It's about God

And we are misusing the shield of faith, if we say:
“I don't have to think about faith too much, since I remember what I learned a long time ago and I go to church now and again. I'm doing OK and feel fairly safe about things.”

Hear the word “I” sprinkled throughout that little speech?

If the image of armor leads us to be thinking that we are self-sufficient, secure in ourselves, and safe, then it is being misused.

Why is that?

A solitary person in armor is still quite vulnerable in many ways.

Enemies coming from several directions at once cannot all be fended off.

But when a cohort of Roman soldiers would form a square and lock their shields together, they could make a defensive wall that could withstand assaults by great numbers of the enemy.

The Roman legions proved that countless times on the battlefield for centuries.

We can see the application to ourselves at once.

The person trying to go it alone is going to have a difficult time.

Dealing with a problem in one direction, evil of another sort can attack,

and rising over the whole situation is the sin of pride:

“I'll handle this all myself”

“I don't need you, or anyone!”

But it is just not true.

With the long list of things that happen through the church such as Stephen Ministry, visitation with Holy Communion, hospital visits, Family Promise, quilt making, school kit making, visiting the Selinsgrove Center, CROP Walk, and many more activities and projects that we do it is easy for us to forget that much of the world around us has a very different view.

One day I was talking with a person who stated the world's opinion very clearly.

“Nobody does anything for other people without asking what they get out of it,” he said.

“What's in it for me?”

As the conversation went along, I asked the person how he would explain the work of the quilters group, engaged every week in work for those whom they will most likely never meet this side of heaven.

There is no money in it for them.

I could even describe to him the warehouse in New Windsor MD where the quilts are baled and stacked waiting to be shipped wherever they are needed.

I could relate to him a story I heard from a returned missionary who witnessed quilts like ours being unpacked and put into service in India.

All to no avail.

He shook his head derisively, indicating that the whole enterprise is kooky in his view.

But the church is called to precisely that kind of kookiness, to stand with people of every sort and condition,

those whom we know close by

and those in distant places also.

We stand with each other,

speaking the truth of the gospel to each other, and helping each other in physical distress also.

There are no lone or independent Christians.

This is clear in the passage from Ephesians.

Paul is the great missionary who is not afraid to tackle most any situation,

but even he knows that he needs something from the little church at Ephesus.

“Pray for me also,” he says, “so that when I speak, it is truly Gospel Good News that the people hear.

He can't do it alone.

He needs those other believers to stand beside him and to help him,

in any way they can, including prayer.

Paul's mention of prayer here is good for two reasons:

--it is important, needed, and necessary,

--everyone can do it; no one is left out, saying “That's something I can't do.”

So, to use the Christian armor rightly is to work, study, help, and pray, together.

Now let's change direction and observe a second way in which we can misuse the image of armor.

Not only do we use it to try to announce our independence,

we also call upon “my own personal faith” to be invulnerable.

...and it cannot be, because the worst dangers are from within us!

I'm reminded of one of the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, the Masque of the Red Death, in which the rich folk all flee to a distant castle to escape the plague.

They bar all the entrances and proceed to party, thinking themselves to be safe and secure in their armored fortress.

But the seeds of destruction were already among them, and the plague worked its deadly way through their number.

It did not matter how high their walls and secure their gates, they were killed from within.

It is not just a story; we hear this and know this every day.

A dam that is supposed to protect a town gives way and kills unsuspecting folks downstream.

Our soldiers are shot in the back by supposed allies in Afghanistan.

One whom you thought was a friend turns out to be spreading vicious rumors.

Some cells in your own body go crazy and turn into a cancer that wants to destroy the very body that hosts it.

And then Jesus talks about it in another connection in the Gospel today: For it is from the human heart that evil intentions come: fornication theft, murder, adultery, pride, avarice, wickedness, envy, slander, folly...

All these things come from within, and they defile a person.

So, we put on the armor and discover that things can still go wrong!

Then what?

Notice that there is only one offensive weapon mentioned:

the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

So it is with this unusual weapon that we are to cut out the evil that is after each one of us as well as the evil that is beyond the walls.

the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

Does that mean we are to hold up the Bible and wave it at the problems?

No, the New Testament was just beginning to be written when this passage was being penned, and so “Word of God” must mean something else.

It refers to this whole community activity of speaking and hearing, helping and correcting, of work, and study, and worship.

It is here, together as church, that the word of God is active, doing its job.

This is the place to be for fighting the evil which is inside of us as well as the evil around us.

Again and again over the years people have said” I can't come to church because of this problem or that.”

-a health problem, a cancer that I'm trying to keep secret because I feel unclean.

-A job problem, I'm embarrassed, with a loss of self-esteem.

-A family problem, tensions or divorce or all of the other things that can go wrong.

The pastor has to keep on saying: Don't stay away! Individually our armor is weak and vulnerable,

but when we are together, the word of God can more easily get at its job of consoling the pain, cutting out the evil, and healing the wounds.

There is a further observation to make.

We've been saying it right along, but we need to emphasize it now.

In the verse with which we began, we are counseled to put on the whole armor of God.

The whole armor is not of our own making, but God's gift to us.

It is not a self-help exercise, but a Spirit-led connection with the will of the Father.

It joins us with the prayer and praise of the church of all times and places as we work on the problems and struggles of our own day.

It is first of all about the nature of God, not about us!

It is the armor of God, belonging to God, the gift of God, sent by God to help us withstand the the assaults of evil until Christ's victory is made manifest throughout creation.

And so we sing as the church has sung for 16 or 17 centuries:

Holy God, we praise your Name...

You, Christ, are the king of glory...

You overcame the sting of death,

and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers...

Come then, Lord,

and help your people,

bought with the price

of your own blood....

Make no mistake; there is war afoot.

But we have armor, armor not our own but from God,

armor sufficient for the fight outside as well as the internal strife.

Christ Jesus has already won the war, but these mopping-up battles are certainly painful and can be deadly.

Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand the wiles of the devil. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.