In this weary world, we often struggle against powers and cosmic evils that wish to take us away from eternal, abundant life. The full armor of God helps us remember we are not alone in our struggles.
Vicar Natalie Wussler
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 21 B
Texts: Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18; Psalm 34:15-22; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69
Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The beginning of my senior year of college felt a lot like the flaming arrows that Paul talks about today. Riddle with anxiety, I was constantly barraged by the questions of where my life was going the next year, and while I had a perfectly canned answer, I truly had no idea where I was going and found it hard to believe I would attain the same level of success my peers would. My self esteem was at an all-time low. Compounded on that, my junior year left me with some pretty traumatic scars that I had not yet healed from. Some days I barely wanted to get out of bed. I was confused, broken, and often I felt utterly alone.
I don’t remember exactly why I started doing this, but I began reading our Ephesians passage before I got out of bed in the morning and before I went to sleep at night. I made a point to not even let my feet touch the floor until I had read Ephesians 6, because I wanted to clothe myself in the armor of God before I did anything else that day. It wasn’t overnight, but gradually the pain and the anxiety subsided. I connected with dear friends that reminded whose I am. My path started to become clearer. Getting out of bed didn’t feel like a battle between the world and me. I started feeling like myself again and was more confident to face the day knowing that I wore the armor of God.
When I saw that this text was in the lectionary this week, I got excited to preach on the armor of God because of how personally meaningful it is to me. But I do understand that talking about armor and battle in church is a tenuous topic. It’s passages like Ephesians 6 that people used to write songs like “Onward Christian Soldier” which likens the church to an aggressive army instead of a community attempting to love God, each other, and the neighbor well. This kind of text has been used by Christians to justify doing horrific things, some of which we talked about last week. We see Christian nationalists today using this passage as permission to arm up and create violent chaos in our country. But, beloved, even though Paul’s address to the Ephesians sounds a lot more like something out of the Lord of the Rings or Henry V, if you dig a little deeper, it has truth and good news. I invite you to stick around with me and find out.
But, we’ve got to talk about the bad news first. There are powers and evils in this world that want to keep you and I away from eternal, abundant life. Paul says this is what we struggle against. It’s larger and loftier than one person or even a group of people. Our struggle is not with flesh, but with powers. Powers that seek to divide and oppress. They’re things that we encounter everyday. Greed, misogyny, homophobia, selfishness, racism, and sinfulness of all kinds. The prospect of resisting these cosmic evils might feel hopeless. But Paul responds “stand in God’s strength.” You are not helpless against these powers, no. You have a full set of armor to protect you.
You have the belt of God’s truth, which holds you together.
The breastplate of righteousness to protect your heart from all the cosmic evil in the world.
You can lace your sandals to ready yourself to proclaim the gospel–the present evils have already lost, Christ is victorious.
The helmet of salvation, reminding you of your baptism and your unconditional welcome into God’s family.
And finally the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God delivering both law and gospel. A word that can both cut and heal.
This is the full armor of God. They are the tools that equip you to do God’s work in an overwhelmed world. It unites people of faith, it does not divide. It responds in God’s love, not with the world’s hate and fear. It’s a protective agent so that you and I have the ability to withstand our world’s proclivity for violence and oppression, and do it with the Holy Spirit’s guidance. The full armor of God gives us fortitude against sinfulness that keeps us separated from the Triune God and from our neighbor. It helps us with one voice denounce the systemic evils that keep God’s beloved children in oppression and we do all this knowing that it is not with our own strength, but by the strength of God.
Once dressed in this armor, Paul has this directive: Pray. Do it unceasingly. This is a deep kind of prayer, an abiding kind of prayer. A God in you and you in God kind of prayer that Jesus talks about in our gospel reading today. It is a total dependence on the One who has saved us and continues to save us, every moment of every day.
Beloved, you are not alone, you have never been alone, you will never be alone.
Yes, the weight and the pain of this wild world might feel like they are on your shoulders, but you do not have to face it by yourself. The same is true of our neighbors.
Paul asks us to pray for all the saints, including him, a prisoner of the Roman empire, fully dependent on God. This armor was never meant just for our own protection. Our neighbors far and near are experiencing the same cosmic evil as us. They need to know that the armor of God is for them too. We can go out and be God’s armor for people. Whether it’s being a helpful hand to a stranger, a random act of kindness, or advocating for the liberation of all people, we can take our armor to enter into this hurting world speaking love and justice to all. Paul’s directive to pray shifts our focus from our own protection to the empowerment of all God’s beloved children in a weary world that desperately needs to hear good news.
Friends, hear the words of the ambassador in chains: speak truth, guard your heart with righteousness, have faith in the Triune God, renew your mind and remember your baptismal promises, ground yourself in the gospel, for yourself and for your neighbor. But most of all pray, and do it abiding deeply in the God who abides in you so that all may experience the protection and empowerment of the armor of God.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
