Hilton Head Island, SC – February 27, 2022
The Chapel Without Walls
Ephesians 6:5-9; Ephesians 6:10-20
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. – Ephesians 6:13
“The world is going to hell in a handbasket.” That is an old expression which indicates that things have really gone awry. I looked up this statement in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, but it didn’t have a listing. I have never been certain exactly what a handbasket is, so I looked that up in a regular dictionary, but it also was mute on the subject.
For the past five weeks I feel as though I have been contending in a hellish situation against 21st century technology. I found out that the telephone company with whom I had my email account is going out of the email business. Therefore I need to establish a new email address with a new phone company. However, to connect with them both Lois and I had to buy new cell phones, she because she has an old flip-phone, and I because I have the oldest Iphone ever invented. Furthermore, before I can hook up with the new company and have a new email address, I must wait until March 8 to get the two technological devices necessary to go online. I might note I was never thrilled to be online in the first place, although I realize its many advantages. Still, it seemed to me, and it still seems to me, that my world is going to hell in a handbasket because this process is taking so painfully long. Furthermore, we are a long way from being able to use our newfangled 5G phones properly, and it may never happen. I have spent at least twenty-five maddening hours trying to get all this stuff straightened out, and it won’t be fixed until March 8, if then. By then I may have entered into the mid-stages of total insanity.
All of us may have felt at times that the world is currently imploding, and for far more serious reasons than a personal technological meltdown. COVID, inflation, growing racial unrest, political polarization, and climate change are examples of serious anxiety. (Personal troubles with technology should not even qualify as a serious anxiety producer, unless one is a completely inept technoklutz.) The world is always a bit topsy-turvy, but these other contemporary issues are extraordinarily challenging.
However, the major matter of the moment is Ukraine. For months the news media have been filled with stories about the threats that Vladimir Putin has made against a people who declared their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, after the USSR collapsed. Eventually a Ukrainian dictator took over who was favored by Vladimir Putin, but t dictator he was booted out in 1914, and a democratic government was voted in. Ever since there has been growing tension between Putin and the Ukrainians. Putin especially disdains the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he has hinted that he may capture and execute him and his family. Incidentally, if you have wondered why Mr. Zelenskyy is Volodymyr rather than Vladimir, and recently “Zelenskyy” with two y’s at the end rather than one, I have deduced that is because it is the Ukrainian rather than the Russian spelling, and why it is now Kyiv rather than Kiev, which is the Russian spelling and pronunciation, and why it is “Ukraine” to the Ukrainians and not The Ukraine, as it was to the Russians. The two countries are closely connected historically and linguistically, but they are not one and the same, despite what Vladimir Putin thinks.
The Ukrainian-Russian situation is so volatile that no one can accurately predict with certainty what eventually will transpire. Whatever it might be, it is fraught with immense peril for the people of Ukraine, and potentially for the rest of the world as well. This war could quickly escalate and expand. No one should feel safe until the Ukrainian War is resolved in some satisfactory manner.
Apparently all this is also similar to how the apostle Paul felt about the direction of the world in his day. The longer he worked in his mission to deliver the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, the more he became discouraged by how much resistance there was to his message. He was painfully aware of resistance in those who rejected the Gospel altogether. He also knew people who affirmed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but who rejected his interpretation of it. Paul being Paul, it would be easy to object to him.
Ephesus was a large and important city on the Aegean Sea in what now is the nation of Turkey. No one lives there anymore, but it is a spectacular archeological site. There is a huge amphitheater that was built by the Romans on the side of a mountain. It seated thousands of people. The main street of the Greco-Roman city is clearly visible. At one end of it stands the two-story facade of the famous library at Ephesus. The Ephesian library may have been the second largest in the ancient Middle East, second only to the vast library in Alexandria, Egypt. Ephesus was not a New York City in the first century CE, but it was a Philadelphia or Chicago or San Francisco, and Paul established a strong church there. It was also there where Paul first referred to the Church as “the body of Christ.”
The Book of the Acts of the Apostles says that Paul lived and preached in Ephesus for three years. The Ephesian Christians were Gentiles. The progress made there was not easy though. The Ephesians worshiped a goddess called Artemis, and at one point a riot broke out between the followers of Artemis and the followers of Jesus. The city authorities blamed Paul for starting it.
Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians while he was in prison in Rome, not long before his execution. No doubt his realization of what was coming colored what he said. Therefore he began the last section of the last chapter with these words: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” There were tough times ahead for the Ephesian Christians, Paul implied, and you must steel yourselves for what is coming. Perhaps he foresaw persecution of Christians everywhere by the Roman government. Considering his own circumstances, it is possible he was writing those closing words more for his own benefit than for the Christians in Ephesus.
Back in the first century, probably most people believed in the existence of a physical devil, a fallen angel who made it his business to lure as many as he could into a battle against God and His goodness. It was bad enough that the Romans occupied the Mediterranean world and forced their pagan ways upon the captive nations, but many of the captive people attributed the hardships of their circumstances to the devious dealings of Satan.
There is great optimism in the Bible following the death and resurrection of Jesus, but there is also profound pessimism. What are Christians to do when the dark curtains of adversity surround them?
Paul had an answer for that. “Put on the whole armor of God.” “Armor” is a military term. We think of “knights in shining armor,” mounting war horses to do battle against other knights, jousting for supremacy against their foes. No one ever wore armor as ordinary attire. When people strapped armor onto themselves, whether it was King Arthur or Sir Galahad or Joan of Arc, they intended to fight in hand-to-hand combat, defeating their foes. Now soldiers or the police wear Keflar armor to protect themselves against bullets or bayonets or knives. Armor is the best defense in a personal struggle with another person.
Paul was convinced that the people of God are pitted against a physical Prince of Demons, and his armor imagery conveyed that thought. Nonetheless, Paul was not urging his friends in Ephesus literally to do battle. “Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the gospel of peace” (6:14-15). If it sounds like Paul was mixing his metaphors, it’s because he was. Whenever Paul got onto a literary roll, his mind would send him off in many directions all at once. Thus he uses military terminology for carrying on a peaceful mission to a needy and turbulent world.
William Wordsworth wrote, “The world is too much with us; late and soon/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:/ Little we see in nature that is ours.” Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, we can feel consumed by problems. For us this seems like such a time. COVID has attacked the world relentlessly. All of us have felt isolated because of it. Maybe it is in retreat, and the pandemic is over. But the scientists tell us that COVID epidemics shall continue to break out here and there, as new strains manifest themselves in new places.
Many people never allow themselves to be affected by politics. For the rest of us, as Patrick Henry said, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Washington may soon become a battleground of truckers trying to repeat what happened in Ottawa. Kyiv has become a literal battleground, and Brussels and NATO are hard pressed to know how best to respond.
The world is always in one kind of upheaval or another. It was true in the first century, and it is true in the twenty-first century. In order to withstand it, we need the whole armor of God to survive.
Ulysses S. Grant left eight years of the presidency in a huge personal financial bind. His administration was marked by graft and corruption. He was not personally involved in it, but people around him were. He never had a lot of money, but he entrusted what little he had to a man who invested it unwisely, and it was gone. Soon after he left the White House, he became afflicted with throat cancer (probably because he had smoked too many cigars). Nonetheless, in order to leave some income for his wife, he set about feverishly to write his memoirs. He finished his long book in a matter of just a few months, and only a few days before he died. It was a huge publishing success. Grant was a committed Christian, and he put on the whole armor of God in his last battle as a grand old warrior. That book has been studied by many other warriors ever since, who learned tactics and strategies for other wars in other circumstances.
Paul wrote, “We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (6:13). When Paul got going on an idea, the words seemed to fly off his quill pen. Even in prison, and not long before his execution, Paul saw his own personal battle as part of a cosmic struggle in which everyone is involved. He was not engaged in it as a soldier, but nevertheless he used martial imagery to convey his message.
In many respects, life was far more tenuous in biblical times than it is in our time. We saw an illustration of that in our responsive reading for today. The superscription at the beginning of Psalm 27 says that it is a psalm of David. The king wrote this: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble, he will conceal me under the cover of his tent, he will set me high upon a rock” (27:4-5).
Politically, Christians in the first century found it impossible to determine how the Romans would respond to them in the future. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he expressed that concern. In a similar manner, first-century Christians were like the Ukrainians over the past year or so. What will the Russian president ultimately decide to do? Now they and we know he has initiated the war he has long threatened, and it is a disaster for everyone, however it turns out.
In the past two-plus years of the plague, we have been through a lot. It isn’t over. There is more to come. We need the whole armor of God to protect us. Obviously that does not express a physical reality. Rather it is a spiritual reality. “I need Thee every hour” says the opening line of the old familiar hymn. We particularly need God when the world is too much with us. “For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble.” David was not speaking literally, but figuratively, spiritually. President Grant found the strength and perseverance to finish the story of his life just days before his life ended.
Paul was a brilliant, persuasive, controversial, and complex man. Sitting in a dank Roman prison cell, he remembered with affection the people in Ephesus among whom he had ministered for three years. They were a community living in constant danger, uncertain of what the future held for them. He told them, “Take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”
Some newscasters and news commentators are comparing the past few days to the beginning days of World War I or World War II. We all hope they are wrong. But whether right or wrong, it behooves us to put on the whole armor of God. With it, we shall be able to endure whatever is coming. Without it, we might be swept away by the unleashed dogs of war. Therefore, stand fast; stand fast. And put on the whole armor of God.