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The Rev. Frank
Logue
Be Strong,
Stand Firm This morning is one of those times when the children and the youth in the church probably have an advantage over the adults in understanding the scripture. I say this because our reading from Ephesians presents some very good advice coming from the Apostle Paul while in prison. This past summer, our Kids in the Kingdom Week was Courageous Christians and we learned what life was like for St. Paul and the Underground Church in Rome. Thanks to Geoff Wills skills with turning sheets of cardboard into a building, we met each day in a Roman home where Paul was held in house arrest. And thanks to Rachel Warden, Zachary Schwaller and Daniel Babb, who took turns playing the part of the soldier, the kids got to see a Roman soldier chained to Paul, played by me. Each day, we would visit Paul and his guard to learn what Paul was thinking as he sat chained to a Roman soldier while awaiting trial before Caesar. With the gift of hindsight, we knew that Paul would later be put to death. And thanks to the letters Paul wrote from prison, which are now in the Bible, we know some of what Paul was thinking in those last months of his earthly life. Then each day after visiting with Paul, we made our way to the cave where a group of Christians met in secret to worship God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—as they had met God through the life and ministry of Jesus. That experience of spending a week with St. Paul and the Underground Church this summer has everything to do with why the kids and youth of King of Peace can better understand where Paul is coming from as he writes to the Christians in Ephesus. I should probably ask Evan Wills to come up and give the sermon in place of me as he took part in that experience. But instead i will try to convey some of what the kids learned as a way to understand what Paul is telling us in the letter to the Ephesians. Paul knows the Christians in Ephesus are aware of his house arrest and of his sitting under constant guard, awaiting a trial almost sure to end in his death. Paul wants them to see that the struggle is something more than may meet the eye. The real struggle for Paul is that he wants to live up to the faith that is in him, no matter what may happen. Paul encourages them to be, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.” Then Paul pulls back the veil to show what he thinks is really going on. Because to Paul, the Roman soldier sitting next to him is not the threat. Yes, if he wanted to escape from prison, the soldier would do whatever it takes to keep Paul imprisoned. The real struggle was not whether to overcome the soldier by force. Paul had no desire to do that. The real struggle was with finding the way for the Good News of Jesus Christ to overcome the very real evil that Paul saw present in Rome. The great battle for Paul came whenever he had a chance to speak up. He ends the passage saying, 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. That is what he is building towards. The imagery of the Armor of God shows that Paul knows that he has a spiritual fight on his hands rather than a physical one. Yes, physically, he is a prisoner. But at a spiritual level, he is the one who is free and it is the soldier who is imprisoned. This is because in Jesus Christ, Paul has found a freedom he never knew was possible. Paul was born into a system of rules and if you got out of line with the rules, God was the big meany set to crush you. In Jesus, Paul found love and redemption. Interestingly, he then followed the same Jewish law as before, but he did so out of love of God rather than out of a sense of rigid rules that must not be broken. So as Paul sees himself as now free, it is those who have not found freedom in Jesus who are still slaves. For Paul then, the battle was not a physical fight, but a spiritual one. Paul writes, 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. His struggle was not against the flesh and blood soldier chained to him night and day. Nor was Paul’s battle against Caesar, not really. Paul was fighting against something much bigger. Paul’s struggle was to turn the upside down. The way of the world was evil. For Paul, it was very simple. His was not just the side of the Christians and God, but also the side of angels. Allied against them were not just Romans like Caesar, but also the devil and demons. I know talk of demons and the devil is not popular today. We are too clever for this way of speaking about our faith. But this sort of talk was part of Jesus vocabulary and how Paul and the early Christian church understood the world and we do well not to get so clever that we dismiss it out of hand. Paul is saying that a larger struggle is taking place and we would do very well to pay heed to his words. Paul understood well that if we see the fight we face as merely physical, we will miss the real battle taking place. One way to see this more clearly is to realize that Paul didn’t even have a physical fight at all. Getting free for Paul would have been that simple. He could have denied his faith in Jesus, offered sacrifices to Caesar as a god and died of old age. Paul had to contend within himself for the part of his own heart and mind that wanted to deny Jesus and walk away from house arrest. Paul named the struggle as one against the devil and demons. You may prefer other ways of talking about the problem, but there are a couple of ways in which this way of talking about the demonic remain in frequent use. Anyone who has been through a Twelve Step program understands something of this language. In AA or NA, you can only begin when you name that you are powerless against the addiction and to then realize that only a higher power than yourself could return you to sanity. You see the addiction as bigger than you and beyond you. In the baptism service, we also have three renunciations that move to the heart of this directly. The candidates and their sponsors are asked three questions related to evil in the world in the form of renunciations:
The answer to each of these questions is “I renounce them.” The three renunciations get to a very old way of understanding the evil in the world. I want to take them briefly in reverse order. To renounce the sinful desires that draw you from the love of God is to renounce the evil that you do all by yourself. To renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God is to renounce the evil that we do together, which societies and nations do, sometimes without the desire to do evil on the part of each individual. Then there is the recognition that beyond the evil I do alone and that we do together in the way of the world, there is more evil out there. There are the spiritual forces in rebellion against the spiritual forces of God. These we also renounce. These three ways of looking at the evil in the world are combated with one solution in the baptism service, following Jesus as Lord. The service gives three questions in answer:
The answer to each is “I do.” And in so doing you fight against the spiritual forces within and without. Imagine now Paul in house arrest. He knows he faces near certain death at the hands of the Roman Empire. But Paul is convinced that the faith that is in him can overthrow the evil that has Rome in its grip. Looking at the soldier who was chained to him, Paul could see how Christians can prepare for spiritual battle. He calls it the Whole Armor of God and names the defensive parts of the armor as righteousness, faith, and salvation. These are the Breastplate, the shield and the helmet. The belt which keeps the sword at the ready is truth and the sword itself is the Word of God, the Bible. Then the shows on your feet are “whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” With the Bible in hand and your faith and salvation to protect you, the Word of God a Christian can go do spiritual combat. But without that faith and that Word of God, Paul knew that he could never face Caesar with his own power. With the hindsight of history, we know how this battle would go. The emperor Nero held Paul and Peter in jail. When Rome burned, Nero needed someone to take the blame. He blamed the Christians who refused to honor the Roman gods with sacrifices. Both Peter and Paul were sentenced to death. Peter was to be hung on a cross. He said that he wasn’t worthy to die like Jesus and at his own request was crucified upside down. Paul as Roman citizen was sentenced to the quicker form of death, beheading. Each of the two great apostles was faithful unto death. Their deaths were part of a larger pattern in which anytime the Roman Empire decided it needed a scapegoat, Christians were blamed. Christian leaders were rounded up and killed. Sometimes members of noble Roman families who converted to Christianity were threatened with death. And the pattern found with Peter and Paul repeated itself. The Christians went willingly to death rather than deny their faith. Christians never rose up with military might against Rome. But in faithfully going to their deaths, the Christians who chose death rather than denying their faith in Jesus did serious combat against the spiritual power that was Rome. The amazing fact of history is that Christianity won the battle. In time, the whole empire converted to the Christian faith. Christians never fought against flesh and blood. Christians never had a single physical fight with any Roman. But in standing firm in their faith when everything around them said to deny Jesus, they did spiritual warfare. By standing firm and being strong in their faith, the early Christians were able to overthrow the might of Rome. It was an astounding victory. And in the battles you face, with work, with family, with whatever obstacle it is you feel cannot be moved, part of what must happen is to realize that not all battles are physical. We also face spiritual battles. Whether this is a battle against addiction, or a battle against those who want to tear you down with gossip, or whatever the fight is, an important part of the solution is to see that the answer could be spiritual. Give the problem to God. Then let your faith uphold you and grab hold to the promises found in the sword of the spirit which is God’s Word. Realize that some problems are so big that your mightiest weapon is prayer. Acknowledge that the battle is the Lord’s for you are powerless on your own to contend against what you face. Put you trust in God in these times and you too can see an amazing victory. Amen.
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