Building our Toolboxes: A sermon on Ephesians 6:10-20

On Friday evening, while sharing pizza with friends, I mentioned that I am preaching on Ephesians 6, the text about the armor of God. After some nervous laughter and some statements like “Oof, how will you do that?”, one of my friends told me about how when they were a child they would go to the Family Christian Book Store and long to have the dress-up kit for The Armor of God. These were physical items you could buy: a child-size breastplate and belt and shin guards and shoes and shield and helmet, and yes, sword.

Image by @tjump on Unsplash

 Besides the visceral flashback to my Midwestern childhood experience of the Family Christian Bookstore, I found myself disconcerted about the existence of a set of Armor of God you can buy, the encouragement to play with items of war as a child, and, maybe more than that even, the literalist take on the words in Ephesians.

 In Ephesians, the author, who our recent preachers have reminded us may or may not be the apostle Paul, tells us that the wars Christ-followers are called to fight are not physical wars. Verse 12 says “we aren’t fighting against human enemies but against rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens.” In the New Testament, we hear Jesus say things like “You have heard it was said ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,”(Matt. 5: 38-39)  and “...all who draw the sword will die by the sword,” (Matt 26:52) and “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matt 5:9). And there’s that whole thing about “swords into plowshares,” too. So there is a clear call to nonviolence in Jesus’ teachings. The author of this epistle, writing several decades after Jesus’ life, followed in the pacifist path by describing the spiritual wars on a cosmic level that Christians faced.

In the Feasting on the Word commentary for this text, Dr. Haruko Nawata Ward wrote that the letter to the Ephesians showed an arc of Christian living that demanded Christians “shed their former pagan selves and licentious lifestyle (2:3; 4:17-19; 5:3-5), and put on their new selves of godly righteousness and holiness (4:22-24)...” She writes, “To live such a Christian life in the predominantly pagan world posed challenges to the ‘Ephesians.’ One of the major challenges that these early Christians experienced in their transformation concerned power. Roman civilization was built on militarism. Yet Christians were called not to bear arms against any human agents, because their battle was a spiritual one. Their true enemies were sin, evil, and death, forces that constantly waged war in their inner spirit and at the cosmic level.” (FOTW)

The context of the letter to the Ephesians may help us understand the meaning of this teaching about spiritual warfare. The city of Ephesus was in present-day Turkey, located near the Aegean Sea. It was a large city on a trade route, and a center for pagan worship. When the letter was written around the 60s of the Common Era, the followers of Jesus were still a fledgling group, working on differentiating themselves both from the pagan communities and from the Jewish sects who were their neighbors. And, located in the Roman Empire, these small house-churches were trying to figure out how they were to follow the teachings of Jesus that declared their loyalties were to God above human institutions and governance.

An additional aspect of context is that early Christians were waiting for Jesus to come back to Earth, as he said he would. The early community of Christ-followers were convinced that Jesus would come back in their lifetime, as he said in Matthew 24:34, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.

So it is in this context of responding to a community in the process of spiritual differentiation from neighboring traditions, that the letter to the Ephesians was penned. Perhaps it felt like a war to the Ephesians to whom the author wrote, with the need to defend themselves against the pressures to participate in cultic rituals and the desire to be on the offensive as they spread the Good News, as they were told to do by Jesus’ Great Commission. And their spiritual anxiety was high, as they suddenly had a future to think of and plan for because Jesus hadn’t come back yet. All of this anxiety swirling around for this early Christian community was channeled into a dualistic understanding of spiritual warfare, where the forces of good battled the forces of evil.

Image by @xoforoct on Unsplash

There are many disclaimers to give any time when we are interacting with the Bible, and some have even chosen to mark any Bible reading with a “read at your own risk” note. One important aspect of our Scripture today that we need to be aware of is the reference to “cosmic darkness.” This is more than just “nighttime” or “shadow,” but an alignment with the evil side of a heavenly battle of good and bad. Some early Christian communities, like those in Ephesus, made sense of the tension in their world by imagining a cosmic war, in which Christians fight on the side of God. Obviously, today we find ourselves two thousand years removed from the community that wrote this text, but still inextricably intertwined with this text. And today, in the 21st century, as a congregation seeking to be antiracist, we recognize that the texts with dualistic language equating good with “light” and evil with “dark,” as we read in multiple places in Ephesians, cause profound harm to people living in a racialized society like ours, particularly to siblings of color. Today, we live in a society characterized by systemic racism--and so these words and metaphors hit us differently. Many, many Black, Indigenous and People of Color Bible scholars and theologians have called out dualistic language of good vs. bad, light vs. dark language as racist, anti-Black and deeply painful. These same scholars have challenged White, Anglo Christians to learn and problematize the context of biblical texts that use language, and even to change wording sometimes. We must be careful when we read the Bible and we must learn the source of the language and why it reads the way it reads.

This text is complex. On one hand, I do believe that both in the first century CE and now the “powers and principalities” and “spiritual powers of evil” and “forces of cosmic darkness” were and are active among us. When I think of the gross wealth inequity rampant in this nation and in this city of Seattle, often called a progressive bastion, I think of the cosmic evils that manifest in human behaviors resulting in oppressive systems. On the other hand, I must admit I do not like the Bible using words from the lexicon of war, especially when these passages have been used many times over the past two thousand years to justify dehumanization and colonization and racism, across the world. As Christianity became intertwined with the Roman Empire, the concept of “spiritual warfare” became literal in the so-called “just wars” and “holy wars” against Muslims, pagans, Jewish people, indigenous spiritual practitioners and more. As followers of the Way of Jesus today, we must own the role our tradition, including our sacred text, has played in these horrific events. And we must use that knowledge to galvanize us to move forward doing better.

Image by @hnhmarketing on Unsplash

So instead of using the language of war and defense and offense and weaponry, I choose to think about this text in terms of tools in our toolbox that we can use to deconstruct the systems of oppression, which is where cosmic evil manifests itself today. And I choose to think about skills for persistence in the face of injustice, with the threat of apathy or analysis paralysis all around us because there’s just too much to do.

I was blessed to be the camp pastor for Camp Burton this past week. The theme of the week, as you already heard from some of our church kids who attended, was Adventure Time. Our chapel time was called Faith Adventure. For each of our Faith Adventure times, I added an object to the altar space and we talked about the tools we have for going on our faith adventures. We had binoculars that would help us make close observations of the world around us, headphones that would help us tune in to positive and encouraging messages in our lives, and imagination that would help us creatively wonder how to fix problems we saw in the world.  

The armor of God mentioned in our Scripture today is a belt of truth, a breastplate of justice, shoes that prepare us to spread the good news, a shield of faith, a helmet of salvation and a sword of God’s word. In the Feasting on the Word commentary, Dr. Nawata Ward points out that most of these items are for the purpose of defense from attackers. The only offensive piece is the sword (FOTW). The author of the letter urges the readers to be prepared for a struggle, to be prepared to defend themselves as well as assert themselves. In the first century, the imagery of battle armor resonated. And in many dire situations of war around the world, this imagery still resonates for many dealing with unspeakable evils. However, today, in this place, I think of many progressive Christians who talk about the process of deconstruction and reconstruction. So as we shift towards thinking about deconstructing a world upheld by the oppressions of patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism and more, we must prepare ourselves by bringing the right tools for the journey.

We must use our cosmic binoculars in a way that I talked about at Camp Burton this week--observing the world around us, looking closely for where God shows up in our lives--and I suggest we use these binoculars to see beyond the surface of our own individual experiences to notice how our behaviors and norms are part of larger systems.

And we must tune in with our cosmic headphones to listen to the voices offering a prophetic witness of the world that could be. These headphones of deep listening will also serve to block out the distractions that threaten to draw us away from our course.

And we must carry a canteen to stay hydrated with the water of life that gives us life, flows through our veins, keeps us embodied, connects us with each other and the whole of Creation.

Image by @denisseleon on Unsplash

We must carry a strong knapsack of presence, for holding all the stories we encounter along the way, the sorrowful and painful and traumatic stories told by people living in a world not meant for them--and also the stories of surprising joy, of friendship, of intimacy with loved ones, the stories that sustain us. The knapsack must be knitted together out of strong wool given from all the sheep that waited with patience and solidarity while Jesus went to get the one that was lost; and it will be knitted by thousands of grandmothers’ hands, persisting over time to bring us to this point and give us what we need to keep going.

We will also need to store the mirror of self-reflection in the knapsack, because whatever -isms we are undoing impact us, and we, knowingly and unknowingly, uphold them. Perhaps our hands will shake when we hold that mirror sometimes, as we learn more about how we have participated in others’ pain and marginalization--but the mirror is an important tool, and we will learn to use it well.

We must bring a handkerchief of gentleness for soaking up the tears that will surely come, because deconstructing is painful. And perhaps we will wring out that handkerchief into a garden plot where we testify that there is enough food for all, wealthy nations just need to get better at distribution.

In our pocket will be a well-used tin of the balm of care, that we can use to soothe our wounds and share with each other to ease each other’s pain. When we use that balm we will heal and get to a place of readiness to continue the work.

On our feet will be the shoes of creativity that allow us to walk and run and play when we are struck by Spirit; the shoes of support for when we protest and stand firm in our faith; the shoes of awe that we remove when we gather on holy ground. Perhaps we will spend a great deal of time barefoot, because every place God created is sacred.

Over our shoulders will be a shawl made by all the givers of silk, woven of hopes and dreams and imagination, light enough to take with us everywhere we go but strong enough that it will not tear under pressure, and warm enough that it will offer us comfort when the winds in the winters of apathy threaten to blow us off course.

Above our heads will be a raincoat of endurance, to protect us from the torrents of bigotry that the cosmic powers will throw at us as they begin losing their grasp on the world they’ve upheld for so long.

Around our necks we will hang a necklace of vulnerability with a pendant that opens, and in it each of us will store the thing most dear to us, close to our hearts, reminding us that we do the work of deconstruction for love. And when we share the contents of this pendant with each other, we receive the vulnerability as the gift it is.

When it is the time for reconstruction, we open our knapsack of presence to bring out the vision of the beloved community that Dr. King and others dreamed about and spoke about, that was foretold in the prophet Isaiah’s vision of a peaceable kin-dom, a place where all belong, where all are like a child at home, as the hymn says. The vision is a roadmap, is blueprints, shows how all the pieces fit together-- of vulnerability and love, persistence, endurance, care, self-reflection, hope, support, creativity, awe, gentleness, patience, solidarity, prophetic witness and careful observation.

These are the tools we need, friends. These are the skills we must nurture.

And so, beloveds, hear the good news. We already have some of what we need, and we see glimmers of what might need to grow some more before we employ it. And we have each other, too, so long as we practice our gentleness as we allow each other the space to be vulnerable and commit to being present with each other. This is what a community is for--to have a communal tool-share, so we don’t all have to possess the same skills and own the same tools, but we know each other and we know where to go when we need assistance.

Beloved church, may we go from this place today taking stock of the tools we already have for this journey of deconstructing the powers of oppression, and together committing to help nurture the skills we have for reconstructing the world that is not only possible, but already on her way. (Arundhati Roy)

May it ever be so. Amen.

Rev. Anita Peebles, Seattle First Baptist Church

August 15, 2021