"Armor for Peacetime?" by Rev. Jillian Hankamer 7/20/2025

A sermon for Northminster Church

            A juxtaposition is taking two or more ideas, places, characters, etc. and placing them side-by-side for the purpose of contrasting them. So a seagull standing on a sign of a picture of a crossed-out seagull is a juxtaposition. As are two billboards stacked on top of each other, when the top one is about childhood obesity and the bottom one is an advertisement for the “shopping spree” that’s possible through the McDonald’s Dollar Menu. Another unfortunate juxtaposition I saw this week was a picture of a card with the words “This countdown’s over – Yay!” on its cover, mistakenly placed in one of those grocery store card slots. You know it’s a mistake because the slot is labeled as “sympathy/loss of loved one.”

            This was outdone by the picture of a Walking Dead billboard with the tagline, “What Makes Us Human?” on the corner of the Cooperative Funeralcare building, which was outdone again by a photo of two side-by-side movie posters in a subway station. The poster on the right was for the movie Lincoln. The one on the left was for the James Bond movie Skyfall. This seems like the coincidental combining of movies coming out at the same time until you realize that the way James Bond is positioned – sliding on his back, holding a gun – he appears to be shooting directly into Abraham Lincoln’s bowed head.

            This morning’s Ephesians passage fits into this juxtaposition category. Paul tells his listeners to put on armor, which has inherently aggressive overtones. When else do you wear battle gear other than when you’re preparing to fight? – but then clarifies that their “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.” Add to this lack of a tangible enemy verse 15, “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace,” and you have 10 verses of scripture that appear to be a study in contrasts.

            How many of you remember coloring “the whole armor of God” coloring sheets in children’s Sunday School? Or the felt board figure your teacher would dress with the armor, a piece at a time? I can’t be the only one who glued the pieces of armor to a toilet paper roll, nor am I the only one here who attended a “whole armor of God” VBS, summer camp, retreat, or other similar gathering. This is a great Sunday School story because it helps us talk to our kids about truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the word of God all at one time. But as you dig into these verses, you see a deeper and more complex picture.

            For example, Paul’s language is absolutely intentional, as armor is something the Ephesians can conceptualize as easily as we can the mechanics of driving a car. As you know, Ephesus was part of the Roman Empire, a civilization built on militarism. What Paul’s doing by associating these pieces of armor with tenants of Christianity is “transform[ing] common idioms of military warfare into new Christian terms.”  It’s also fundamental to keep in mind that the Ephesians were a religious minority, and despite this letter not mentioning persecution specifically, Christians of this time period “faced daily harassment and discrimination from their neighbors and possible suppression by the authorities.”  Being in Ephesus, these folks might have had their faith tested by being forced to worship the emperor at the temple of Domitian or at Artemis’s temple, as Ephesus was the cultic center of that goddess. 

             Adding to the layers of this passage is consideration of the armor itself. Armor, by nature, is heavy and cumbersome. Someone who puts on all the pieces Paul describes isn’t going to be able to move around much. “’[In] jousting, for instance, an armor-clad knight had to be hoisted onto his horse. Armor ha[s] its functions, but also its limitations. It actually wasn’t much good for fighting.’ Paul’s weaponry, in other words, serves defenders better than attackers.”  And as Professor Emeritus, Sarah Henrich points out “[this] armor is designed to help folks stand fast: it is not armor for aggressive action…[it] is to empower believers to withstand the evils that surround them and threaten them.”  Despite the militaristic connotations, what Paul’s describing in his list of these armor pieces is a mechanism for survival.  Again as Sarah Henrich notes, “the only equipment for attack is the sword [and] even that weapon is the sword of the Spirit…the Word of God.”  And as Paul makes clear, the only boldness this armor will empower believers with is the “boldness of witness in speech.”

            The third piece of the deepening puzzle that is this passage is Paul’s references to “’ the wiles of the devil,’ struggles ‘against the rulers…authorities…cosmic powers…[and] the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.’”  What’s clear in Paul’s words is that the battle the Ephesians are called to stand against is spiritual rather than physical, but that doesn’t explain what he means by “the wiles of the devil,” “cosmic powers,” or “spiritual forces…in heavenly places.” Commentator Haurko Nawata Ward offers the theory that because new converts to Christianity in Ephesus come from a pagan background they’re continuing to use their Greco-Roman Platonic cosmology, or the philosopher Plato’s understanding of the plan and purpose of the universe and everything in it, to understand Christianity.   Ward points to language in the first chapter of Ephesians about Christ being “’ seated…in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion,’”  which is consistent with the language of Platonic cosmology. As Ward says,

“The church is understood to be raised up with Christ in heavenly places (2:6). Between the heavens and the earth, spirits and powers swirl. However,    while they grow spiritually into such a dwelling place for God (2:22),” these formerly pagan Christians must be transformed…” they must shed their former pagan selves…Their true enemies [are] sin, evil, and death, forces that      constantly wage war in their inner spirit and at the cosmic level.”

            In 1942, C.S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters, was published. This Christian apologetic is a satirical series of letters written by the character Screwtape, a senior tempter in the service of "Our Father Below,” to his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter whose job is to secure the damnation of a British man known as “the Patient.” Before the letters begin, however, the satire is obvious in Lewis’s Preface, which is written as though he’s been a bystander to Screwtape and Wormwood’s conversation. He writes,” I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands. There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They are themselves equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.” 

            Why am I mentioning this? Is it because I feel the need to warn you about the devils I see lurking just outside our walls to bombard you when you leave this place? No. Do I see the claws of the evil one sunk into you, and see my job as Pastor to free you? No. To be perfectly transparent, my personal understanding of and belief in demons, devils, the evil one – whatever terminology you’d like to use - is still part of my theology that’s unfinished, still developing.

            But I do believe and share the Lewis quote with you as a caution against something I do see happening and something I know you see happening too. Hopefully, it doesn’t occur here, but in the world we inhabit, it’s far too easy to, as Doug Bratt words so perfectly, “think of the evil one’s army as made up of people whose political allegiances, economic theories, or lifestyles differ from our own.” My friends, these kinds of disagreements are not what Paul is talking about. In fact, when we consign people we disagree with into the role of “enemy,” we make a mockery of what Paul’s actually talking about. For the far more insidious and “the dangerous enemies” we should be concerned with “are systems, structures and habits that are racist, misogynist, hedonist and materialist...”

     We should be concerned by churches that invalidate the calling of women and who tell those in the LGBTQ community that their personhood is irrelevant. We should be concerned that our country leads all industrialized nations in frequency of school shootings, and no one has come up with a solution that satisfies everyone. We should be concerned that the history of our nation has ever required Martin Luther King Jr. to have a dream, and that black and brown people are still fighting for equality. We should be concerned that the Church is continuing to deal with the destructiveness of clergy sexual misconduct. We should be concerned about many things.

            Though being the religious minority, as the Ephesians are, isn’t one of them. Being persecuted for our faith isn’t one of them. We’re allowed to live out our faith in ways that are impossible for our Ephesian ancestors. Their wildest dreams for the future of the church don’t come close to our reality. But what we do have in common with Paul’s original audience is needing God. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Word of God – far more than simply pictures we give our children to cut out, color, and glue on a toilet paper roll - these are elements of the armor God gives us. We don’t create this armor. We can’t make it, or request it, after a certain number of years as faithful disciples. This armor is given to us just as freely from a God who loves us enough to stabilize our weaknesses and motivate our lagging spirits. God gives us this armor not so we can win a battle – for Jesus has already won the most important battle – but so we can survive the challenges of life and be instruments of God’s peace.

            For that is the Good News this morning, that even in the midst of the worst fighting, Christians are called, as verse 15 says, “to proclaim the gospel of peace.” “Confident in the great power of God, giving up weapons of destruction, Christians are to move forward, in whatever shoes they have, in proclaiming the gospel of peace.”  This armor God gifts to us isn’t the means by which we shut ourselves off from the rest of the world. It isn’t our escape route from times when the world around us seems to be spiraling and we’re not sure how to respond. Putting on the full armor of God is, in actuality, can actually be a bit cumbersome, a little heavy, a weight on our bodies. But my friends, that weight is part of the gift. That weight keeps us mindful of our role as peacemakers. The pressure of this Godly armor is there to remind us that God needs us to speak words of love into a world that seems to be more and more divided every day. That our first  - and maybe our only job as Christ followers – is to love others as Christ loves us. The pressure of this armor is there so that even in the worst moment of our lives, we can be confident that the Holy One is our constant reinforcement. And eventually, if we take our role as peacemakers seriously, we can set our armor aside and live into the peace and promise of God.