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.
This last Tuesday a small plane landed at the St. Paul downtown airport carrying someone I’ve always reluctantly admired, but was frustrated by.I learned to hate the skill, tenacity, and toughness he exhibited— especially when he put his energies to work against my side.
On Tuesday, this person then was driven across town, scratched his name on a few pieces of paper, and then put on a purple helmet with horns on the side.Suddenly I saw this person in a whole new way.In place of hating those energies and skills, I can now become excited to see how they might be used for my tribe, my clan…for “good, justice and the American way”, or at least the Minnesota way.Sometimes things happen that can open up a new way of seeing and thinking— ways we could hardly have imagined before.
That’s what has happened as I approached this text for today; I started out thinking about it in one way, and discovered that what I was seeing before was inadequate, superficial, and just plain wrong.
This passage from Paul I’ve always written off because of its militaristic imagery— it seemed far from the teaching of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace…the one who called us to love our enemies.I caulked this section of Scripture up there with others that seem so “us against them”, “we’re right you’re wrong”, so tribal-based and “might makes right” flavored.I essentially took it out of my personal canon, along with those primitive horrific passages that talk about God instructing his people to kill every man, woman, slave, child and even every animal of an Amalekite village.
“Putting on the armor of God” smacked to me of that dualistic triumphalism of some Christian theology and popular literature, where we’re the good guys and it is OK to fight or kill bad guys.
Turns out I had reasons to be uncomfortable with this passage.I did some research and found that the church has used this passage to justify violence against anyone it didn’t like— Jews, Muslims, Natives, other Christians… anyone who disagreed with the church or thought differently.It is easy to get to the point of violence when you name others as “enemies of God.”
But then, this passage landed at an airport of sorts in St. Paul and I saw it in a whole new way.St. Paul, in a sense joined my team or perhaps I joined his team.It happened this way.
The passage is addressing the Ephesian Church with the larger question of how to live as a Christian in this world.Specifically it deals with how to encounter evil.What do we do about evil?Do we bomb it?Fight it with violence, power and force? Or is there another way?
Jesus certainly had teachings about encountering and conquering violence.His parables of the wheat and tares (or weeds) and his encouragement (rather, command) to love our enemies is pretty clear.What I discovered is that, despite the language of fighting and imagery of militarism, Paul is pointing to the same response.He gives us the principles for non-violent resistance in these verses.The principles of trust, righteousness (right-relatedness to God, others, creation and self), peace, salvation, and Spirit are what is needed to be a light warrior.All of these principles are paired with images of a belt, breastplate, shields and helmets.All these are defensive tools… only one is an offensive “weapon” and that is the “sword of truth.” And the actions of the light-warrior likewise elicit the same kind of posture: standing, resisting, protecting, being alert or awake, praying.There’s no slashing or thrusting…no slicing and dicing for God’s side.Standing, resisting, protecting, alert, praying.
If we look closely at this text we see that instead of promoting violence, this text is one of the great foundational texts of non-violent resistance.Instead of a negative, violent warrior image, St. Paul gives us a light-filled evil-resistor!
What we can learn from this might be focused upon the word stand.“Stand therefore,” the text suggests.Standing is not aggressive, but it is not passive either, but resolved, prepared, aware and alert.Standing is shown to us best by those who have done it in a fight against the evil authorities and cosmic powers: Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood firm against the failure of the church and against Nazism; Martin Luther King Jr., stood firm for non-violence; Margaret Sanger stood firm for women’s rights; Nelson Mandela stood resolute against apartheid; Bishop Tutu stood for a peaceful way out of the violence that could have swallowed the country of South Africa.
Martin Luther King Jr. put this kind of standing best in one of his writings:
“We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering.We shall meet your physical force with soul force.Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you.We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because non-co-operation with evil is as much a moral obligation as co-operation with good.Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you.Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you.But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer.One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves.We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”
The day after France surrendered to Nazi Germany, a pastor in a small town preached to his congregation that “The responsibility of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through [by] the weapons of the Spirit.”These Huguenots would go on to provide sanctuary for over 5, 000 Jews.They discovered the “weapons of the spirit.”
It remains to be seen if number 4 can lead us to victory.Every indication is that the talent is there in the whole team.Things happen that change your attitude…your outlook.Do you think of yourself as a light-warrior?Could you, if that meant standing, resisting, protecting, being alert, praying?We too can be extremists:“extremists of love, peace, and boldness in bringing peace in these present evil days.”[1]
Bishop Desmond Tutu:Goodness is Stronger than Evil
Goodness is stronger than evil,
love is stronger than hate,
light is stronger than darkness,
life is stronger than death,
victory is ours through him who loved us.
[1] Haruko Nawata Ward, Feasting on the the Word, Volume 3 p.378.
