Ephesians 6:10-20
Equipped by God
James Sledge August
22, 2021
Scene from
Trajan’s Column, Rome, 113 CE
Where you are situated when you encounter
a scripture passage has a lot to do with what you hear. People in positions of
privilege and power may hear a vastly different message than those from the
underside do. Slaves in the pre-Civil War American south heard a very different
word from the Bible than did those who oppressed and exploited them.
Ever since the 4th century, when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, interpreters of the Bible and the Christian faith have largely been aligned with empire and power. As a result, the Church has often given its sanction to wars, crusades, and genocide, and much of American Christianity still suffers from an easy, uncritical alliance with patriotism and the privileged status quo.
I suspect that my growing up in a position of privilege, a citizen of a powerful nation that often describes itself as “Christian,” has greatly influenced how I’ve heard this morning’s scripture. It’s always made me a little nervous with its military imagery and talk of spiritual battle against the forces of evil. It’s just the sort of passage that has been used to justify violence against those deemed pagans, heretics, or practitioners of unapproved versions of the faith, and I’ve always avoided preaching from it until today.
But when the letter to the Ephesians was written, Christians knew nothing of privilege, power, or participation in the status quo. Christians were a small minority in the Roman Empire, one viewed with suspicion and subject to occasional persecutions. What is more, the first Christians were pacifists who swore off violence.
No one in the Ephesus congregation would ever have imagined that calls to put on the whole armor or God encouraged any sort of physical aggression against their opponents. They would, however, have recognized the description of that armor, belt, breastplate, shield, helmet, and sword. This was a picture of a Roman soldier, a figure the Ephesian Christians would have been inclined to fear rather than emulate.
Borrowing this military imagery was intended to encourage Christians who had no influence, no power, no friends in high places, no security connected to the status quo. The writer reminds the congregation that they do have resources available for withstanding the forces aligned against them. But their weapons and protection are truth, righteousness, faith, salvation, and the word of God. These are what they bring to bear against the forces that fear the Jesus movement with its proclamation of peace and an upside-down world where the weak and poor are lifted up and the powerful brought low.
The Christians at
Ephesus had very real reasons for worry and fear. Their society viewed them at
as troublemakers, and the powers that be saw them as a threat to the social
order. For the Ephesians, Roman soldiers raised mostly negative connotations.
They were agents of forces aligned against them, those who might well arrest
them and haul them before some tribunal. But the writer of our letter assures
them that they have resources at their disposal that are more than a match for
the forces of empire.
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Most of us have a hard time imagining the predicament of those members of the Ephesian congregation. Perhaps if we lived in China or Afghanistan it would be different, but our society poses no existential threat to our safety. Christians may not enjoy all the privileges and advantages they once did in our culture, but churches are still seen as valued members of the community. We are agents of the state who perform weddings on the government’s behalf. And a soldier in uniform is more likely to be viewed as a hero than an instrument that may well be wielded against us. All of which makes me wonder if there is a way to appropriate the letter to Ephesians for our context.
What are the forces at work in our world that frighten us, that terrify us and seem impossibly beyond our powers to resist or combat? Are there forces aligned against the way of Jesus that we are called to struggle against, to use the language of our scripture, not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness?
Powers of darkness has a rather antiquated ring to it. Modern people tend not to think in terms of powers and principalities or forces of evil. Many progressive Christians think of problems once attributed to human sinfulness as things to be solved and eliminated with sufficient education. But I’m inclined to agree with the Apostle Paul’s understanding of sin as a force that twists and distorts humans, that inclines humans to act in ways that are corrosive to full and abundant life for ourselves and others.
How else do you explain the stubborn persistence of systemic racism, of greed that would just as soon destroy the planet as miss out on profit, of systems of exploitation bordering on slavery utilized by respectable corporate entities and happily participated in by most of us so we can have cheap smart phones? How else do you explain a Taliban convinced their medieval cruelty is God’s will? What accounts for decade after decade of corruption, government malfeasance, and endemic poverty in Haiti that made suffering and death from the recent earthquake so much worse that it might have been? These systems are more than mistakes that have been made. There are forces at work that predispose us to act in ways that are ultimately against the world’s and humanity’s and our own best interests.
That may seem a rather pessimistic point of view, and it would be if that were the end of the story. But it is not. Yes, there are forces at work in the world that are corrupting and death dealing, that make some of society’s greatest ills highly resistant to our best efforts to combat them. The forces of greed and hate and division are powerful, but ultimately, they are no match for God’s love that seeks to rescue us, God’s love that would die for us, God’s love in Christ that is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
In our scripture,
the writer repeatedly urges the Ephesians to stand against the dark forces of
their world. Despite their seemingly insignificant and powerless status, they
are more than able, more than adequately equipped, not just to hunker down and
survive, but to go on the offensive against the corrupting, death dealing
forces in their world. And those same resources are available to us, can equip
us for our work in standing against the forces of hate, greed, division, and
more.
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When the Civil Rights Movement began in the mid-1950s, it seemed to many an exercise in futility. What were a few protesters against entrenched segregation and Jim Crow laws, against racist governments and law enforcement that would stop at nothing to maintain the status quo? But people like Martin Luther King and John Lewis knew that they were more than equipped to stand against the powers and principalities. They were armed with truth, righteousness, faith, and the word of God. They knew that the Holy Spirit was with them, that God was on their side, and so they were fully able to stand up to the forces of evil that worked tirelessly to stop them.
Truth, righteousness, faith, and the word of God are no less available to us when we heed to call to stand against the forces of evil in our world. That is true in our individual lives, helping us to make personal choices and live in ways that make for a better world and in our corporate lives, helping us work together to build better world. God is with us when we seek to bring the ways of the kingdom, the ways of God’s new day into the world.
Many centuries ago, an apostle encouraged a small gathering of believers, assuring them that God was with them. And those words are for us as well. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.
God is with us! Christ is with us! Thanks be to God!
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