Trinity 13 17
“Put on the armour of
light,”
says St Paul. We don’t often see people in armour these days, but the people St
Paul was writing to – Christians who lived in Rome about twenty years after the
time of Jesus – would have seen armed men walking the streets every day. Roman
soldiers in their armour would have been a familiar sight.
Paul’s
first readers would have known far better than us what armour was for and about,
but we probably need to do a bit more thinking to really get it. It seems to me
that there are really two reasons why armour matters so much to soldiers. The
first is obvious. It equips you for a fight. The Greek word Paul uses doesn’t
actually just refer to the defensive stuff, the helmet and breastplate and so
on, but to all the equipment a soldier would need, weapons as well. Soldiers
need the best equipment they can get if they are going to win a battle, or at
least survive to fight another day.
But
there’s another reason why soldiers wear armour, and that is to identify which
side they are on. Armour is a bit like a uniform – every army wears something
at least slightly different, otherwise you don’t know whether you are shooting
at someone from your own side. The Roman soldier’s very recognisable uniform
would have told everyone who looked at him that he had sworn to fight for the
Emperor, to enforce his will, good or bad, right or wrong. They would have known instantly what he stood
for because of the armour he wore.
So
when Paul tells people that they need to put on this armour, he is saying two
things to them. The first is that they are in a battle, and that they need to
be equipped for it. We don’t have to be militaristic to appreciate that life is
a struggle, full of challenges that have to be faced. The second thing Paul was
telling his hearers was that in declaring themselves to be Christians, they
have come down off the fence and taken a side. They have committed themselves
to God, and that will have consequences for them that they can’t escape. If we are going to call ourselves Christians,
says Paul, we can’t just shrug our shoulders when we see someone in trouble,
for example, and say “it’s nothing to do
with me – it’s someone else’s job to help”. We can’t just shrug our
shoulders at the things within ourselves that need to be straightened out either,
and pretend they don’t matter. We’ve signed up to serve a God who created
everyone in his own image, and loves them with his whole being, and if we say
we are his, then we’ve signed up to do that too. We are called out of apathy into commitment,
into action, called to make a difference, however insignificant we feel, however young
or old we are, whatever our abilities or our disabilities.
Put
on the armour, enlist for the battle, take yourself seriously, says this
reading.
Of
course, there’s a problem with all this imagery of armour. It’s very vivid. It
grabs our imagination. But that can lead us astray. Over the centuries, again and again,
Christians have fought wars and persecuted those they think are in the wrong, fired
up with crusading zeal. They’ve heard the first part of Paul’s phrase, “put on the armour” and got all gung-ho
about it, thinking it licenses them to
throw their weight around. They’ve entirely missed the end of the phrase “put on the armour of light”.
So
we have to be really careful with this image. The armour Paul is talking about
isn’t made of steel; it’s made of light. That was meant to sound odd, to sound
nothing like the arms and armour of a Roman soldier. You put on this armour by loving
your neighbour, respecting others, not impaling them on a sharp sword. There’s
nothing violent about it, nothing that insists on its own way – quite the
reverse. I doubt whether this armour would have impressed a Roman soldier. And yet ,
ultimately, the kind of self-giving love Paul is talking about is far more
powerful than hatred, far more likely to make a difference that will last.
Paul
emphasizes that message at the end of the passage we heard today when he uses
this imagery of “putting on” in a different way. “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” he says. First we were told to put
on armour, now we are told to put on Christ. Be like Jesus, he means. Act as he
would have acted. And how is that? Well, Jesus died on a cross, helpless,
powerless. He was crucified because of his commitment to the people at the
bottom of the heap, because of his rabble-rousing, trouble-making insistence
that those on the margins of his society were as worthwhile and precious as
those who held the reins of power, and had as much to give. As Jesus hung on
the cross he looked like a complete and total failure, far from a conquering
hero, and yet, out of his act of self-giving love came life and hope that has
changed the world.
Today,
as we baptise Ewan, Harry and Kristian they are going to be putting something
on. It may not look like armour, but it reflects the same idea. After they are
baptised, I am going to put these shawls around their shoulders. Clothing the
newly baptised in a white garment goes right back to the earliest days of the
Church, and in fact, some commentators think Paul’s words about “putting on
armour” and “putting on Christ” were meant to remind people of what happened to
them when they came up out of the waters of their baptism. They would have been
baptised by total immersion – dunked completely . They would have needed
something dry to put on when they came up out of the water. But the white
clothes they were given weren’t just a practicality. They were symbols of the
fact that they were now clothed in the love of God, that they had put on
Christ, that they had taken up this armour of light which would equip them for
the new lives they were called to live, loving and helping those around them,
making their world a better place.
When
we clothe Ewan, Harry and Kristian in these shawls, we remind them that, yes, they
go out into a world that is full of challenges and danger. It might sometimes
feel like a battle. But they too are clothed in the love of God. And that love,
if they can learn to trust it, will help them to face whatever life throws at
them, stand up against hatred and prejudice, make the difference to the world
that each of them is called to make. These
may only look like flimsy bits of material, but the love they remind us of is
stronger than Kevlar. It’s indestructible and eternal and we pray that they
will know that they will put it on not just today, but every day.
Amen
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