Hello everyone!

Welllll...I preached my very first sermon and it was such an amazing experience for me. Not just the actually speaking of the words from the pulpit, but really the support of people in my life. I still feel just overwhelmed at how many people believe I might have something special to say or give to the world. Friends who would drive for hours to be with me for less than 16 hours just to be familiar faces in the congregation for me. My mom cried. And it made me cry. I am just overwhelmed and I feel unworthy of it. But yet it also makes me feel braver for whatever is ahead of me with all this seminary stuff.

I preached on Ephesians 6. I could talk about what I said, but here is the transcript if you are interested.

Introduction

Good morning! My name is Jessie Doerrer, and I am delighted to be here worshipping with you this morning. Thank you for your hospitality towards me as I learn and grow on this journey towards ministry. As I told Steve your pastor and Jeff, my former Sojourners colleague and friend, I have not as yet actually taken a preaching class, and so I am honored and humbled that you believe that I have something valuable to say to you today.

A little bit about who I am and who is speaking to you this morning: I am entering my second year at Princeton Theological Seminary and have just completed my first real intensive ministry training as a chaplain at Hospital for University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia working full-time on the floors and on call one night each week in the Trauma Bay. I am still learning about where I want to go with this seminary thing, and I am blessed to have these wonderful people you see around you in my life to guide and support me. I am more aware than ever of how much we need others on this journey. It is my prayer that you would learn a bit more about me by hearing what God has taught me through this passage this morning, and that it would speak to you as deeply as it spoke to me. That said, let’s open in prayer.

Reservations / Call to Hear in a New Way

So…this passage. This is a tough one for me. Although it does not stand alone as warlike Biblical imagery of the Christian life, when I saw it in the lectionary for this morning, I did feel a certain sense of fear and reservation. For several reasons.

1. It seems a bit overdramatic. What I face in my daily life does not seem to jive with the idea that there is an overarching cosmic conflict for the world all around me. It is tough to believe in principalities and powers on a day to day basis when my life involves things like homework, laundry, exercise and the like. Could spiritual warfare really be a reason behind some of the world’s complex problems and struggles?
2. This type of language is often grossly misused. When Christians or leaders use Paul’s words like “powers of darkness” (or for that matter “axis of evil”) to describe their earthly enemies, something does not feel right deep down in my heart, and I almost wish that this language were not even available for our appropriation. Which leads to…
3. As Christians called to justice and peace, can we really believe in a worldview that involves battle? Paul’s picture encounters some sharp dissonance with our idea of Jesus’ way of nonviolent resistance.
4. Finally, and probably most significantly, this passage just flat out scares me, freaks me out. As a kid, I could not even watch PG-13 horror movies much less think deeply about the reality of evil forces out there in our world. I still encounter the topic with a good deal of trepidation, and feel that I do not have the courage to step out of my optimistic bubble into the possibility that what Paul is saying could be real.

So all that said, I was never quite….on board with Paul’s theology here. Yet this sermon has become for me a story of personal transformation. When we read God’s word, we are failing ourselves if we are not open to totally changing our minds about it. And when I preach, I pray it will always be words that transform my mind as this passage has. Because otherwise, what is the point of sharing it with anyone else?

We have to wrestle with hard passages like this in Scripture because it is not an isolated item of propaganda to ignore. It is part of the whole story of our life with God, and this picture of battle and armor is all over the Bible. Therefore, let’s read this passage hungry for the Good News and see what we find together.

Background

Up to this point in Ephesians, there has been an interesting build-up taking place. Paul’s first three chapters focus on spiritual blessings because of Christ; those blessings being things like the grace of being chosen by him, the new life in him and the new community or rather new humanity united under him, where as you will recall, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, etc. In Chapter 4, Paul starts to bring the discussion closer and closer to home for his readers. He discusses gifts in the church of each believer and how to live worthy of our calling in all our relationships, down to even in our own household as in Chapter 5.

Now, the sixth chapter comes like a slap in the face. From the household to a battlefield! Doesn’t this feel like it comes out of nowhere?? ……The more I look at it, the more I don’t think it does. You see, if we are indeed in a battle in the Christian life, we need to know two very important things to be a part of it which came before chapter 6. One, we need to know our blessings in Christ. The very first command in this passage is to be strong. The literal meaning is passive imperative, or be strengthened in the Lord. Secondly, we need to know that we are in this together and that our relationships are a priority in the Christian life.

This is all very reminiscent of what was happening leading up to the OT passage today in Joshua. When God was leading his people into the land he had promised them, they knew they were going to have to fight to claim the promise and enter into it. And God commanded them to be strong. Just so now…we have new promises made and fulfilled in Christ, but there will be conflict as we journey to claim them.

Yet the nature of this battle is different than it was for Israel. The enemies are not other tribes (or at least they shouldn’t be) and the tactics are not with arrows or guns or other weaponry. If we do not fight against flesh and blood as Paul claims, then all the tactics we rely upon as humans in conflict fall to pieces. We cannot use our worldly inclination to war and retaliation to fight this enemy. It is a different sort of battle. Consider who we are fighting in verse 12. The rulers, the authorities, the powers of darkness IN THIS WORLD and the evil in the heavens.

Who are We Fighting?

That is a lot to take on! Who falls into these categories? Who or what are we struggling against? One theologian very popular with my colleagues at Sojourners is Walter Wink, and he has developed a deep theology of the principalities and powers. He defines them as the impersonal spiritual realities at the center of institutional life, or to put it more briefly, the soul of systems. Worded that way, the powers are not always inherently evil. Just like anything else created, they are able to do good, but they can be manipulated for evil purposes. Consider the example of nationalism. (Any –ism might work well here in imagining the powers: materialism, racism, sexism, utilitarianism, etc). After 9/11 in this country, nationalism had a rather inspiring and altruistic face. For a brief moment, our country and the world got a glimpse of unity and concern for others’ welfare that it lacked for a long, cynical time before it. But that quickly descended into a militant, vengeful, self-protective stance of war against the unseen power of terror in the face of the exotic stranger.

Another more concrete example of this power or authority in life is our own privilege. Everyone sitting here has a certain amount of privilege and blessing because of living in this country, owning a vehicle, having a bank account or a job, etc. That is a blessing, but can also be a barrier towards stepping beyond oneself and extending oneself to those with much less. Shane Claiborne writes in his recent book Irresistible Revolution that “while the ghettos may have their share of violence and crime, the suburbs are the home of more subtle demonic forces—numbness, complacency, comfort—and it is these that can eat away at our soul”.

This is a very personal thing, but it affects whole communities. Mother Teresa describes our entire country as living in spiritual poverty, and for myself, that is not far from the truth at all sometimes. This year at seminary, I found myself blessed with good friends, supportive family and a graduate school education in a beautiful town. Yet I lacked hope and courage and self-esteem in my path. Something was going on in my very soul that could not be explained away with material reasoning. To look at my life from the outside, I was indeed very comfortable, but inside, my soul was afflicted and fighting a battle. It felt like a battle, and one that I was losing for a long time. What caught me in it is what catches all of us. The powers in this world and in this life rule by sowing fear, confusion, accusation, guilt, complacency, and loneliness and they use all the things that divide us, all those –isms and messages of the world to keep us from fighting back for something greater. We start to believe that maybe there isn’t anything greater. Like I said earlier, I had a hard time accepting that something so big could be going on involving a life so small as my own.

What are we to do in light of this struggle?

Amazingly enough however, God wants us involved with what He is doing to the powers. He has triumphed them! Christ’s death on the cross effectively “killed hostilities between us”. His death murdered enmity and proclaimed a new ruler in this world. What a paradox our faith is! Moreover, God’s final victory sounds a death knell for the opposing powers spoken of here, but also intensifies their opposition until the final day. It is here that God invites us into His work to rein in the powers during this aftermath, this in-between time until Christ returns. So what are we to do?

The first thing that Paul says, and repeats several times here, is that we are to STAND. Stand against, stand firm, stand your ground. This word is significant. It is our battle position, and an unlikely one for such a large-scale conflict according to human standards. But it makes sense because in following Christ and his way, we do not meet evil on its own terms. We do not become that which we oppose. Indeed we resist it with all of our being. The Greek word for “resist” means to “stand against”. As Wink writes, “following Jesus’ Way arrests both the outer spiral of retaliation and hatred AND equips us to face the inner infection it excites” [meaning often the evil we most oppose is that to which we are most susceptible].

One piece of very good news in this is that since we are being invited into this enormous, terrible and wondrous struggle for life and the world, God prepares us for that and even gives us armor for it. This armor is not the glorious adornment we might imagine of a knight. It is protection in every piece. When Paul describes it, he writes as “an ambassador in chains”, literally chained to the soldier guarding him and describing what he sees, giving it new meaning. Let us consider the pieces he gives us for a few moments. Paul uses deep and beautiful imagery to set the scene.

The Armor

The belt of truth. A belt was not like our belts today, but tied up tight in one’s lower torso and loins to protect one from being disemboweled. The picture here is of truth being protective of our guts, our substance. We live in a culture of untruth and all we have to do is look at one of the 3000 ads an average person sees everyday to encounter the lies of the powers around us. Truth helps us to retain our substance in the midst of this.

The breastplate of righteousness. The breastplate protected the heart, the control center, the part that keeps the rest of the body on course and functioning. Our heart is similar to a gyrocompass in a submarine: a tiny mechanism keeping a massive, complex machine going on the correct path even if assaulted or thrown off course The breastplate protects that for us, and that breastplate is righteousness; not necessarily just the righteousness imputed by grace and justification, but also the righteousness of doing the right thing and enacting justice. God gives us this armor as if to say to us that we share in his role of doing just that in the world. Although the powers make us feel unfit, and the enemy is an accuser, our righteousness protects us and makes us fit for the struggle at hand.

Feet fitted to proclaim the Gospel of Peace. Interesting. We are battling to proclaim a Gospel of Peace. Does this surprise you? Our faith lives and dies with these kinds of paradoxes! It seems odd to mention shoes as part of a suit of armor, but they are crucial. Any good soldier needs shoes that are light, flexible, and resilient to help them keep going. Furthermore, a soldier’s shoes must be able to grip the ground and enable them to dig in their heels in order to do what? TO STAND. Paul charged the church in his letter to Galatia to “not grow weary in doing good, for we shall reap a harvest at the proper time if we do not give up”. We truly can stand in the midst of battle and be at peace standing on the redemption that God has won for us and digging in our heels.

The Shield of Faith. Soldiers in Paul’s day used huge leather shields soaked in water in order to naturally extinguish what was fired at them; arrows dipped in pitch and then set on fire. When extinguished, they could advance. Let us imagine for a minute. In our battles that we face, what sorts of darts are fired at us? What is used to bring us down? What is a sure-fire discouragement for us? The interesting thing about a shield is that it not only protects ALL that you have already put on, but according to battle protocol of Paul’s day, this shield [of faith] also was built to cover 2/3 of you and 1/3 of your neighbor fighting next to you. I love that! This is not a battle we fight alone, and if we think it is, we will certainly lose.

It is in these last two pieces that the tense changes. Before we were told to “put on” such and such, but now we are told to “take”. We are to take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. These things are given to us and at no point were they ours to possess. In fact, in Isaiah 59, God is described as using this very armor to fight for justice for the needy when there was no one else doing it. Israel had returned from exile and had still not learned to care for the poor, widowed, and orphaned so God himself fought for them with these pieces of armor that he now gives to us. This is significant for us, and makes these two pieces crucial. The helmet protects the head, the most vital part of the body. The majority of fatal wounds then and now were head wounds. Our most vital and vulnerable parts are covered with our salvation, or rather with Christ’s blood. Our victory was not through clever strategy or powerful weaponry but through a person, through God as a human being who could feel pain and die. Finally, the sword of the Spirit. The one and only offensive weapon. The truth is that the only true thing we have to fight back with is the word. It was true of Jesus in temptation and it is true of us today. The Holy Spirit’s role is to give the word power and penetration, but like any offensive weapon, we must learn to use it. We must become intimately acquainted with it.

What gives us energy and enables us to wield this weapon is prayer. Prayer effectively names the enemies, and keeps us in close communication with our captain, so to speak. Prayer has the power to redefine what is possible, especially in communities of worship. Prayer is openness to God’s activity and is a walking into it to take part. Through prayer, we can be watchful soldiers with Christ, fighting as he fights, waiting for any opportunity to turn darkness into light.

Where Do We Get This Armor?

So we have been given the gifts of this armor for our spiritual life here on earth where battles are taking place everyday. Spiritual warfare may take place on a cosmic scale but it is an everyday struggle for truth, justice, solidarity, liberation and peace in human relationships. I struggled with it this year. I saw it everyday at the hospital as I encountered everyone’s worst day of their lives when loved ones fell ill or someone got murdered or tragedy struck their family. Perhaps God does not take it upon Godself to prevent all that suffering. But God does give us to one another. We need each other. We cannot face worry, responsibility, change, grief, and fear of life in this world without others. It will not work and we will lose.

Perhaps we have the power to embody truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation news, and spirit to one another. In my opinion, the most powerful sermons are those God preaches to us through the lives of those around us. I am forever changed by the people I have met who have let me into their stories, their celebration, their dreams, their fear, and especially their pain. That is why my experience this summer at the hospital was one of the richest in my life. In a place with so many heartbreaking things happening everyday, I was often asked why I wanted to be there. It was because it was there that people were startlingly real, if you let them be.
One of the first things we learned as chaplains that I think should be taught to every person, Christian or not, was a tool called ‘reverent acknowledgement’, which is basically listening for the feelings behind the content of what a person was saying, rather than running from those feelings or allowing that person to run from them as we are all wont to do. I found that when I uncovered my ears to others’ needs and deepest pains, my world opened up into an unimaginable holiness and a profound understanding of the mutual struggle to be human beings. Just from listening beyond the words into the heart and soul of a person. I came to believe that we all have the same story at a certain level, and we all fight in this battle like it or not. This is good news! We cannot try to hide our humanness from each other or we will not survive this battle.

God dares us to put on these pieces of armor and we may be intimidated wondering where to get these things like truth and peace. We have them already! We have been given them, and they are in each other. Who are the fighters in this battle? All the saints, and that includes you and you and me. Not saints made of plaster or platitudes or perfection, but made of human flesh in all its richness.

Closing

In ancient times before a squire was knighted, he would spent the night in vigil in the castle and spread his whole armor out before him, lying prostrate and offering up his soul to God. So we too must lay aside our old rags of untruth, guilt, anxiety, weariness and sin. Putting on this armor is putting on the new humanity Paul writes about a couple chapters before this. It is being a participant in the new world that God is creating, ruled by love and redemption, not the powers!

Therefore, I implore you friends: give of yourselves, not to a cause or a way of thinking, but to people because God created us human beings as good gifts to creation and to each other. To live up to that means risk, and maybe even battles between light and darkness. But to live fully as God created us to be is worth the risk. May God be with you on your journey, and if you’ll let me, may I be with you as well. Amen.

I would welcome comments on this, but this sermon is basically the sermon I need to hear for where I have been the last year or so. So this was my attempt to put words to how God has been speaking to me on my journey with prayers that my journey is not so different from yours or that church's. I feel like a great weight has been lifted. Another first behind me.