“Armour”

Ephesians 6:10-20

August 23, 2009

It happens from time to time, so I must apologize this morning for the lack of action in the scripture readings. Nothing happens in either one, just occasions of talking heads. How many times have you been enthralled by a dedication speech for a new building? Of course, the concluding salvo in Ephesians is a kind of locker room pep talk, “Give one for the Gipper!” that can be pretty inspirational if you are present, however, none of us were.

On the weekend after a Roughrider loss it may not be the best time to bring up half-time pep talks, but I have witnessed an interesting development in the evangelical church in recent years and my encounter with it was through sports.

Over 20 years ago I was coaching an athlete Mel who was getting ready to compete in the Olympic Trials. Mel gravitated to me because he was now a student at Asbury Theological Seminary, aiming to become a minister in the Free Methodist Church, an evangelical branch from the Methodist Church just prior to the American Civil War formed to express its opposition to slavery.

We seldom met except at competitions, but talked on the phone a lot about training and racing. Mel had a lot of talent, but had had several disastrous competitions in which he had to drop out, ultimately I believe the real issue was in some chemical imbalance in his metabolism. Our goal was to correct the problems and give him a chance at making the 1988 Olympic team. Preparation went very well as Mel was a very disciplined and principled person.

He told me how it was becoming a popular strategy at Asbury and in associated churches to utilize various Biblical verses as words to combat difficulties, to fight the devil, so to speak. They knew that this world is a difficult and tempting place, easy to be deluded into going in a wrong direction. So whenever you were under stress to relent doing something good, you would repeat to yourself a particular Biblical passage. Christians have used this technique throughout the millennia, although it had been mostly forgotten in recent times, especially in our mainline churches. Perhaps the influence of the Hindu ‘mantra’ in our North American culture played a role in inspiring these Christians to revive the practice.

On race day in Indianapolis, about 10 of his fellow students drove up from Kentucky to cheer Mel on. They had made huge signs with Mel’s favourite passages emblazoned on them. I know it greatly encouraged him, both the people and the words, and he was doing great well past half way. Then it didn’t work. Whatever the physiological problems were, they struck again and he had to drop out. The mind and the spirit may be willing, but when the body decides something definitive, that’s it.

What Mel and his friends were doing was enabling him to put on the whole armour of God. He was training his mind and spirit as well as his body, working to implant God’s Word into his habitual responses to challenges, for our society is not into challenges. In other words, putting on the whole armour of God is targeted at changing one’s way of living and seeing and loving. If it is only the recital of a Christian mantra that will dispel evil, à la Harry Potter, then like Mr. Potter it is just a pious fiction.

This is a final locker-room pep talk by the author of Ephesians as he is about to send out his team on to the field, so the phrases are more colourful than they are substantive. What he does tell his players is that they need to always be equipped with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, the word of God, and prayer. These aren’t items you carry in your bag, these are the ways of life that train your body, mind and spirit to confront the principalities and powers of this world.

The point of Ephesians is that these matters of truth and righteousness, peace and faith, the word of God and prayer, and let me add love, are not naturally part of your spiritual makeup, no matter how good and kind a person you are. Even love is an acquired skill, as those first time parents quickly discover. It is not automatic that you love your infant, and your infant does not automatically demonstrate love towards you. That comes about from your persistent love that emerges into a relationship of love and self-giving. We need to make ourselves love in order to learn how to love, especially with the innumerable groups of the Other, people who look, speak, act and love differently than we do. When you really get down to it, there are not that many people who are the same as you. Most of the world is the Other, so you and I have a lot of training to do. And the analogy of the body here is important: if I train and run a marathon one year, but then do not train or run for the next year, I will not be able to complete another marathon. Because you loved once upon a time, or told the truth once or was righteous with high standards at a certain time in your life, perhaps even prayed a few times, that does not enable you to love naturally. You have to keep training in all sorts of weather in order to love again.

Fiction sometimes declares a truth stronger than our realities. Those of you who have seen the musical Les Miserables will already know the story about Jean Valjean from the novel written by Victor Hugo. Convicted for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving family, Valjean first spent five years in prison and the sentence is extended to 19 years of hard labour on the French galley ships. He entered prison sobbing and trembling, he left hardened. Where do we still hear that story? Finally released, he is shunned and given no work.

One day he comes across the home of an old bishop who treats him like an honoured guest, but Valjean’s hardness has been well steeled. He is taken back by his host’s graciousness, but then escapes stealing a couple of silver plates. Jean Valjean is also not a good thief and is caught by the police the next day who drag him back to the bishop’s residence.

The bishop surprises everyone, especially Jean Valjean, by saying that he had given these things to him as a gift, and even more that he had left behind a couple of silver candlesticks he had also given to him to sell. The police leave, and Hugo writes that “Jean Valjean opened his eyes and looked at the bishop with an expression no human tongue could describe.” The bishop gives him the candlesticks, calls him “my friend,” embraces him warmly, then tells him, “My brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts... and I give it to God.” Then it hits Valjean who he has been and the magnitude of the gift he has now been given, and he begins again.

That old bishop could not have loved in this way naturally, he had to train his heart and soul and mind and body to love in what modern psychologists love to call a counter-intuitive way. This man learned to put on the whole armour of God at every moment and learned to love increasingly the way that God loves. None of us is immune to such a love; it is never impossible to be retrained. If you are an old dog, it’s definitely time to learn new tricks.

Preached by Robert Kitchen

Knox-Metropolitan United Church

Regina, Saskatchewan