Incredibles suit up in their special costumes and go to work defeating the principalities and powers of darkness.

Transcription

1 George A. Mason 14 th Sunday after Pentecost Wilshire Baptist Church 26 August 2018 Dallas, Texas Armor, All Ephesians 6:10-20 I m all caught up now. In the span of one week, my granddaughters introduced me to the superpowers of The Incredibles. We saw The Incredibles 1 on video, then The Incredibles 2 at the theater. Each of the girls has her own favorite incredible. These animated movies feature a family with secret superpowers that fight bad guys. The girls love that there are girls with superpowers, too. Of course, every young boy I know has always believed that every girl has some kind of mysterious superpower they can t figure out, but that s a story for another day, don t you know?! The basic storyline is that there are certain incredible humans who have been endowed with superpowers like speed, strength, flight, invisibility or elasticity. But superpower heroes have been outlawed from using their superpowers, as they make ordinary people feel inferior. Except that from time to time, sinister evildoers arise to threaten the peace, and regular people have no chance against them. When that happens, the Incredibles suit up in their special costumes and go to work defeating the principalities and powers of darkness. Put on the whole armor of God, Paul tells us, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. We ve come to the last chapter in Paul s letter to the Ephesians and he finishes by challenging Christians there to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of God s power. To make it vivid, he probably just looks out of his prison cell that he was writing from. He sees a soldier standing guard, and, lo and behold, we get the image of putting on armor for battle, suiting up in other words for a fight. At this point I have to tell you that I ve long been wary of this wisdom. Religion and violence are a toxic mix. Using literal

2 weapons to kill some humans in the name of God runs headlong into Christ s gospel of peace. It doesn t add up. The church has a bad history of taking texts like these and using them to justify holy war. You only have to look at the horrible history of the Crusades to see how badly this can go. Beginning in 1095 and stretching four centuries, crusaders were clad in armor with red cross logos on their chests. They armored up in helmets and swords, attacking Muslims mainly, and later Jews killing in the name of God and for the glory of the church. They wanted to control Europe, the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Land. Popes promised honor, land, treasure and immediate entrance into heaven in return for crusader service. Since then, Christians in the West have often thought of themselves as fighting against the enemies of God in nearly every war, demonizing opponents as forces of the devil. In the one war that seemed right, against the evil ideology of the Nazis, Christians actually sang songs in churches like Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition. Even in our most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Christian soldiers painted Bible verses, like these from Ephesians, on their tanks and called on God to give them the victory. It isn t even actual war that inspires this kind of thinking. Did you know that when American football was getting started in the late 1800s and the years following, many Christian preachers were against it because of the violence? The president of Wheaton College refused to field a team, seeing it as antithetical to Christian character. But by 1905, a professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary, J. Gresham Machen, wrote this to a friend: When I see a vacant field on one of these autumn days, my mind is filled with wonder at this benighted people which does not seem to hear the voice of nature when she commands every human being to play football or watch it being played. 1 As most of us can attest by our fandom, Machen s view won the day. Now, you know I m not going to preach against football this /september/god-and-grid-ironchristianity-football.html 2

3 week, any more than I preached against drinking last week, lest I be a big fat hypocrite. But there are many reasons we are now rightly questioning the violence of football. The brain injuries suffered by players from repeated blows, from both concussive and subconcussive hits, are devastating. Players armor up for battle on the gridiron, but no helmet has been made to prevent head injuries that often lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). But there s more than just the physical question. In the years I was playing, I can also tell you that Christians like me often saw these games as spiritual tests not just of our own valor but of our team faith. We believed that God would reward the team that had the most faith with victory. So you understand my apprehension. And yet if we dive more deeply into what Paul is saying, there are things we have to take more seriously than we often do. First, though, this cautionary note: Paul employs military imagery of armor and war as spiritual metaphors. If we take metaphors literally, we don t take them seriously. For instance, if you call your lover a rose, you don t mean to make her a flower; you mean to call her beautiful. If you call someone a straight arrow, you don t mean he s a pointed wooden stick with feathers on the end; you mean he s a righteous guy. If you call someone the Rock of Gibraltar, you don t mean he s made of stone; you mean that his character is solid and he can t be moved. When Paul employs the language of armor, he is calling us to prepare ourselves spiritually for a battle against invisible evil that wants to distort our souls and demean God s creation. This is what he means by the principalities and powers. He is saying that human beings are often unwittingly motivated by dark spirits that seek to maim nature and harm human life. These spiritual powers are inspired by the Evil One. They reside in rulers and authorities who make laws that protect injustice and crush the spirit of disenfranchised people. Racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, misogyny and homophobia are some of these ideologies inspired by the powers that undermine human 3

4 dignity and flourishing. They work by denial and deflection: You don t know my heart; It s about defending our culture; Some of my best friends are black (or gay). These forces have to be acknowledged and named if they are to be defeated. The battle against them will always be fierce, and it will always be opposed by those who want to retain their power over others. Five times Paul uses the word against in this text. We would all rather be polite and say what we are for, but part of our Christian calling is to stand against those dehumanizing forces that rob the world of its intended joy. How we stand against them, though, is crucial. Howard Thurman was a black preacher and teacher who wrote a book titled Jesus and the Disinherited. Martin Luther King, Jr. carried a copy of it everywhere he went to remind him of what was really going on which was not just a civil rights struggle but spiritual warfare. Thurman s commitment to nonviolence was rooted in the revolutionary way of Jesus. Against those who would take up arms against white people to even the score, Thurman counseled winning the spiritual struggle within. He believed we could never defeat this evil by violence. Jesus had taught that violence begets more violence. He defeated the devil by his suffering love, undermining the very premise of treating human beings like enemies. He told us to love our enemies and do good to those who hurt us. We celebrate King today because of the moral, not militant, force of his Christian message that was applied to racial discrimination. We will never defeat evil on its terms. We have to undermine it and expose it for the imposter it is. It comes from the principalities and powers that seek to undo God s good creation. Notice that when Paul tells us to armor up, all the armor he refers to is for defensive, not offensive, purposes. The belt of truth. The breastplate of righteousness. The shoes of peace. The shield of faith. The helmet of salvation. The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. If you focus on the belt and breastplate and shoes and shield and sword, you miss the point. You have to focus on the truth, the righteousness, the peace, the salvation, the 4

5 word of God. These are the things we arm ourselves with. And all for the purpose of standing firm, not for the purpose of killing our human enemies. Oh, and as my fatherin-law, Bill O Brien, pointed out to me, there s no armor for the back. We re intended to face up to evil, not turn our backs on it. Vicki Briley-White told me about the great-grandson of Winston Churchill, Jonathan Sandys, who visited Dallas recently to speak to the Eagles Club of large donors to Methodist Hospital. Churchill, he said, displayed three primary leadership traits during his long career: courage, faith, and integrity. Although [he] was often unpopular with the British people, he had the courage of his convictions. At this, Sandys asked everyone in the audience to stand up and repeat the phrase God save the queen! three times. After they had done so, he asked, Be honest and trust me, now: Who said it? And who didn t stand up? Perhaps half a dozen people in the crowd fessed up to staying glued to their seats including [Gerald] Turner, [the president] of SMU. Instead of berating these holdouts as bad apples, Sandys said They were the Churchills. They stood up against the majority. And what about those who rose unquestioningly to recite the queen s praises? They represented the Germans of the 1930s, he said, providing the Eagles with much food for thought. It s important, Sandys concluded, to always stand up for what you believe. This is what we re talking about. Christians have to act with courage to stand up and speak up against the forces of populism that give up what is good and true and beautiful in exchange for petty power and privilege. When someone is bullying another kid on the playground, stand up and speak up. When someone tells racist jokes or uses slurs against women, stand up and speak up. When those who are defenseless need an advocate, stand up and speak up. For too long, the church of Jesus Christ has defended the rich against the poor, the strong against the weak, whites against people of color, men against women, straights against gays, insiders against outsiders, and on and on. We ve got the against part down, but we re against the 5

6 wrong things. If we are going to follow Jesus and the teaching of Paul, we have to stand against the unholy powers. Two pieces of good news to end: One, we will always win in the end when we do what is right, because we have the incredible superpower of Christ s Spirit at work in us. Christ won the decisive battle with evil, and we have his Spirit, who helps us to stand. And two, we also have each other. When Paul says to be strong, he is addressing the church, not just individuals in it. When you stand up and speak up for peace and justice, the church will have your back. When the church armors up together, we are incredible a mighty force that will withstand any foe. So armor, all. Amen. 6