I am grateful for the opportunity to come
and take part in the baptism of our youngest grandchild, Avery, and to Paul
Friesen for his invitation to preach once again at St Paul’s after our
eleven-year sojourn in the United States. They were a wonderful, spiritually
stimulating time for us in many ways, but it is also good to be back in Halifax,
which became home for us during my eighteen years as rector here.
Had we been using the old Book of Common
Prayer, we would be hearing these words following Avery’s baptism:
We receive this child into the congregation
of Christ’s flock, and do sign him with the sign of the cross, in token that
hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and
manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and
to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s
end.[1]
It is a source of sadness for me that we
haven’t retained these words, or something like them, in our contemporary forms
of worship. I wonder if they weren’t dropped because our liturgical revisers
sensed an incongruity between a defenseless baby cuddled in its parent’s arms
and the blood and gore of a battlefield. If so, I don’t entirely blame them.
Yet, when you think about it, that is almost exactly what the apostle Paul does
in this morning’s reading from the last chapter of his letter to the Ephesians.
In the latter verses of chapter 5 and the
first half of chapter 6, Paul has addressed his words to Christian households,
to the relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, masters
and slaves. The whole emphasis throughout those verses is on Christ-like
submission and service. The nineteenth-century German Lutheran pastor Karl
Spitte put the picture of the Christian family into idyllic form in his hymn
that includes the words,
O happy home, whose little ones are given
Early to thee, in humble faith and prayer,
To thee, their Friend, who from the heights of heaven
Guides them, and guards with more than mother’s care![2]
Early to thee, in humble faith and prayer,
To thee, their Friend, who from the heights of heaven
Guides them, and guards with more than mother’s care![2]
Yet suddenly, from that blissful scene Paul
drops us into the middle of a battlefield, with the image, not of a peaceful
family home but of a soldier fully armed for mortal combat.
The Action
Why the sudden shift? Handley Moule, one of
the great scholar-bishops of Durham, wisely observed a century ago that it is a
common experience that “the evil powers often win their worst advantages
against us Christians on the quiet and common ground of life”.
Where we are least upon our guard they are
most upon their watch… Just at home, alas, it is only too easy for the
Christian to be inconsiderate in deed and word, to be quick or sullen in
temper, to indulge self in small but dangerous ways, while yet a tolerable face
of consistency is maintained in more public and exterior matters.[3]
Do you recognize yourself in the good
bishop’s words? I can certainly see all too much of myself in them. Even such a
one as the apostle Paul confessed to the struggle between good and evil that raged
within the confines of his own soul:
I find this law at work: Although I want to
do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s
law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind
and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. (Romans 7:21-23)
The great Russian novelist Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn made much the same observation when he wrote,
If only it were all so simple! If only
there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were
necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the
line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
And even in the best of all hearts, there
remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil.[4]
As difficult as it may be to accept, little
Avery has been born into a battlefield. At this stage in his life he certainly
is not aware of it. But we ask his parents and sponsors to affirm on his behalf:
Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual
forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
I renounce them.
I renounce them.
Do you renounce the
evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
I renounce them.
I renounce them.
Do you renounce all
sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
I renounce them.
I renounce them.
The Adversary
I don’t know if it was intentional, but
those words in many ways reflect the words that we heard from Ephesians this
morning. There Paul warns us about the devil’s schemes, about the rulers,
authorities and powers of this dark world and about the spiritual forces of
evil in the heavenly realms.
It is important to notice that Paul doesn’t
write about evil only in vague, general terms. He speaks quite specifically
about the devil. In our post-Enlightenment world we may find the Bible’s
references to the devil strange, antiquated, even slightly embarrassing. We may
be tempted to set them aside as part of a pre-scientific worldview. If that is
the case, then we need to beware.
“There are two equal and opposite errors
into which our race can fall about the devils,” wrote C.S. Lewis in the
introduction to his spiritual classic, The
Screwtape Letters. “One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is
to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They
themselves are equally pleased by both errors…”[5]
C.E.B. Cranfield, one of the leading New
Testament scholars of the twentieth century, has written,
Here we are up against something that
presents many difficulties to the modern mind, which is apt to dismiss the
whole subject as outgrown superstition. It is important to approach it with as
open a mind as possible. To suggest that there may be more truth here in the
New Testament picture than has sometimes been allowed is not to wish to turn
the clock back on scientific progress or to open the floodgates of
obscurantism. The question whether the confident spread of the demons’
non-existence has not been their greatest triumph gets tragic urgency from such
twentieth-century features as Nazism, McCarthyism, and Apartheid. And lest we
should be prejudiced by the memory of such horrors as the burning of witches,
it must be said that they were due, not to taking the New Testament too
seriously, but to failing to take it seriously enough.[6]
Even a casual reading of the New Testament
should leave us in no doubt that to follow Christ will inevitably lead us into
conflict with the spiritual forces of darkness. Satan’s desire is to bring us
down, to tangle us in a web of lies—and at times those lies can be very
powerful and enticing. Yet all the while we must never lose sight of the
assurance that “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the
world” (1 John 4:4).
The Armour
So how does this work itself out in practical
terms? How are we to engage in the fight? Paul uses the image of a soldier—one familiar
to everyone in the Roman Empire—to show how it all happens. And it may seem
odd, but he begins with the belt. For the belt was possibly the most important
component of all. With it the ancient warrior bound together his loose-fitting
clothes and so was able to manoeuvre with nimbleness and mobility. When we
buckle on the belt of truth, we are encircling ourselves with certain truths
about God and about ourselves, truths that we read in Scripture and that we
affirm week by week in the creeds. At the same time we are committing ourselves
to be men and women of truth, people whose “yes” truly is “yes” and whose “no”
is truly “no”, people who really are who we say we are.
The next piece of armour is the
breastplate. The breastplate covers and protects nearly all the vital organs,
especially the heart. And for the biblical writers the heart stood as the seat
of the will. “In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord,” wrote the apostle Peter
(1 Peter 3:15a). Though it is the breastplate of righteousness, it is not our
righteousness, but Christ’s, that protects us, conferred upon us by the
shedding of his blood on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:20,21).
Third come the sandals. Just it was
important for a soldier to have proper protection for his feet so that he could
cross any terrain no matter how rough without causing himself pain or injury,
so too we are to have “our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the
gospel of peace”. And so we are gospel people, good news people, leaving the
imprint of God’s shalom wherever we
go.
Then we are to arm ourselves with the
shield—and the shield in question was a large piece of armour that covered
nearly the whole body. That shield, says Paul, is faith. The word for faith in
the New Testament is pistis, which
can equally mean “faithfulness”. Thus I prefer to think of myself being armed
not with my own faith, which is weak and faltering at the best of times, but
with the faithfulness of God, which extends to the heavens and endures to all
generations.
Fourthly there is the helmet of salvation.
Clearly the helmet protects the brain—and how important it is to have minds
that are formed and informed by the truths of God. Paul writes elsewhere of being
transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we may be able to test and
approve what God’s will is. He writes of taking every thought captive to Christ
(Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 10:5). How vital it is that we should be able
to think Christianly, to develop our minds in such a way that we can respond
effectively to the many intellectual challenges that the world places before
us!
Finally, we are presented with the sword of
the Spirit, which, Paul tells us, is the word of God. Commentators have long
observed that up to this point all the armour has been defensive. The sword is
the only offensive piece of weaponry. It was with the word of God that Jesus
fought off the attacks of the accuser in the wilderness: “It is written:
‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only…’ ” “It is written: ‘Do not
put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” “It is written: ‘One does not live
by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” I
well remember an adviser in my university days pointing out that a sword has
two edges, but in most cases only one is blunt, and that is the edge facing
away from us. We can be very adept at applying the Scriptures to other people,
but if we have any right to do so, it will only be after we have learned to
apply them to ourselves. And if the powers of darkness are to be defeated in
our lives, that is the way it will happen.
All of what I have been trying to say in
these few minutes is most profoundly and beautifully expressed in a hymn which
we know as “St Patrick’s Breastplate”. And I’d like to use those words to pray
for you and for me and for little Avery as he is enrolled as Christ’s faithful
soldier and servant in the sacrament of baptism.
Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.[7]
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.[7]
[1] The Book of Common Prayer, 1959, page 528
[2] Hymn 340 in the Book of Common Praise (1938)
[3] Ephesian Studies, page 322
[4] Both quotes are from The Gulag Archipelago.
[5] The Screwtape Letters, page 9
[6] The Gospel According to St Mark, 75
[7] Hymn 812 in the Book of Common Praise (1938)
