21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 23, 2009
Ephesians 6: 10-24Dressed for the Part
For the past few days the newspaper has been crammed with color supplements advertizing back-to-school clothing. Just what does the well-dressed scholar wear to school these days? In my day, girls wore A-line skirts, blouses and flats. Guys wore slacks, loafers, and button-down shirts, preferably in pastel colors with socks to match. My friends who went to Catholic school didn’t have to make agonizing clothing decisions. They wore their school uniform, which, of course, they all hated.
These days, judging from the ads, T-shirts are still “in,” as are jeans that are sold as new but look as though they have been worn for several years by somebody else. That seems strange to me, but who am I to judge? I used to wear pink shirts with matching socks. My “coolmeter” is way out of adjustment.
What does the well-dressed Christian wear? The writer of the letter to the Ephesians provides the answer: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (This last item, of course, would have to be left at home. These days you can’t bring a butter knife to school, much less a sword.)
This is, of course, a metaphorical wardrobe, but those Christians in Ephesus would have immediately grasped its significance. The writer has taken the archetypal symbol of imperial oppression – the Roman soldier in full armor -- and undressed him piece by piece. He takes the implements of flesh-and-blood warfare and transforms them into the implements of spiritual warfare against the “spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.”
The writer is not trying to inspire Christians to become warriors in the literal sense. He is trying to give them some encouragement. People as low in the pecking order as those Christians in Ephesus needed images like this to keep them going. In a world ruled by soldiers, it must have been heartening to think of oneself as armed to the teeth with divine weaponry.
But that was before Constantine, before the church allied itself with Empire, before Caesar’s soldiers became Christian soldiers, marching onward “as to war with the cross of Jesus going on before.”
When reading and applying scripture, context makes all the difference. We Christians can no longer dawn the spiritual armor of which the writer speaks without recalling the flesh-and-blood battles we fought in the name of Jesus Christ.
You and I gather every Lord’s Day in full sight of that north gallery, where the slaves who helped to build this church stood week after week, hearing their masters downstairs sing about God’s love and grace. The church and Caesar marched arm-in-arm back then, and nobody in the downstairs pews seemed to notice a certain inconsistency with the gospel.
I’m not suggesting that Christians should refuse to wear what the writer of Ephesians calls “the full armor of God.” I’m just saying that it’s God’s armor, not Caesar’s.
We would do well to remember that not a single component of this peculiar outfit is of our own making, and all of it is to be used in service of the gospel. The shield of faith, for instance, was not hammered on the anvil of our good works, but is the gift of God. The helmet of salvation is likewise God’s gift, and can help us to keep our heads when all around us, people seem to be losing theirs.
Andra and I were in Scotland when the town hall meetings regarding health care reform began on this side of the Atlantic. Scots, who occasionally complain about their own National Health Service, took considerable offense at the misinformation being offered at these meetings. “What people are saying in those meetings about the NHS simply isn’t true,” one Scottish friend told me. “Has everyone in your country gone completely bonkers?”
Perhaps not everyone. This makes one element of the armor of God particularly relevant, namely, the belt of truth around your waist.
The truth is, there are no “death panels” in the proposed legislation and no mechanism “to pull the plug on grandma.” It is also the truth that health care is already being rationed in this country, albeit in a haphazard and morally unjustifiable way.
Fifteen percent of the population is uninsured and 24 percent of Americans report that they have gone without care because of cost. The Urban Institute estimates that 22,000 Americans die each year for lack of health care in this rich nation of ours, this nation which spends twice as much of its Gross National Product on health care as do countries in Europe.
As David Leonhardt puts it, the choice we face “is not between rationing and not rationing. It’s between rationing well and rationing badly.”
That’s the truth. When you go to the town meeting at City Hall this Tuesday evening, put that “belt of truth” around your waist, and as you’re doing that, say a prayer for Congressman Boyd. If ever a person needed a shield against flaming arrows, it is he.
The writer of Ephesians seems to have envisioned the Christian life as a battle with the “cosmic powers of this present darkness.” No doubt he was right. But part of that spiritual struggle is the struggle against the darkness within our own hearts. Within that darkness is fear that we will lose whatever security we already have, fear that we ourselves will fall ill with no one to help us, fear that some undeserving neighbor will occupy the hospital bed that is rightfully ours. There are those who are perfectly willing to exploit these fears, even if they have to bear false witness in order to do it.
These fears are real, but instead of leading us to embrace outright falsehoods, they should lead us to seek justice – not only for ourselves but also for our neighbors. The gospel calls us to put our fears in God’s hands and our own hands to the task of justice. The health-care debate is a golden opportunity for people of faith to be leaven in the lump, light in the darkness, a candle set on a stand.
Health care reform is a moral issue. Access to basic health care should not depend on how much money you earn, the color of your skin, the largess your employer, or your status with immigration authorities. Countries far less prosperous than ours have figured out how to provide health care that is free at the point of access and costs half as much. If we start from the premise that the status quo is morally unacceptable, surely we can figure out a better way.
Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God . . .
Today’s epistle reading provides a stark contrast to the image of men outside town hall meetings armed with assault rifles. The effect of this passage is to strip the centurion of his sword and the NRA zealot of his AR-15 semi-automatic. Instead of all that hardware, you and I are called to wear what God provides in the struggle to reflect God’s love and justice. Ours is the garb not of warriors but of healers. Not fear mongers but agents of reconciliation. Not Christian soldiers but Christian truth tellers.
For that calling we will need all the help we can get – the full armor of God. The good news is, we already have it.
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