at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

When I saw the epistle lesson assigned to today, I let out a little groan. “Put on the whole armor of God” exhorts the Apostle Paul. I don’t know about you, but I find this militaristic image a little jarring for a lazy late summer Sunday morning. Maybe talking about armor and breastplates and helmets would make sense if you’re studying history, or touring the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, but they seem really out of place when we’re worshipping God.

Or… are they? The Holy Scriptures give us many images of God – the good shepherd, the loving mother eagle, the powerful king, the righteous judge, the everlasting arms, our rock and refuge... And yes, scripture also give us the image of God as a warrior – the prophet Isaiah tells us that “The LORD will march out like a mighty man, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal.”

Such an image might be off-putting at first; after all, far from being a religion of militaristic metaphors and holy war, Christianity celebrates a distinctly un-war-like idea of strength and power. Jesus shows us the strength and power of love, which reveals itself not in the pursuit of dominance, but in the quest for justice. And certainly, we like to think of God as loving, caring, forgiving, and embracing. But when we need a divine rescuer, we want a God who will fight for us. The Gentle Shepherd just won’t do; we want God the all-powerful Warrior on our side.

We see this Divine Warrior through the Hebrew Scriptures, especially in the famous story of the exodus. The Israelite people were slaves in Egypt until Moses, who was sent and empowered by God, rallied them and led them out. Then the Egyptian pharaoh changed his mind about letting them go and came after them. Trapped on the shore of the Red Sea, Israel cried out to God, and the water parted so they could go across on dry land. When the Egyptian army followed, the water rushed back and destroyed them. It was a warrior God that Israel needed at that moment, and that was the God who showed up.

That is the kind of God that the Christians in Ephesus could use, too. The people to whom Paul writes his letter know all too well the reality of war. They are an oppressed people in occupied territory. Their oppressor and occupier is Rome, the most powerful force in the world. The presence of legions of soldiers is an unwelcome, but nevertheless common, sight. There is no hope of doing battle with Rome because the Ephesians know from experience that while Rome may lose a battle or two, they always win the war.

And Paul himself has experienced his share of violence. For him, the Christian life has been a difficult, often violent, struggle. Throughout his ministry he has suffered public beatings and whippings; he has been stoned once, shipwrecked three times, and imprisoned more often than he cares to remember.

And so, although his words strike a dissonant chord in our ears and we may question his metaphor of faith as a process of armoring and fighting the good fight, Paul’s militaristic images reflect the reality of his world, and put in context, they are understandable.

And let’s look again at the kind of armor Paul is suggesting: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Paul is not gearing up for war with weapons of death and destruction, but rather with the instruments of peace and love. Think they can’t work? We need only look at American history to see that they can.

This coming Friday, August 28, marks the 46th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC in which he told 250,000 supporters about his dream for racial equality. Dr. King was a person who tried to live by the gospel of Jesus Christ. He believed with all his heart in a new society in which white and black, Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Muslim, could live together in peace. He knew that such a society could not be built by violent means, because violence only begets violence and hate only fosters more hate; he knew that such a society could come only by a nonviolent quest for justice and resistance to evil – by donning the garments of God.

Five months before King’s “I have a dream” speech, he had led a protest in Birmingham, Alabama, which was recognized at the time as the most segregated city in the country. A century after Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in the Southern states, legal segregation in the South and de facto segregation in the North meant life for African Americans was far from "free." All public facilities -- restrooms, parks, cabs, department store fitting rooms -- were segregated. Blacks in the South endured an apparatus of racist terror designed not only to deny basic civil rights, but to squelch all resistance. But the back of Jim Crow began to break when thousands of men, women and even children, took to the streets of Birmingham to demand "Freedom Now!"

In April, 1963, the protest of Birmingham began, with boycotts, lunch-counter sit-ins, and daily marches, all done quietly and calmly, and completely non-violently. The Public Safety Commissioner, a segregationist and Ku Klux Klan member named “Bull” Connor, began arresting protesters but hundreds more came. Over the weeks, the Birmingham jail had over three thousand people in it, and yet more still came. King himself was one of those arrested early in the marches; he was taken to jail on April 13, Good Friday, one hundred years to the day from when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. King spent the next ten days running the campaign from in the Birmingham Jail.

Outside, “Bull” Connor had firemen turn fire hoses on the marchers, which sent columns of water crashing into children and adults, knocking them down, ripping their clothing, smashing them against the sides of buildings, sweeping them off of the streets, bloodying their bodies and throwing them into parks and alleys. Then he let loose German shepherd dogs trained to attack and bite and tear at running people. Day after day television cameras showed a shocked world the horrors, but day after day the carnage continued, and day after day the marchers continued marching for freedom.

The turning point occurred on Sunday, May 5, when three thousand children went on a prayer vigil to the Birmingham jail, where King and others were being held. When they arrived, the police threatened them and screamed at them, but all they did was kneel in prayer.

“Bull” Connor yelled at his men to turn on the hoses, but nobody moved. The children continued praying. The firemen stood motionless. Connor yelled again, but the firemen dropped their hoses, and one of them began crying. “We can’t continue to do this,” one of them said. The children continued silently praying. Nobody spoke again, and nobody got hurt. That event was the moral turning point of the struggle. Soon after that, the businesses of Birmingham finally agreed to integrate.

The belt of truth. The breastplate of righteousness. The shield of faith. The helmet of salvation. The readied feet of peace. King and his followers put on the whole armor of God to face their enemies. Rather than matching the physical power and might of their enemies, they disarmed them with the garments of God -- truth, justice, prayer, forgiveness, loving kindness and peace, and -- even as they faced the force of fear and violence -- they refused to take any of that armor off.

That is the way the Gospel tells us to live in the world. But the idea that love can and will disarm power is not a popular stance, and few of us are ready to take such a risk, because the human part of us blocks the divine within us. But when we put on the garments of God -- when we strive for truth, righteousness, peace, and love -- Christ will be with us and in us and working through us.

Others have donned the garments of God and shown us the way. May God give us the courage to follow. Amen.