2024-08-29
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
August 25, 2024 Hamilton Coe Throckmorton
Ephesians 6:10-20 The Federated Church, UCC
I know, I know. For some of us gathered here today, this may well not be your favorite biblical passage. I mean, really! In a world tossed and turned by excessive violence and devastating wars, how would it possibly make sense to encourage arming ourselves? “Put on the whole armor of God”? Really?! In the face of relentless gun violence and weapons of war that poison our streets and ghastly destruction in Gaza and Ukraine, this ancient letter-writer wants us to arm ourselves? I don’t think so!
And you and I are not the only ones who have our doubts. Several decades ago, as many denominations were producing new church hymnals, almost invariably they left out a long-time staple, “Onward, Christian Soldiers”—with its vivid image of “marching as to war.” That hymn struck many church leaders as tone-deaf in a world as violent as ours. So out went that hymn. There were passionate debates over other hymns, as well—“Soldiers of Christ, Arise,” and “Lead On, O King Eternal” among them. To many, they just seemed inappropriate in today’s world.
And those were pertinent questions, not only because of general violence in the world, but also because of Christian history itself, with its checkered and shameful chapters of inquisitions and witch trials and wars to establish superiority. For those of us who may be dismissive of Islam because of a perceived tendency to violence, a good hard look in the Christian mirror would be entirely appropriate. Our own religious history is punctuated with violence and abuse enough to singe us.
And yet maybe it’s possible that there is still nevertheless a word of truth here, a word of encouragement and strength. Let me tell you a story. On September 25, 1988, I was ordained as a Christian minister. I had already been a pastor for a year by that point. And the churches of which I was a part in East Montpelier, VT, put on a fantastic celebration concluding with fireworks on the lawn. In that service, my mother, an ordained minister, preached the sermon. And I asked my father, also a minister, to lead what’s called the prayer of ordination. People in the congregation—in those days, it was all clergy—were invited forward to lay hands on me as the prayer that ordains me was spoken. And what I still vividly remember is that my father prayed that day that I might be surrounded in my ministry by “the whole armor of God.” So for me, those words have a rich and special resonance. They remind me of my calling as a minister of the good news of God in Jesus Christ. And they evoke for me the unutterable joy and satisfaction of this lifelong work of mine.
When my father prayed those words, he knew something I didn’t yet really know. He knew that his son was a sensitive man, one who can be easily, maybe too easily, hurt. I think he wanted to summon some holy forces of beauty and good to strengthen me in the trials he knew were inevitable. And he very much wanted to remind me that I was not alone in this work, that, in all its pain and challenge, God would be with me.
At a deeper level, he also knew that the work I was embarking on, just as is the work of so many of us, would be full of challenges, some of them excruciatingly daunting. He knew, in a sense, that we all face trials that can get the better of us, and that we fight battles that may sometimes seem unwinnable. Remember the old line of Ian Maclaren, “Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”
You know those battles at your core. You know the pain of thwarted pregnancy and miscarriage and premature death. You know the weakness that haunts you, and the seeking of a false comfort in alcohol or drugs or video games or pornography or mindless hobbies. You know the agony of a marriage that, no matter how hard you try, never seems to find a deep and settled joy. You know the pain of friends or family who have ghosted you, of work that leaves you drained of all spark, of depression or anxiety that robs you of equanimity and peace. Enemies? You and I know them well. They stalk us in myriad ways.
So the ancient letter-writer calls for something, anything, to make it right. The writer knows that we are all confronted with “enemies” that seem more powerful than our own innate resources. So the writer summons a power, the only real power, that can make the difference.
That power has a particular character, though. Take a look at the weapons of the armor the writer says may make things right. Those weapons are, with one exception, all weapons that are defensive in nature. They’re not weapons of attack. They’re weapons of protection. Look at the list: belt, breastplate, shoes, shield, helmet. Those are hardly weapons designed and intended to harm others. They’re defensive. They’re protective. They keep the wearer safe.
Not only that, but it’s what the armor is made of that’s really key. It’s not so much literal war clothing that Ephesians is talking about. It’s the figurative “material” of that clothing that matters. Instead of iron or chainmail, the belt, breastplate, shoes, shield, and helmet are made of truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation. Those qualities of depth and beauty are what the author of this letter wants us to wear.
One of the several militaristic hymns that has made denominations wonder whether to include them in hymnals is the hymn, “Lead On, O King Eternal.” Its words have rubbed some people the wrong way. “Lead on, O King eternal, the day of march has come; . . . and now, O King eternal, we lift our battle song.” And many Christians justifiably cringe at the notion of going to battle as a way of expressing our faith.
And these objectors have a point. But like the scripture passage itself, that hymn, too, has a special resonance for me. When I graduated from high school, we had a baccalaureate service the night before. And one of the hymns at that service was a hymn I had never heard before. It was that very hymn. And I was enthralled by it. And part of the reason it gripped me so is the words of the second verse: “Lead on, O King eternal, till sin’s fierce war shall cease,/ and holiness shall whisper the sweet amen of peace;/ for not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums;/ with deeds of love and mercy, the heavenly kingdom comes.” Not with slashing swords. Not with war-like drums. With deeds of love and mercy: that’s the armor of God; that’s how the heavenly way of God takes hold.
The hymn does just what the letter to the Ephesians does. It invokes battle imagery as a way of conveying just how crucial the whole issue is, and, at the same time, it turns that imagery on its head as if to say: use that armor not to divide and destroy, but to do the work of God in the world—to show love and justice, to make the world a better place, to transform it with kindness and compassion. ‘You want to be a Christian?’ the letter seems to say. ‘Then wear the soft and yielding and embracing armor of love.’ Or, in the words of the hymn, devote yourself to “deeds of love and mercy.”
Back and forth this passage takes us, between its two complementary emphases. Given the battles of life—the illnesses and deaths and failures and betrayals and addictions that more often than not seem too big for us to handle on our own—given those assaults, it seems entirely appropriate that we would wear an armor that conveys the presence and strength of God. When serious illness slaps us in the face; when the death of someone we love sucks all the life out of us; when failure and betrayal destroy some core spark in us; when addiction shows us just how powerless we so often are—when these things happen, isn’t it a gift of the highest order to know that we are wearing, and in truth being protected by, the very One, and indeed the only One, who can save us, who can truly make us whole? This long-ago letter reminds us that we are wearing that very Holy One at every moment, and that we can take comfort and refuge in that. You and I are not in this all by ourselves. We are held at every moment by the One who offers the only armor, the only power, that can make the difference—that can let us “withstand” (6:13) and come through the potentially destructive battle relatively whole.
At the same time—its second emphasis—from within the cocoon of that love, the letter to the Ephesians gives us our marching orders. It admittedly uses language that can seem antiquated and irrelevant to the contemporary mind. “Our struggle,” says the letter, “is . . . against the cosmic powers of this present evil age, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (6:12). And perhaps we rebel against such language, or find no connection there to our everyday lives. Cosmic powers and spiritual forces of evil are not the way we customarily think about our world.
What the writer is getting at, though, is simply that there are forces of destruction and evil that seem far bigger than any of us, and far beyond our ability to control them. Mass murder, unconscionable restrictions on freedom, virtually limitless movements of mayhem and cruelty—think Tulsa race riots, think Matthew Shepard, think ongoing gun violence, think Nazi holocaust—these are gruesome manifestations of the “cosmic powers,” of the “spiritual forces of evil” that sear us with their banality and relentlessness.
And it’s as we put on the armor of truth and righteousness and peace and faith and salvation that we become witnesses to a better, richer, more whole way. It’s as we don that uniquely beautiful armor that we can often make a difference. In her book, The Amen Effect, Rabbi Sharon Brous says, “I am ever cognizant of [a man named] Derek Black. Son of the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Black grew up at the very heart of America’s white nationalist movement, a fervent believer in the lie of white genocide. . .. When classmates in his liberal arts college discovered his identity, he was largely shunned . . . except for one classmate, a religious Jew, who invited [Black] for Shabbat dinner. ‘He doubted that he was going to convince me of anything,’ Black later said. ‘He just wanted to let me see [the] Jewish community . . . so that if I was going to keep saying these [antisemitic] things that at least I had seen real Jews.’
“Imagine the tension at that meal: a Shabbat dinner table with a guest whose foundational identity, whose connection to his family and community is rooted in violent, virulent racism and antisemitism. But one dinner led to the next. A few other Jewish students joined . . .. They discussed and debated. For every study Black cited, attempting to prove racial superiority, they’d counter with ‘150 more recent, more well-researched studies . . .’ They’d argue back and forth until Black would have to admit that his argument didn’t hold together. Black explains: ‘We did that over a year or two on one thing after another until I got to a point where I didn’t believe [the ideas I was raised with] anymore.’
“Of course, I’m fascinated by Black’s ultimate disentanglement from white nationalism and his family—a process he describes as a ‘gradual awakening’ to the harm he had caused. But I’m even more curious about his Jewish classmates. What did it take for them to open their homes, week after week, to engage in the painstaking work of stretching open another person’s heart, of humanizing themselves to a neo-Nazi, and even finding humanity in him? . . . [T]he transformative power of these relationships is undeniable” (The Amen Effect, pp. 162-3).
That transformative power is the secret sauce in the armor of God. The Jews who engage in their encounter with Derek Black have done vital work. And so have we whenever we don the uniquely beautiful, healing armor of the Holy One. That armor is our protective strength. And it is our saving power, the power, with God’s help, to make all things new. May it always be so.