, a
lot of blood has been shed in the name of God. Our founding fathers like Jefferson and
Madison knew this to be true.
I'm
not upset by the Ten Commandments being pulled out the Supreme Court
House in
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owever,
there is no doubt we do face a moral crisis in our nation. But forcing religion will not work. Jeremiah 31:33 says
I will put my law within them, and I will write it
upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
God
wants to carve them in our hearts, and that can not be done by the point of a
steel-sword.
Christians
face a spiritual cross roads. We can not turn the clock back to the 1940's
when everyone thinks the world was better off:
when prayer was in schools, blacks were segregated in the south.
How do we witness to a
nation that is consumed with greed and material possessions?
How do we witness to a
nation where people matter less than money; where truth is important only if
it’s convenient?
How do we witness to a
nation that cares more about pleasure than it does about substance, and the
pursuit of goodness?
How do we witness to a
nation where violence is glorified and practiced in our movies, television, and our
video games?
I
do not have all the answers. But I know
that we as Christians must struggle to understand how we are different from the
world. How will our lives be a witness
to those around us that we are Christ's?
What
the world needs is a witness, not by simply words or stone monuments, but by
faithful people who witness in the strength of God's love - a witness that does
not bend to the whims of the world, but also one that does not use anger and
violence as its tools. Rather, we when
we put on the Armor of God, we stand firm for Justice, Truth, and Love, having
the shield of faith and the hope of salvation to uphold us when the storm winds
blow strong.
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hat
is your level of frustration?
Don't
let frustration beat the good out of you.
Don't let the wiles of the devil win.
Don't give in to anger and
simple us versus them answers.
Don't be drawn toward swords of steel.
Put
on the Armor of God. Draw your strength
from God to remain calm and resolute in the face of life's insanity. Stand firm for what is right. Defend the less fortunate. Speak the truth in love. Pray at all times.
Be
strong, stand, pray - that is our charge today.
In
the Armor of God, you can.
To him who
loves us
and has
freed us from our sins by his blood
and made us a
kingdom, priests to his God and Father,
to him be glory and dominion
for ever and ever.
Amen.[2]