The Updated Armor
a sermon based on Ephesians 6:10-20
by Rev. Barbara Krehbiel Gehring

In 1522 in a small city in Spain, a 7 year old girl convinced her brother Rodrigo to run away with her. Her name was Teresa and she is said to have had the heart of a warrior. Intrigued by the tales of King Arthur, she dreamed of being a Knight. Knowing that this would be impossible for her as a girl in that age, she hatched a second plan. She talked her brother into going with her to be martyred by the Moores who had recently been driven out of Spain into North Africa by King

Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Fortunately they were caught by an uncle who found them outside the city walls on his way back into the city. I understand there is a charming monument marking this spot today.

Teresa never became a knight or a soldier of any traditional kind. However, her biographers credit her warrior’s heart for being an essential part of the work she went on to do. She is known today as Saint Teresa of Avila and she is admired still for her steadfast service, her writings and for the founding of many Carmelite convents.

As Christians, in our efforts to follow Jesus’ teachings as closely as possible, we emphasize the need to love our enemies and do not like the violence we sometimes find in the Bible. Furthermore in today's world we have too often seen religion and violence mixed in ways that are clearly ungodly. That is why the New Testament passage for today may make some of us uncomfortable. Actually, I think it should.

The other option to discomfort with this violent imagery of the armor of God is to hear terms like sword and shield as ancient poetic language far removed from actual warfare. The problem with this approach is that it is not how it was intended. Ephesians is a letter written to a church who lived in a pretty violent time. Many of its original readers would have lived through a horrible war between the Romans and the Jews in which the Jews had their temple destroyed and the autonomy that went with that devastated. Some in the church would have suffered persecution as Jews while others would have suffered it as Christians. Armor was a very present part of their lives. Imagine that imagery contextualized for our present time. It might sound something like this.

Therefore, take up the whole uniform of God, so that you may be able to withstand that evil day, and having done everything to stand firm. Stand therefore and fasten the gun belt of truth around your waist, and put on the bullet proof vest of righteousness. As combat boots, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the gas mask of faith with which you will be able to avoid the poison gas of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the semi automatic weapon of the spirit, which is the word of God.

Now I don’t know about you, but I am uncomfortable with the spirit or the word of God being compared to a gun. Yet, it seems to me that is the image used here.

One of the great things about the Bible, I think, is that the imagery and the stories and parables seem more interested in being relevant than charming. If Jesus was talking to farmers, He talked about agricultural images. If sexual immorality was a problem, the stories named it and discussed it. If violence was a part of the world, it too was explored.

If only the church had remained true to this desire to speak in language people could understand and translate God into terms that were personally meaningful. Frankly, it is not just the language of armor that might feel outdated to us in this passage. It is also the language of the church. Words like salvation and righteousness are not used much outside religious settings. Even words like faith and the spirit are ambiguous. Let’s try this updating again.

Therefore, take up the whole uniform of God, so that you may be able to withstand that evil day, and having done everything to stand firm. Stand therefore and fasten the gun belt of truth around your waist, and put on the bullet proof vest of morality. As combat boots, put on whatever will make you ready to announce the good news of peace.

With all of these, take the gas mask of trust with which you will be able to avoid the poison gas of the evil one. Take the helmet of knowing that you have been saved from the really bad stuff, and the semi automatic weapon of the spiritual presence, which is the words of God.

When I hear this language it makes me think of all the holy wars of the past as well as the holy wars still being waged by every major religion today. To me, holy wars are the biggest argument against organized religion. Finding a passage that could be and probably has been used to justify them is not what I am looking for in the Bible. So, I have to ask, is that what this passage is doing? Is that what God intended us to understand? Because whether or not I like it, I have to deal with this stuff if I am a serious follower of Christ.

You may not be surprised to hear me conclude that I don't think it is. In fact I think it is an antiwar passage. It is the armor of God we are to wear instead of the armor of human institutions. This passage was not written to the military superpower. It was written largely to the persecuted. It was written to those without much human power letting them know that they had an even greater power than did their foes. Let’s also remember that this passage instructs us that our enemies are not those of flesh and blood. That is not whom we are to fight. Instead, we are to recognize a cosmic struggle of the heavenly powers and principalities. In this struggle, it is our moral choices, our willingness to speak truth and our telling of the way of peace that will matter. It is our realization that God has saved us from a pointless existence of violence and meanness and called us to the beauty of love that will give us the strength to endure and not become consumed by the evil around us.

Does talk of this cosmic struggle sound a little like that irrelevant church talk I mentioned earlier? Perhaps it does. So, let’s contextualize it. In the news these days we hear about refugee camps in the Sudan for example. We can fight for the victims by trying to kill as many of their oppressors as possible. Still, there is something beyond people who are responsible for the evil there. We have a name for that evil spirit. It is called genocide and when the spirit of genocide invades a group, the individuals act in a way they would not otherwise act. It is an idea, an adrenaline rush, actions based on fear all combining to create something beyond the individuals it effects and the evil in it is cosmic.

We can look to our passage to find out what our response should be. It is not soldiers of blood and flesh who we are to fight. Instead we are to use truth to tell the real stories and expose the evil. We are to live morally ourselves so that our words of truth will be meaningful. We are to do whatever it takes to explain peace and the good alternative it presents. We are to have trust in God as the one to save. This is the armor which we are to wear.

I think that it is easy to feel impotent doing these things. I think we went into Afghanistan and Iraq for this very reason. After 9/11 it felt better to do something rather than nothing and so we struck back. But as the wars drag on poles show a growing dissatisfaction with our response. In the short term we want to take action, any action. It is easy to look at biblical guidelines such as prayer or faith as doing nothing. Let’s contextualize again. While I could give a sermon each on the complex concepts of righteousness, faith, salvation, the spirit and the word of God, I know you all will want to eat before I get that all done. So, let’s begin with the concepts we understand best that still surface in our language regularly. Let’s contextualize truth and peace.

Is telling the truth doing nothing? Was it nothing for the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence to tell the truth to someone and then for that someone to tell the truth to others. Many of the women who speak the truth in these situations literally risk their lives to do so. Some die. Yet, it is hearing the truth, naming the evils that is the first step to both personal healing and the transformation of societal attitudes.

Because of this truth telling and risk taking,, today laws exist to protect victims of abuse, there are safe places for them to go and it has become socially unacceptable to engage in such behavior. As for peace, it is not a concept for the faint of heart. Gandhi believed that nothing could be done with a coward. However, he also believed that from a violent person could be made a nonviolent one. In fact early on in his work to train the masses in nonviolent resistance, he suggested that people first join the army and then come to him to be trained in nonviolence. He did not continue this practice as he became more separated from the powers of violence. Still, throughout his life, he wanted a warrior’s heart in a person committed to peace and righteousness and truth.

This idea of the warrior’s heart brings us back to Teresa of Avila. She saw the struggle much as Gandhi did. She wrote, “Let the soul be manly,,,and determined to fight...and realize that there are no better weapons than those of the cross.” (Interior Castles by Teresa of Avila). She spent her life passionately dedicated to service for Christ and in so doing was both beloved and hated. She worked tirelessly until her death at the age of 67 when her warrior’s heart failed. To Teresa, the concern was not the use of violent imagery. It was that if one did not feel the cosmic and personal war, one would become complacent. For Teresa, the tools of war were not swords but the willingness to act and to suffer.

Peace is not a position of weakness or impotence. It requires courage and trust in God in ways that reliance on our own strength and our own weapons never could. That is the imagery of Ephesians 6:10-20.  Amen