Engage in the Resistance

Based on Ephesians 6:10-20

Today we reach the end of our summer road trip through the letter to the Ephesians. It has been quite a journey. We have seen visions of the glory of God and the unity that God, through Jesus, has provided for us. We have thought through how this unity can impact our lives today, some examples of what this unity looks like in real life. We have talked about the rules of the road, those principles and guidelines that support us in manifesting our unity. And now, we have arrived home, carrying with us the memories of this trip.

Back when I was a kid, and our family would go on summer road trips, my dad took with him a Nikon camera. He took lots of pictures, mostly of the scenery but also a few pictures of the family. When we got back home, he took the rolls of film to the Fotomat to get them developed into slides. Then, a few weeks later, my dad set up the slide projector and the screen in the living room, loaded up the carousel, and one click at a time we would view the pictures and remember our trip. It was a great way to review all we saw and did. It brought back memories of fun stories and some chuckles as we remembered the inevitable mishap that happened along the way.

I invite us to approach today’s scripture as a way to reflect back on all that we have seen these past several weeks. We enter into this time of remembering not with a slide show but with a single image, this well-known illustration of putting on the whole armor of God: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes that make us ready to proclaim the gospel of peace, the shield of faith to quench the fiery darts of the devil, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. It’s a great image. Perhaps you can visualize yourself wearing this suit of armor and holding up the sword of God’s word. A bit militaristic, true. But also an interesting image Paul uses when we remember that when he wrote this letter he is sitting in chains in a prison.

Paul tells us why wearing this armor is something we need to do. We are to stand against the forces of evil. Verse 11, “stand against the wiles of the devil.” Verse 13, “withstand on that evil day…stand firm.” Verse 14, “stand therefore.” We can’t miss Paul’s point! Paul is very clear that there are evil forces in this world whose intent is to knock us down, break us apart, and ruin our community. These are forces from which we cannot run and hide. They are always coming after us. They are in the air. So, we have to stand our ground against these forces and not back down. Thus, the armor.

These forces of evil that Paul is talking about are not some general force. Paul identifies specific kinds of evil forces that are manifested in real life ways. He speaks of rulers, authorities, cosmic powers of this present darkness, and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. What are these? Well, they aren’t people. Our struggle is not against people but against forces. The rulers and authorities he is talking about are not human rulers or human authorities. These are spiritual entities. The cosmic powers of this present darkness are forces that emerge in the world while spiritual forces of evil come from outside of this world, the heavenly places. Now, there is a lot of confusion over exactly what Paul has in mind as far as what these specific evil forces are. But the main point for us is that they are specific and diverse. And they manifest in real life ways. These forces are present and active in society, in systems, in institutions, in people, sometimes in us. How can this be?

Back in 1962, almost 60 years ago, in Jackson, Mississippi, there were three young people sitting at a lunch counter in a drug store. They were a white man, a white woman and a black woman. Behind them were a large number of mostly young white men, although there is also an old white man standing in the back. The crowd is jeering this trio sitting at the lunch counter. The white man has had a bottle of catsup emptied on his head. The black woman looks to have had some kind of white powder poured over her head, maybe coffee creamer. When the picture is taken, a young white man is in the act of emptying the sugar jar on the head of the white woman. These three young people, their backs to the mob, sit there and take the abuse. Wearing God’s armor, they don’t run away or lash back. They stand their ground as they reveal the presence of evil forces. It is the evil embedded in Jim Crow segregation, the evil that motivated such hostility in the crowd of white men. The three young people sitting at the lunch counter, two white and one black, demonstrate resisting the forces of evil. We also see one other person in the picture. He’s an older white man, sitting at the end of the counter. He is looking down at his plate of food. His face has a look of shame. These three young people standing their ground against the forces of evil prompted in this man the need to acknowledge that the evil of segregation was not right. He was ashamed. His heart was opened a little that day. For him, this experience became a small transformation. He left that diner different than when he went in.

That instance took place in 1962. The struggle continues, and it is real. There are threats to unity and peace all around us. We see it in our political life, with so many voices of division. Racism and fear of the stranger manifest in many ways, not only through rhetoric but through policy. Our food systems separate us from where our food comes from. So much of the food we eat is processed in a factory somewhere. Our urban way of life separates us from the land we live on. We see forces of division in our churches as we divide over all kinds of issues. Misunderstandings and quarreling put stress on families that lead to division. Divisiveness bends and sometimes breaks relationships.

With so many manifestations of evil in the world, we must engage. Love requires it. We don’t need Paull to tell us to engage. How can you and I not engage with the forces of evil that seek to divide and destroy? Love demands engagement. But how do we go about engaging these forces which, again, are not people but are spiritual?

Well, I would say the first step in engaging with evil forces is to be determined in your will to do it rather than turn a blind eye. I know how tempting it is to look the other way. We are tempted to tune out the news, to cocoon ourselves the best we can with our friends and family in an attempt to shut out those forces from our awareness. But it doesn’t work. These forces are everywhere and can’t be avoided. We are tempted to rationalize what we see or minimize it or shrug our shoulders and say, “that’s just the way it is.” We say that every police department has a few bad apples rather than interrogating how policies, training and police culture can be influenced spiritually, manifesting distrust and sometimes callousness. We say it is unfortunate that Sue had to be cut off of her life saving treatments because of insurance rather than questioning how evil forces penetrate into bureaucracy and policies that lead to someone needlessly being blocked from health care. Again, this struggle is not against people but against spiritual forces that divide and destroy. These forces are all around us. The first step is to acknowledge this and be real about the influence of these forces rather than turn a blind eye or find a scapegoat or shrug our shoulders and say, “ain’t it awful.”

The second step in engaging with evil is to be set in our minds not to lash out. A violent response is not the go to move. I think again of those three young people sitting at the lunch counter. If any of them turned around to lash out at a single one of that mob it would have been an all-out beat down and nothing redeeming and transforming would have happened. That man with the shameful look on his face may have then thought to himself, “Ah, just some troublemakers.” The young resisters sitting at the lunch counter would have lost the moral high ground by lashing out. Remember, our struggle is not against people. It is against spiritual forces. Lashing out at people only perpetuates division, hatred, and broken community. Violence, verbally and physically, is destructive by its very nature.

We must set in our minds that evil forces are real and must be resisted. We resist lashing out at people. Third, we use the armor God has given us. We speak the truth. We represent righteousness. We proclaim the gospel of peace. We exercise our faith in the power of God when evil forces send out the fiery darts of discouragement and futility. We trust in our salvation. We ground our resistance in the word of God, the word that comes to us from the Spirit. By “word” Paul does not mean only what is on the printed page of Scripture. He is talking about Spirit inspired messages. Sometimes people will say to a pastor in their time of need, “Preacher, can you give us a word?” The word is just the thing we need to hear in times of struggle. That’s the word that cuts through the noise, the doubts, the hurts and confusion so that we are clear about what is happening and what we need to do to resist these forces. This is the armor, God’s own armor, that God has given us to use as we resist the evil forces that seek to divide and destroy community.

Finally, resisting evil forces is done through constant prayer. That’s what Paul wrote after describing the armor. He instructs us to pray in the Spirit at all times. Doesn’t that make sense? If we are engaging evil spiritual forces, should we not be tuned in to the Holy Spirit that works through us to vanquish these forces? We want to be a conduit through which the Spirit can flow. This happens by being aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit within us and allowing ourselves to be directed by the Spirit in our thoughts, words and deeds. We want to be filled with, possessed by, the Spirit of God so that evil forces get pushed out. Think of it this way. We receive so many different influences in every moment of our lives, influencing what we see, what we feel, what choices we make in response to a particular situation. What Paul is saying is to zero in on the influence of the Holy Spirit. Let this influence be the guiding one throughout our day. This grounds us and directs us so that we can engage the evil forces effectively, resist them, stand our ground.

And remember that the struggle to resist evil is not your struggle alone. We do it together as the body of Christ. This is a community struggle, not the uncoordinated efforts of individuals. In this struggle we truly need each other. There really is strength in numbers. And the body of Christ has numbers! There are over a billion of us on this planet right now and when you add in the billions more that are now in the church triumphant that’s a lot of members in the body of Christ. We don’t often think about how massive the body of Christ is. We buy in to the rhetoric of division within the church, which is another evil force we have to resist. Remember that the unity we have in the body of Christ is not something we create. It is what God has given us. Our challenge is to acknowledge the unity God has provided and build on that. But as long as the body of Christ buys into and even adds to the rhetoric of division, we are less effective in the struggle against the evil forces that seek to divide and destroy. See every Christian you know, no matter what church they belong to or what their theology or views they have on social issues, as a brother or sister in the resistance against evil forces. What I just said alone is a struggle. We have a lot of work to do to realize unity in the body of Christ even as we resist the forces that are seeking to rip apart society and disrupt the cycles of nature that sustain life on this planet. This engagement with evil forces is way bigger than any one of us can do. It has to be an entire group effort.

In the end, we have reason to be confident in this struggle. Even though we don’t always win the battle, even though many times we are complicit by being influenced by these forces and do harm, even though we fail to maintain the spirit of unity in the bond of peace, this is ultimately God’s struggle. The power we have at our disposal to resist evil in all its forms is divine power. And we know the end game. God will bring unity out of the chaos. Love will conquer all. The world will be mended. This is God’s determination. You have heard that phrase, maybe original to Martin Luther King or maybe he got it from someone else: the arc is long, but it bends toward justice. This is true. Our struggle, haphazard, faltering, and frustrating as it is, is not in vain.

So, I close with the prayer Paul offered to the Ephesians. Please pray with me. “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” It is in this name, the name of Jesus, that we pray. Amen.