Put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand… Ephesians 6:10-20
It is March, it is St. Patrick’s Day, it is cold in Toronto, and our neighbours to the south are gearing up for spring and, what they call, March Madness. I’m not a big basketball fan, but having spent several years in Lexington one has little choice other than to get excited about the NCAA Championship. Rupp Arena in Lexington “packs ‘em in” better than the Air Canada Centre and since the Seminary I attended had joint programmes with The University of Kentucky, I just had to follow The University of Kentucky Wildcats. I tweeted and plastered Facebook with joy after they won the National Championship last year. Kentucky has now won eight championships, second only to UCLA in this regard. This month, I’ll be cheering for Kentucky but alas, they do not have quite the team they had last season. With family ties in North Carolina, I may be left cheering for Duke in the later rounds. Duke have won the championship four times and during their great run in the early 90s, they felt themselves to be so good that Duke t-shirts began to spring up around Carolina with the words, “You can talk the talk, but can you play the game!” It was a jab at all the other colleges and universities – talk is cheap, but can you do what it takes to get to the Duke level.
I think the apostle Paul would have enjoyed today’s sports for he alludes to a number of sports in his letters. In 1 Corinthians 9:24ff., he writes of running and training in such a way that one wins the prize. He mentions running again in Galatians 2:2, mentions boxing in 1Cor.9:26, and perhaps alludes to wrestling in Ephesians 6:12, gladiatorial contests in 1Cor.4:9, and chariot races in Phil.3:13. Of course these were the sports of Paul’s day, sports in the ancient Roman setting and if you’re a film buff, you will know of our understanding of Roman games from Ben Hur and The Gladiator. The Gladiator in particular focuses on the life and death aspects of Roman games. They were harsh, fierce contests and a person would have had to be ready. He would have had to have had the right armour and weapons, if he was to gain victory and live. A person had to be able to do more than just talk the talk, he really had to be able to “play the game” with the best.
And as we come to this passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the words of those Duke University t-shirts seem to sum up Paul’s intent when it comes to the Christian life also; “you can talk the talk but can you play the game.” Using a metaphor, he portrays the Christian life as a struggle, in v.12. It is as though the Christian were in Rome, in the Coliseum, when it comes to the arena of life, “wrestling not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Paul is asking if we are prepared to do more than talk in the bigger “game” of life.
We can understand Paul’s words about spiritual forces in the arena of life in two ways. One is to recognize that the Greek mind understood the world to be full of not only physical elements but also spiritual. The cosmos was full of forces, negative and positive, that would influence events on earth. There were many gods and goddesses in the Greek pantheon above, and just as many evil powers in the netherworld below. In the modern world with our comforts and relative safety, we tend not to dwell on these things, but in the ancient world, they were perceived as very real.
I evidenced a similar mode of thought in my childhood in Ireland. In rural areas of the country, there were still places where there were no televisions, few radios, houses without electricity and running water. In the midst of many a long night, the darkness lit only by fireplaces and gas lamps, the imagination could play tricks. The shadows were the stuff of intrigue, mystery, and danger. There were stories of faeries and the little people, banshees and the grim reaper. The banshee was particularly dreaded. To hear its cry meant certain death to a loved one. A 1959 Disney production, Darby O’Gill and the Little People, immortalized some of these old stories with depictions of the banshee and the Reaper coming in his carriage to cart a hapless Darby O’Gill off into the land of no return. We may smile, but in the hearts of the people in some areas, these were “as real as the hair on the back of your hand.” They were equally real to the general culture of Paul’s day and people feared the very thought of the shades and spiritual forces from beyond.
But there was another form of this battle that Paul may have had in mind when penning this epistle. The battle metaphor may have had to do with the spiritual struggle of Christians against things much more concrete and immediate. Christians were up against persecution in the Roman world. They were viewed with suspicion for having a lord other than Caesar. They were persecuted if they failed to bow down and worship the gods and particularly images of Caesar. There were misunderstandings of their community meals and their talk of the body and blood of their Lord and, so, they were hated in parts of the Empire.
In our “Getting to Know the Bible” seminar last week, I read to the group an excerpt from Roman writer Tacitus. Tacitus wrote of the Emperor Nero’s treatment of Christians as he sought to blame someone for the great fire in Rome. Tacitus held Christians to be criminal but had sympathy due to the horrendous treatment they incurred at Nero’s hands. They were clad in the hides of beasts and torn apart by dogs. They were crucified by day and, at night, doused with oil and made into human torches to light up the darkness. These are our spiritual forefathers and mothers. Persecution and death were at hand just for being a Christian and that is still an issue today in some parts of the world. Paul may be saying, one must be ready for that sort of battle.
Heresy was another issue that the early Christians had to struggle with. In days before there was a Bible or New Testament, people were free to go around preaching whatever they wanted and there were some who twisted the gospel into whatever pleased them. Early Christianity was of course Jewish and there was always a struggle to understand how much of the Torah, Christians should take on. Some within the Jewish-Christian community took aim at the gospel they thought was too free. In the Greek world there was always the danger of synthesis with other religious thoughts. Paul struggled to keep the gospel pure from what was considered forces of spiritual evil and error.
Temptation was another spiritual battle. If you ever read Paul, you will find him teaching people who are young in faith how to live. Turning to the one, true God in the midst of the Hellenistic world was not an easy thing. It was a daily battle for believers to follow a God who called them to a higher form of living. Paul speaks of believers putting off the “old self,” being renewed in the spirit of their minds, and putting on the new, “Created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” O, but it was hard to leave the old ways. Temptation always lay at hand. Spiritual strength was needed to have true righteousness and holiness, and it was here that Paul uses the metaphor of a soldier girded for battle to encourage his followers. Whether it was persecution, error, temptation, or spiritual struggle, Paul says, “Be strong in the Lord … Put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand” in the day of “battle.”
He writes of a number of things that would bolster our defences. Among others, he mentions, he advises us to don “the belt of truth.” In the midst of competing truths in the Greek world, Paul pointed his followers to the truth of Christ, the gospel that he had learned from the risen Lord and the disciples closest to Jesus.
Today, we are not that far from the pluralism of Paul’s day, with our own version of pluralism. Like the first century, it is very difficult for us to get across to others a notion of truth when so many see many truths. I run into people all the time that will speak of religions all being equal. They’ll talk about Islam being true for some and Judaism right for others. Christianity is one faith among many, one truth among many. While that all sounds magnanimous and good in our society, saying that everything is “true,” doesn’t make a lot of sense. Some have wondered what happens when there are conflicting claims between religions? What happens, for instance, when one religion says that Jesus is Lord and God while another says he is only a prophet? Both of those things cannot logically be true at the same time. Some will then suggest that the important thing is that they are true for the believers and that’s what matters. Yet, that sets up a belief that there are many truths and no Truth in an absolute sense. And then some wonder if it is absolutely true that there are no absolutes truths. This type of thinking fails the test of logic. So where are we to go? Some of us are silly enough to believe that if something actually happened then it is true and I think this is where Paul would go. He had an experienced Christ so vividly that it changed his entire life. He knew many others that had witnessed the events around Jesus. He could say, “Here’s what happened,” and “This much is true.” “Put on the belt of truth,” he told his followers.
Then he asked them to “put on the breastplate of righteousness, to shod their feet ready to share the gospel of peace, and take up the shield of faith to hold back the various attacks and opposition that will come one’s way.
The breastplate of righteousness and the shield of faith … I have always been very moved by one of the stories that has grown up around the person of St. Patrick. Patrick, we know from his Confessions, was called back to the land of his earlier captivity, to bring the gospel of Christ. At the time, there was almost no Christianity in Ireland. Ireland was subject to the old Celtic religions and the dominance of the druids. As part of their rituals each year in the spring, every fire in Ireland would be doused and the high king of Tara would light a fire on the hill of Tara from which every other fire in the land was to be lit. There was a moment in which the land was in darkness just before the king lit his fire. The story goes, that shortly after Patrick’s return to Ireland, he went over to an adjacent hill at Slane and lit a fire there before the king’s fire was lit. Patrick was signalling that a new light was coming to Ireland, the light of Christ. This, of course, did not sit well with the king or the druids and they sent soldiers out to round up the one who had dared set a fire before the king. In great danger, the story tells us that as the troops approached, Patrick and his followers appeared to them as a herd of deer and were able to pass by unharmed. A great poem known as The Deer’s Cry or St. Patrick’s Breastplate credits God for shielding Patrick from his enemies. It is a wonderful poem in the Celtic spiritual tradition that ends with the words:
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Paul says, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power … put on the breastplate of righteousness, take up the shield of faith. This beautiful poem illustrates the Celtic Christian belief that Christ is all around us, Christ is the shield protecting us from evil.
There is one more item in Paul’s list that can be both defensive and offensive, he says “take up the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.” One does not often think of the word of God in those terms but Paul knows the value of the Word in a wonderful way.
I recall when I became interested in Christianity, I started reading the Bible. I wanted to get to the bottom of the whole God-thing and so I read and I read and I read. It was intriguing what happened to me because I found that as I read, my faith and my walk with God were strengthened and transformed. Later, I went off to Seminary, it was a place of faith and great encouragement to me but in the midst of it, we were also reading a lot of critical, academic material about the Bible that was challenging. Later yet, I left the relative safety of seminary for university departments of Religious Studies and the challenges increased, sometimes they were deep struggles of faith.
Many of the Christian people I met at universities were facing similar issues and I am sorry to say that quite a number of them lost their faith in the process. I recall one friend, John, in particular, who came from the Pentecostal tradition. John and I had many chats about belief and our struggles with what we were reading. I was disappointed when he threw in the towel and announced that he decided to leave the faith he had grown up with.
Sometimes, I have wondered what kept me going in the midst of critical study but one of the factors, I feel, was the way I had immersed myself in the word of God. Critical study could tear bits of it apart but not all of it. That is why I keep mentioning the importance of getting to know the word for Christians. We are so influenced by countless things in society, why not the Word that Paul calls “the sword of the Spirit.”
An old pastor once commented on someone in a position similar to my friend John who dropped out of Christianity; he said, “Poor thing, when it was time for him to go to the well for water, he had no bucket.” The pastor was alluding to the need to prepare ourselves for the task at hand, whether it’s drawing water or living the Christian life and its struggles. We need a bucket for the water, the armour of God for the struggles we may face in Christian living.
The game of life is a big game and truly following Christ was not easy in the first century, it is not easy now. There was a time in Canada when it was generally assumed that Christianity went along with good citizenship. Especially in the United Church, there were those that felt that being United was being a good Canadian and little difference was seen between Christ and culture. … If that was ever so, it is definitely not now.
I was reading an article in the Observer this week reflecting on what the author called the “crisis” in the church. He indicated that the next five years “may well make or break The United Church of Canada.” He pointed out that the concept of Christendom had come to an end, that we are very much a minority now in society in competition with other forms of living. He suggested that our future was as a remnant, a minority made up of dedicated, trained, disciplined people who understand that baptism and confirmation are not mere formalities but are genuine, costly commitments to Christ. Christ, and life in Christ, is again, against culture, as it was in the first century. There are widespread temptations to follow other paths, to follow other “truths” and, for some, difficult spiritual battles to face. As Christians we can struggle to be true to God in the midst of it. Intriguingly, The Rev. Ernest Long wrote these things in the Observer in 1967. Today, we are a long way past 1967. The struggle with spiritual forces, or heresy, or temptation, seem much more pronounced. The game of true Christian living is more costly today and Paul would, perhaps say to us in the words of that Duke University t-shirt, “You can talk the talk, but can you really play the game.” Gird yourselves, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armour of God and go on to take the prize that lies before us.