Sermon by:
The Ven. Margaret M. Grayden
“A Difficult Teaching”
Ephesians 6:10-20
August 25, 2024
One of the interesting things about my hometown is that it was not only a college town, but also a military town. Manhattan, Kansas—best known for Kansas State University—was located just fifteen miles east of Ft. Riley, for many years home of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division. Now I lived on the west side of town, which was even closer to the base, so part of the soundtrack of my childhood was the periodic boom of artillery systems being used in training exercises. I knew that if the sky was clear and I heard thunder loud enough to rattle every window in the house, it was just the guns at Ft. Riley, not a severe thunderstorm (although we had plenty of those, too). The Fort was an integral part of the local economy. I had friends whose parents worked there. In fact, during my college years, I worked there as a civilian summer-hire.
As you might imagine, the ROTC summer camp and Correctional Activity units in which I worked were literally and figuratively a world apart from the small liberal arts women’s college I attended in Massachusetts. My supervisors and almost all of my coworkers at Ft. Riley were men. The culture was macho and the language was, shall we say, rather “salty.” Everyone but me wore either fatigues or dress uniforms. There was a bewildering array of things to learn about the Army just to do the work of an entry-level clerk-typist, including the order of ranks (I was constantly confusing corporals, captains, and colonels). It’s safe to say that I found the experience challenging—it stretched me in ways that I did not expect and did not welcome at the time. But forty years on, I can also see the value in that introduction to a very different and important culture.
We each bring our particular history, culture, and lived experience to our encounters with Holy Scripture. My experience at Fort Riley as a young woman definitely informs how I approach the epistle appointed for today, an excerpt from the final chapter of Ephesians. I confess that I find the militaristic imagery jarring and off-putting. It is especially difficult to hear such language at a time when Christian nationalism is experiencing a resurgence in the United States. That’s why it is important to put this passage in context.
Most Biblical scholars attribute authorship of the Letter to the Ephesians either to Paul, writing from prison at the end of his life, or to a disciple writing in Paul’s style after Paul’s death. The author of this letter would have been quite familiar with Roman soldiers and their weapons. It would have been natural to draw on a military metaphor to describe how, through encounters with the Living Christ, Christians are transformed and resocialized into God’s purposes and family, standing strong against the varying forces arrayed against them.
If like me, you find yourself stuck on the military imagery, on the weapons of war, try this thought experiment: place your attention on the quality yoked to each weapon, not on the weapon itself. Instead of focusing on the armor, belt, breastplate, shield, helmet, and sword, focus on God, truth, righteousness, faith, salvation, and the Spirit. Imagine clothing yourself in those qualities. Here’s how that might sound: “Put on GOD, fasten TRUTH, put on RIGHTEOUSNESS, take FAITH, SALVATION and the SPIRIT.”
For me, that version lands very differently, which makes it possible for me to take the next essential step: focusing on the words that I deemphasized and considering why the author might have chosen those words in the first place. Let me be very clear: I am NOT suggesting that whenever we encounter what the disciples in today’s Gospel reading call a “difficult” teaching in Holy Scripture, we should just excise the troubling words from the text. What I AM suggesting is that when we encounter problematic words, we can try changing what we emphasize as we “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest”[1] those words, to see if doing so opens up a space within us for the Holy Spirit to guide our interpretation and understanding of the passage as a whole.
Full disclosure: I tried that thought experiment last week. And when I did, I noticed something interesting. Although “the armor of God” is certainly a militaristic image that makes me think of avenging armies, the components of the armor listed in this passage (the belt, breastplate, shield, and helmet) are in fact defensive weapons meant to protect us, not offensive weapons intended to harm others. The one exception is the sword—but a sword can be used either offensively or defensively. Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita of Preaching and Worship at Princeton Theological Seminary, has suggested that “appropriating the trope of putting on armor, but emphasizing its defensive components, may be a deliberately subversive rhetorical strategy.”[2] From this vantage point, it appears that the purpose of this peroration is to give us a roadmap for staying grounded in God in challenging times, a roadmap that is just as necessary today as it was in the First Century.
In fact, this thread—the need to remain centered, to choose wisely whom or what you will follow, especially when the going gets tough—runs through today’s readings from Joshua and John as well. Joshua challenges the people of Israel to choose whom they will serve: the Lord, or other gods.[3] In John, Jesus asks the disciples who were complaining about his “difficult teaching” in the Bread of Life discourse: “Do you also wish to go away?”[4] Or to put it more bluntly: Will you choose to follow me, to center your life on me; or will you choose to follow another?” Simon Peter, for once, got it right when he replied: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”[5]
As long as we keep that at the center of our being, all shall ultimately be well, no matter what the principalities and powers of the world throw at us. In the end, as we are assured in Romans, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[6] We could not ask for better protection.
AMEN
[1] From the Collect for Proper 28, The Book of Common Prayer 1979, p. 236
[2] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21-2/commentary-on-ephesians-610-20-7, accessed on 08/22/24.
[3] Joshua 24:14
[4] John 6:67
[5] John 6:68-69
[6] Romans 8:38-39
