Nov. 9, 2003 (David Hyers)

Psalm 146:1-10

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul! I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long. Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish. Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. Th e LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD!

Epistle Lesson Ephesians 6:10-20

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, 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 this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

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In this final section of Ephesians, the writer is giving somewhat of a pep talk. It’s a passionate speech to rally the troops, and I do not use the term troops lightly, for this is the imagery of this text. He is getting the readers ready for battle. It is a struggle of cosmic scale yet also of intimate applicability, a conflict already won but not yet over.

He tells us to be strong in the Lord, in the strength of God’s might. We have put on the whole armor of God so that we might be able to stand and resist and persevere on the evil day that is coming and against the evil that is already here. It will take the full armor of God. No earthly armor nor human effort can hope to stay the course, for this is no ordinary struggle. We are told that it is not a struggle against blood and flesh, spy versus spy, army against army, or nation pitted against nation. No, says the writer, this is a struggle against the rulers, the authorities, the powers, of this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

In the mind’s eye of my younger days, I often imagined another worldly expanse: dark red clouds filled the sky, billowing forth smoke; the smell of brimstone filled the air; below a vast plane was filled with legion upon legion of fallen angels; in front of them hordes of raging demons groaned and growled with eyes glowing red and claws clicking; and far back towards the horizon, high on a mountain, was old Scratch himself, the Devil, getting ready to hurl his flaming arrows at me. Now these images are quite exciting and certainly provoke a strong emotive response, and part of me finds these images of apocalypse captivating and certainly entertaining.

On a deeper level, however, I find them somewhat hard to connect with, images that I find difficult to make real sense of. This modern, rational, empirical world I grew up in isn’t filled with fallen angels and fiery demons. It is filled with cars and trains, cities and buildings, things that I can touch, see, or calculate a formula for.

Although such demonic images of evil concepts of spiritual warfare are not as immediately accessible to me and somehow not quite real to me, I feel the message of this text is very relevant to our world. The writer is pointing towards the all-too-real power of sin and death at work in the world. From the scenes of environmental destruction caused by the scraping and marring of the gentle beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains where I grew up to the desperate plight of the homeless and the devastation of addiction that I witnessed on the muggy summer streets of Atlanta, these are images of systemic evil that I can see and have felt all too clearly.

I also understand all too well the power of sin and death in my own life, on my own struggles to live a life worthy of the calling to which we are called. I know the things I have done and the things I haven’t done. I see the idols that so powerfully lay claim to my allegiances, pulling and tempting me away from the right relation with God and neighbor. I can see and feel the pervasiveness of the power of sin and death in the world, the fallenness of creation that cries out in anticipation for the full revelation of God’s will. So, I do see and feel that ours is not a struggle of blood and flesh but is much, much more than that. It is a struggle larger than I can imagine and closer than I dare think.

I know of no earthly armor or mere human effort that could hope to stay the course against such pervasive power, but we are not called to stand firm with human armor or any strength we possess. We are given the full armor of God, God’s own armor, some say. It is only in God that we can hope and trust and only in Christ that we will be able to stay the course.

We are told to fasten the belt of truth round our waists, to put on the breast plate of righteousness, of justice, of honesty. On our feet we are to wear whatever will help us proclaim the Gospel, the Gospel of peace. Upon our heads we receive the helmet of salvation, of redemption, of reconciliation. In one hand is the shield of faith, and in the other we receive the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. And now, having donned the whole armor of God, we stand firm.

There was a long hallway in the house I grew up in. Upon meeting in the hallway, my father and I would start an impromptu wrestling match to see who would be the first to give way. When I was a small boy, pushing against my 6-foot-6-inch father, the match was over before it began. It was impossible to stand firmly in my place; in fact, rather than a contest of strength, it was for the most part a display of my bare feet sliding cartoon-like in futility against the carpet until my patient father, tiring of the game, simply threw his weight into a firm but controlled push, moving me back to the end of the hall and bringing an end to the contest.

As I grew older and somewhat huskier, the balance began to shift. I would hold my ground longer and longer, and my father would have to try in order to move me down the hall, always saying, “Not long now, David, not much longer now.” After almost twelve years there came the day when I was no longer pushed back, and I found that despite the size difference, with effort I could push my father back to the other wall, his feet now sliding and finding no firm grasp. Well, soon after that, Dad developed a mysterious “back problem” which put an end to our weekly standoffs. If you ask my father about the later contests we had, he will gladly agree, with hand pressing to his back, that there was nothing easy or passive about our attempts to stand firm in the hallway.

It is no easy task to stand firm against the power of sin and death. We can often feel that we are pushing against a large immovable wall so much stronger than ourselves and our feet are doing nothing but sliding in place. There is nothing passive about the struggle we are called to engage in where ever we encounter it, whether it be the systemic evils in the larger world or the more subtle and quiet struggles in our psyches and souls. We are called to stand firm in every facet of life, not just against the systemic and pervasive manifestations of sin and death but also in the day-in, day-out living of our lives.

Standing firm is about the active living out of the Christian life, the ordering of our lives in response to the armoring grace of God, a grace that surrounds us as new creations in the body of Christ. We are called to be about living a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called. The scripture writer continues to encourage us by saying to pray in the spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication and to pray and stand firm at all times, always keeping alert.
As the son of a Presbyterian minister, I have often looked to my father’s journey for an understanding of my own calling. However, it is my mother’s life and work to which I am drawn by this text.

For many years my mother worked with physically and mentally challenged youth. She would often speak of her children. Forester, one of the children, was quite a handful. Good natured, Forester had just enough mischief to push at the edges of precocious. She said he was full of spizterictum. I’m not sure quite sure what spiztericutm is, but after an hour with Forester, you knew he was filled with it! I first saw Forester when he was eight years old. He could not speak and could not walk.

Day by day, year by year, Mother worked with him, on small things in simple ways. She first worked on his eye contact, helping him hold his gaze on her finger and drawing it to her face. Minute by minute, again and again, she’d pull his gaze towards hers. Then she moved on to his motor skills, moving his arms and legs and making sure he had the physical therapy he needed. Work with Forester proceeded one gaze, one movement, one moment at a time. He began to hold her eye contact, and over time he began to learn to crawl and then to stand and then to walk with assistance. And in his last years at the school, Forester also learned to type his name, hitting the keys and smiling. It was that same way with many other children.

Recently as we were remembering these things together, my mother quietly said, “David, you know I could not, would not have been able to be with them and to teach them without the support and love of your father, and I know that the Good Lord was with me, hearing my prayer, watching and guiding over me and those children.” It is that image that lingers in my mind, of my mother day-in and day-out watching for that lingering gaze, helping Forester to follow her finger.

My mother’s work with the children is a testimony to the fact that we are called to stand firm and in every moment to be about our callings, often in small ways in seemingly simple actions. We are to pray in the spirit always, one gaze, one crawl, one moment at a time. We are to know that whether we are battling our demons or feeding the hungry, God’s armor surrounds us and God’s loving justice supports us. Whether we are ministering to the sick and lonely or playing with our children with a sore back, God is with us in the struggle, assuring us with the words of Paul: “Neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, not height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will separate us from the love of God.” Amen.

 

 

 


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