Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church
Ephesians
6.10-20
Finally,
be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. 11 Put on the whole armor of God,
so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 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. 13
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. 14 Stand therefore, and fasten the
belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of
righteousness. 15 As shoes
for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of
peace. 16 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. 17
Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of
God. 18 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.
19 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, 20 for which I am an ambassador in
chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.
1
Samuel 17.33-40 Saul said to David, "You
are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are just
a boy, and he has been a warrior from his youth." 34 But David said to Saul,
"Your servant used to keep sheep for his father; and whenever a lion or a
bear came, and took a lamb from the flock,
35 I went after it and struck it down, rescuing the lamb from
its mouth; and if it turned against me, I would catch it by the jaw, strike it
down, and kill it. 36 Your
servant has killed both lions and bears; and this uncircumcised Philistine
shall be like one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living
God." 37 David said,
"The LORD, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the
bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine." So Saul said to David,
"Go, and may the LORD be with you!"
38 Saul clothed David with his armor; he put a bronze helmet
on his head and clothed him with a coat of mail. 39 David strapped Saul's sword
over the armor, and he tried in vain to walk, for he was not used to them. Then
David said to Saul, "I cannot walk with these; for I am not used to
them." So David removed them. 40
Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the wadi,
and put them in his shepherd's bag, in the pouch; his sling was in his hand,
and he drew near to the Philistine.
Choose
your weapon carefully, they say,
because if you get it wrong, the
consequences will be disastrous.
We
live in a time of intense debate
about what the appropriate arsenal
of weapons should be
for combatting the
various perceived threats we face
at both national and
international levels.
From
the renewal of Trident, and investment in large scale traditional weaponry;
to armed unmanned aerial devices, or
‘drones’ as they are more often known;
to increased surveillance and
monitoring of the population’s online communications.
The
Cold War may have ended,
and we may no longer have boots on
the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan,
but war itself remains steadfastly
on our national agenda,
even if often euphemized
as ‘national security’,
and the arms industry remains one of
the great economic drivers
of our national wealth
and international standing.
To
which I would say: let us choose our weapons carefully,
because if we get it wrong, the
consequences will be disastrous.
And
it’s not as if we in the Western world
have never made any mistakes before
on this one…
There
is a very clear line of argument that traces the rise of Islamic State
to the instability that followed the
second Gulf War,
which was triggered in
turn by the rise of Al Qaida,
which in turn was
triggered by Western interventionism,
and so on all the way back to the
early 20th Century land divisions in the Middle East,
as the failing Ottoman
Empire gave way
to the imperial
aspirations of Britain and France…
We
have chosen many weapons in the past,
from political power to military
might to economic endeavor,
and they have not always served us
well.
They
may have seemed very attractive at the time,
offering quick wins and ready
returns,
but the long term cost has been
catastrophic.
As
the young David discovered in our Old Testament reading,
sometimes even armour fit for a king
is not the right tool to use when
fighting giants.
Goliath
knew very well how to defend himself against a show of strength.
He had been a warrior from his youth
(17.33)
and could put up a
convincing fight against anyone
who took him on on his
terms.
David’s
fabled success against the powerful giant
was due to his willingness to change
the rules of the game,
his refusal to play by Goliath’s
rules.
Instead
of tooling up with weapons and armour
in an ancient version of the arms
race,
David changed the game, changed his
weapon, and fought a different battle.
As
I have said; choose your weapon carefully,
because if you get it wrong, the
consequences will be disastrous.
And
in choosing your weapon, it also helps to know your enemy.
It’s
all too easy to pick the wrong target, to fixate on the wrong adversary,
and to simply and mistakenly
perpetuate cycles of violence
rather than acting to
end them.
Did
you see the article published last month by Lydia Wilson
detailing her interviewing of an
imprisoned ISIS fighter in Iraq?[1]
The
young man was facing the death penalty
for planting four car bombs in
Kirkuk, killing scores of people.
By
one reading of the situation, he is the enemy.
Certainly he has committed terrible
atrocities and will be punished for them.
But
what Lydia Wilson discovered
was that he was also a 26 year old
from a large family,
reasonably well
educated,
and committed to working hard to
support his family
in
the difficult economic conditions of post-Allied-invasion Iraq.
He
was woefully ignorant about the details of Islam,
and was fighting what he perceived
to be the enemy
because he wanted a better future
for his family.
Is
he the enemy?
Or is he just another victim,
perpetuating in his life
the cycles of violence
to which he has become
enslaved?
Wilson
concludes:
‘This is not radicalization to the
ISIS way of life,
but the promise of a way
out of their insecure and undignified lives;
the promise of living in
pride as Iraqi Sunni Arabs,
which is not just a religious
identity but cultural, tribal and land based too.”
While
he will certainly pay for his crimes,
his execution will not stop the
violence,
because ultimately he is not the
enemy.
He
is not the right target.
As
the writer of Ephesians puts it:
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. (6.12)
Executing
a misguided, deceived, and angry young man will not stop ISIS.
Russian and French led air strikes
in Syria
will not stop another
terrorist attack
against a Western
capital city or a Russian airliner.
Because
every ISIS militant killed in northern Syria
will have a brother or a cousin
ready to step into his place.
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. (6.12)
The
theologian Walter Wink,
who I’ve quoted before and will, I’m
sure, quote again,
wrote
a book that was published in, rather fittingly, 1984,
called ‘Naming the Powers’,
and
in this book he offered a way of reading this key verse from Ephesians 6
which I’ve found very helpful over
the years,
as I’ve sought to puzzle
out what a Christian response
to issues of war and
violence might be.
He
starts by inviting us to consider the various powers
that exist both in our world, and in
the world of the first century,
at the time Ephesians
was written.
The
idea here is that there are powers at work in the world
which are beyond any specific
manifestation of them.
So,
when we look at a particular expression of power,
we are actually only seeing the
physical form that that power has taken
in our time and place,
and we are not seeing the power
itself as it truly is.
An
analogy here would be for us to look at the soldiers on the ground
fighting a particular
battle,
and to not realise that what lies
behind the foot-soldier
is a whole chain of
command,
going right up to the General
issuing the orders to fight
from the security of his
tactical command station.
However,
Ephesians says that it doesn’t stop at the General,
and that there are other less
tangible, but no less real,
systems of control and domination
that lie beyond the General,
to which he (and it
usually is a he) is answerable,
whether he knows it or
not.
And
just as killing one soldier doesn’t stop the army,
neither does executing the general
stop the war.
The
killing of Osama Bin Laden
did not remove the threat of
terrorism from our streets.
The
killing of Mohammed Emwazi
will not stop radicalized militants
executing hostages.
Because
we struggle “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.”
So
what do these cosmic powers, these spiritual forces of evil, look like?
And what are we to do in the face of
them?
To
put it another way;
how can we know our enemy
so that we can choose the right
weapons for the fight?
Well,
the first thing I think we need to recognize
is that these forces can be terribly
prosaic,
they are awfully normal,
they are dreadfully banal,
they are appallingly commonplace,
they are horrifically routine,
and they are shockingly
mundane.
What
I mean by this is that they are terrible, awful,
dreadful, appalling, horrific, and
shocking;
but
they are also prosaic, normal,
banal, commonplace, routine, and
mundane.
And
it is in their seeming inoffensiveness
that that their great offence lies.
If
the dark powers stalked our streets clothed in blood and gore,
we would know them as our enemy.
But
they come to us as wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt 7.15),
and all too often we greet them as a
friend,
ignoring their presence in our midst
until they turn on us and devour us.
I
have in my study a first edition of C.S. Lewis’s 1942 classic ‘The Screwtape
Letters’,
and in the preface he suggests
that there are two equal
and opposite errors
we can make about these
forces of evil.
One is to disbelieve in their
existence,
whilst the other is
believe,
and to feel and excessive
and unhealthy interest in them.
The powers, he says, are equally
pleased by both errors.
So
what do these cosmic powers, these spiritual forces of evil, look like?
In
a sense, the answer is very straightforward:
they look like anything which takes
our focus away
from the God of love revealed in
Jesus and made known to us by his Spirit.
Anything
which lures humans into the root sin of idolatry
is a power taking shape in our
midst.
Walter
Wink suggests that we need to look
not for corrupted individuals or
personified demons,
but at structural power “invested in
institutions, laws, traditions and rituals”.[2]
He
says that “it is the cumulative totalizing effect
of all these taken together
that creates the sense of bondage to
a ‘dominion of darkness’
presided over by higher
powers.”[3]
When
these powerful institutions, laws, traditions and rituals pull together,
they collude to create the spirit of
empire,
which seeks to take for
itself
the allegiance and
worship of the people of the earth,
seducing them into idolatry
and opening the gates to
hell on earth.
At
the time Ephesians was written,
the cosmic powers of darkness
had clothed themselves
in the Roman Empire,
with its divine emperors and
institutionalized idolatry,
with its military might
and economic excesses.
But
in different times, and in different places,
the spirit of empire keeps recurring
in human history,
like a mighty beast who, when it
loses its head,
simply grows another in
its place,
as the writer of the
book of Revelation so vividly imagined it (Rev 13.13).
And
where is this spirit of empire in our time?
Where are the current expressions of
organized idolatrous power?
Where do institutions, laws,
traditions and rituals
collude to create hell
on earth?
Well,
the desire to create an Islamic caliphate
based on an extreme, violent, and
totalizing reading of the Koran is certainly one.
But
just as Christianity doesn’t inevitably lead to the crusades or the
inquisition,
so it is important for us to
remember
that Islam doesn’t inevitably lead
to the Islamic State.
And
when we encounter a crusade, an inquisition, or a caliphate,
we need to recognise that these are
recurring expressions
of the cosmic powers of
this present darkness,
deceiving people and nations
into committing
horrendous acts of violence in the name of God;
and we need to recognize that in
them,
evil stalks our world
and the path to hell opens before us.
But
it’s not just them over there, or even us in days long past.
There
are expressions of power in our own culture
which lure us into atrocity,
even as we believe ourselves to be
standing on the side of right.
Our
society has many “legitimations, seats of authority,
hierarchical systems, ideological
justifications, and punitive sanctions”,[4]
which deceive us into
evil
every bit as readily as
the young man in Iraq was deceived into his atrocities.
I’m
afraid there is no moral high ground here.
All have sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God (Rom 3.23).
All of us need
salvation.
All of us need rescuing.
The
enemy is not just over there, or out there.
The enemy lies in the heart of each
fallen human soul.
We
may not be able to solve the world’s problems by lunchtime,
but if we do not address our own
innate tendency to idolatry,
our own capacity for
retributive action,
our own desire to
privilege ‘me and mine’ ahead of the other,
we will never be in a position
to stand firm in the wider
battles that lie before us,
because we will be fighting the
wrong enemy.
It
is no coincidence that when Jesus was asked
to summarise the law and the
prophets
he started with the
command to love God, and God alone,
and then followed this
with the injunction to love our neighbour
as we love
ourselves (Mk 12.31).
Have
no other gods, and love the other.
This
is the real battle, and it begins in each of us, and among us.
Because who we are in the battle
ground of our souls
will affect the way we
engage the battle on our streets and beyond our shores.
So,
let us choose our weapons carefully,
because if we get it wrong, the
consequences will be disastrous.
And
here Ephesians offers us a radical re-visioning
of what it means to be a soldier for
Christ.
The
famous ‘armour of God’ passage
takes each part of the traditional
Roman legionnaires’ dress in turn,
re-imagining them as
weapons fit for fighting
the spiritual forces of
evil in the heavenly places.
There
is no place in Ephesians’ understanding of the battle before us
for weapons of human destruction,
whether they be offensive or
defensive.
Each
part of the armour is transformed,
much as the guns from Mozambique
have been transformed
into the our beautiful
violinist.
We
cannot sidestep the challenge Ephesians presents
to our addiction to weapons of
violence
by claiming that the list of
elements of armour are primarily defensive;
any
more than we can sidestep the lethally offensive capability of Trident
by claiming it is a defensive
necessity.
The
point from Ephesians is clear:
the only armour we need,
the only effective weapons we have
at our disposal,
are truth,
righteousness, peace,
faith,
salvation, the world of God, and prayer.
The
only way in which we can win the battle
against the Goliaths that dominate
our world
is if we strip off the
armour of Saul,
discarding the weapons
of might and power.
We
will not win this fight with guns and bombs.
We will not win this fight with
drones and aerial bombardment.
We will not win this fight with a
renewed nuclear arsenal.
These
are the wrong weapons,
and they take us to engage the wrong
enemy.
The
only battle that matters
is the one that rages in each human
soul: in me, in you,
in the young man on the
streets of Iraq, or Paris, or London.
It
is the battle for what it means to be human.
It is the battle to love our
enemies;
It is the battle to learn how to
both love God and the other
without having to choose
between them.
It is the battle against idolatry,
when idolatry is
understood to be anything
that displaces the God
of love from the centre of the cosmos.
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.
It is only when we clothe ourselves in the
armour of God,
that
we are able to stand firm against the wiles of the devil.
And the only weapons worth carrying are truth,
righteousness,
peace,
faith, salvation, the word of God, and prayer.
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