Many of you, those of you who grew up within the community of the faith, are probably familiar with a portion of this scripture, about the second third, where the apostle Paul uses this image of the armor for faith. Some of you, as children, may even have memorized it. The helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the shield of faith, shoes which are made out of those things that will equip you for the proclamation of the gospel of peace, and the sword of the word and the spirit. These are the tools that the Lord gives to equip Christians for living an obedient life. Somewhere along the line, I memorized it, too.

 

It’s a good thing to have texts that are so vivid that they lend themselves to memory in this way. This is a great text to use with children, because they can picture these images of the armor, and it helps them to memorize them as a kind of pneumonic device. “Put on the armor of God.” You get it now, don’t you? The helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the shield of faith, with which you can defend yourself against the flaming darts of the evil one, says the text. And the shoes, which are made out of those things that equip you for the proclamation of the gospel beast, and the sword of the word and the spirit. That’s the whole armor of God. It’s a vivid picture.

 

But there’s another picture in the text. Likely, I’m betting (if preachers gambled, which we don’t), I’m betting and I think it would be a good gamble that you probably don’t remember this other image. It’s the image of evil. The image of armor is lifted up as a reference of how God is defending you and equipping you against the first image, which is the image of evil.

 

It’s a powerful description, too. This language about all of the wiles of the devil, the struggle against those enemies which are not enemies of blood and flesh, but against rulers, authorities, against the cosmic powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Heavens to Murgatroid! No wonder we turn in denial to that kind of description. We dress children up, in pageants, in the papier-mâché armor of God, but we don’t dress them up in the wily craft of the devil, or the papier-mâché forces of cosmic principalities, which may be venturing against us. Better to bring them in as shepherds and wise men, for the church as a whole.

 

There it is. It’s a powerful picture. Paul speaks of the evil around us. Paul is clear that it is real, that it is present, that it is organized, and that it is aggressive. In fact, the apostle says I know that you know you have to struggle against this every day. Every day, says the apostle, in some way you are having to wrestle against the forces of the evil that is out there. Present, real, organized, and aggressive. You know, he says, what I’m talking about.

 

We don’t talk this way in the church very often, but we should take it seriously. If he is going to use this image of armor to talk about the gifts that God gives us, to equip the Christian and to be obedient in discipleship, and prepared for defense, what image would you lift up to picture the forces of evil that we have to contend with. How would you picture that?

 

Carol McCammon showed me a picture earlier this summer that reminded me of when I first had seen this picture, about fourteen years ago. It’s a picture that, for me, very much captures the reality of the presence of evil. This is a picture that ran in a national periodical fourteen years ago. It’s a picture that ended up winning the Pulitzer prize for best news shot of that year. It was a picture out of the drought and subsequent famine that occurred in the Sudan fourteen years ago. Some of you saw this picture, I’m sure, and will remember it if I describe it. It was the picture of a small, African child who was ravaged by dehydration and hunger. The ravaging was so great, even though I studied the picture a great deal, I couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl. In this picture, the child is in the Sudan and is about a hundred yards from a Red Cross feeding and rehydration station. You could see that the child is struggling, desperate to get there. The body is emaciated. The child is in kind of a hunched position. It wasn’t clear to me if the child was kneeling or was crawling, trying to get to this rehydration station. It was a very sad picture.

 

One of the things that is clear in the picture is that the child is alone. There aren’t any parents in the picture. There isn’t any extended family in the picture. This child is alone. Except for a very large, black vulture that has landed and is seated on the ground about ten yards away from the child. Waiting for death to come.

 

Do you remember the picture? It’s the essence of evil. It’s a demonic picture, as far as I’m concerned. It’s the image of evil.

 

The picture upset me so, that I found myself returning to it again and again that year. I tore it out of the magazine. I carried it around with me. I didn’t want to forget it. I wanted to understand what it meant, how we could address the evil that it represented. I shared it with a group of pastors that I was in a support group with. We talked about it. We processed it. We used the picture as a way to talk about how we could address that evil. In many ways, I think the picture was a part of motivating the world to try and bring relief to that drought-stricken country.

 

The picture did an adequate job in fleshing the powers of evil there, that we should take seriously.

 

It says here in the letter to the Ephesians, Do you see that evil in the world? That evil that is so apparent sometimes? That looks like that picture of the vulture next to the child? Or that looks like evil in the word picture that Paul paints here in the letter to the Ephesians? Do you see that evil in the world? That is a reality in the world, says the apostle. He doesn’t dodge it. He is very descriptive about it. But it is not, he says, the only reality. And it is not, he says, the only reality. And it is not the final reality. God has not left you to face that evil alone, says the apostle. God has given you this equipment, this defensive equipment, that you can use to address it. The truth, the righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the shoes that are equipped with those things which proclaim the gospel of peace. And the word of God, the word which in the Spirit is the word of the Lord.

 

Then the apostle says, When you are tempted to believe that that evil is the reality, the final triumphant reality of the world, this is what you should do (I think this is what Paul is saying here in Ephesians): You should hold up the shield of faith. And in holding it up, you will remember the faith, the truth, about a God of love. And it will help to protect you from the assault of that evil. As the church has held on to the news and sung about it, and sought to teach it across the centuries.

 

About a year after that picture was taken, when the photographer won the Pulitzer Prize, they wrote about the picture again in national periodicals, because the photographer committed suicide the day after he won the Pulitzer Prize. Thus, the tragedy added to the tragedy of the picture. Like many others, I speculated and wondered what was going on in the story of his life that caused him to take his own life, even after he had won that prize. All we could do was speculate. He did write about the picture, though, before the prize. He said, “I took that picture and then shooed that vulture away, then went and sat beneath a tree and smoked a cigarette and cried.”

 

What I heard in that statement was hopelessness. Just a profound hopelessness. And I empathized with him. I imagined I knew something of what it’s like to taste that kind of hopelessness.

 

But I have been equipped with these other resources, that I’m not sure this photographer had. These other resources of the truth about the faith, which helped to buoy me up, to support me, to protect me when I’m assaulted by the kind of discouragement that can come from seeing and encountering the reality of the evil that is amongst us. I have these resources that defend me, perhaps in a way that he was not defended, and thus he was overwhelmed. The helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the belt of truth, and the sword of the word in Spirit, and shoes which help us proclaim the gospel of peace. You have been equipped with these resources, says the apostle. Prepare with them, use them. Which Paul says, “These gifts will help you contend with the evil that you must experience in this world.

 

Those who are overly fascinated with the devil should take a lesson in the gospels from Jesus, who took evil seriously, but whose custom was not to preach the threatening rule of Satan but rather the joyous rule of God. I think Jesus is a great example for us of how we address the reality of this evil. Jesus did not engage in idle speculation about the nature of evil or the person of Satan. When in the Gospel he meets those who are in bondage to Satan’s chaotic rule, he doesn’t use secret incantations or magical powders or extended studies about the nature of evil, as many of the exorcists of Jesus’ day did. On the contrary, what Jesus does, invariably, is to make to that person an appeal to faith in the reality of God. And then he invites them to join in living in the joyous rule of the love of God. He invites them to hear the preaching of the gospel of love of God and to live in the authority of that love.

 

Note this about the armor Paul lifts up. These gifts, they are almost all defensive ones, protective ones. The helmet against blows. The shield, which is kind of a wooden structure over which there is a leather armor that has been soaked in water. The Roman soldiers soaked their shields, so that when flaming arrows hit it, it could help to quench them. The breastplate of righteousness, which seeks to protect the soldier.

 

They are all defensive ones, except for the final one, which is the sword, which, says the apostle, is the word in Spirit. That is an initiating weapon. That is an offensive weapon. Take care of your equipment, says the apostle. Remind yourself of its presence. Familiarize yourself with it. Be prepared, so that when you encounter evil, you are ready to use.

 

I judge that when you get up on the last Sunday in August, early in the morning, get yourselves dressed and come to church, part of what you are doing is preparing yourselves, familiarizing yourselves with the equipment so that it will help you when you encounter the reality of evil that you will encounter out there in the week ahead. So when you gather in the morning and read the Bible, whether you read it alone or together, you join in prayer, whether it’s in study groups like the one that meets here on Monday morning or Tuesday morning, or the Presbyterian women’s circles. When you pray with friends over meals. When, in going to bed at night, you lift up your joys and concerns to the Lord and you read the word, you’re taking the strength of these gifts, this equipment, and placing it inside of you so that when you encounter that evil out there in the week ahead, the Spirit will be able to draw from these gifts and summon them forth in helping you address that evil. You are preparing yourselves. You are trying to equip yourselves for the battle that you, no doubt, will have to contend with.

 

All of the weapons are defensive, except this last one, the sword. Which is the word in the Spirit. And here’s where I got surprised in the studies this week, Mike. When I think, when I’ve read this phrase about the word of the Lord, I typically think of it as the expanded sense of all of the words of the Lord. Scripture. The full document of the word of God. But there is real consensus amongst the commentators (which you don’t always find). There’s strong agreement that at least here in the sixth chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians, the apostle is talking about one word in the Spirit, which is the word. The word in the Spirit, which is the sword. The apostle, say the commentators, even Marcus Barte, a European commentator, and the American commentators, they agree. The apostle is speaking here particularly about one word, which is meant to be a tool for you in initiating the struggle with evil. And that word is prayer.

 

Which is why immediately starts to say, then, pray. Pray at all times. Pray in supplication and pray with thanksgiving. Pray for each other. Pray for all of the saints across the church (and he means the whole Christian community around the world when he uses that phrase). And pray for me, he says. Pray for me, here in jail in Rome, because I have to preach to these soldiers who are around me. Pray so that, when the day comes that I may have to make a strong witness (meaning the day of his martyrdom), I may be able to do it with boldness.

 

Pray. Pray unceasingly. Pray, pray, pray. The word is prayer.

 

Paul says, You have the sword, which is the word in the Spirit. And that word is prayer. And in the way he says this, this is not kind of a nonchalant, typical, a formalized “… and God bless the Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church, and God bless John and Nicole, and God bless everybody else in the world…” kind of a prayer. That’s not what he’s talking about. You’ve picked this up from the Passion and the litany that he brings forward with this. He means intentional, serious, committed, thoughtful, down-on-your-knees praying kind of prayer. You pray, says Paul. You pray with the knowledge that the Christian community is utterly dependent on what God has done, and what God reveals to us about Jesus Christ.

 

You pray in the knowledge that we are utterly dependent on this tool of prayer, in order to be in touch with the Lord’s strength and in order to help the world go forth in the world. You pray with the knowledge that by praying, which is like putting on these shoes, you will be able to help the Gospel, the good news about God, go out into the world.

 

When you pray, he says, you actually are proclaiming the Gospel into the world in ways you do see and in ways you don’t see, beyond your seeing. It is an initiating, effective, specific, concrete action by which you engage with evil in the world. Pray, he says.

 

There was tragedy about ten years ago in the congregation that my dad served. It was in the last year of his active ministry. He was sixty-five, and this was right before he retired. I hoped it was going to be a gracious exit, an easy exit for him. A month before he was to retire, there was a very tragic death in his congregation. His youth group had joined with another youth group to travel in a van to a conference in Montreat, North Carolina. On the way up, the van hit the median and flipped five times. A seventeen-year-old girl in the back of the van was killed in the accident. A beautiful girl (of course, they are all beautiful). It was very tragic. Her father was a judge in the community. When I heard that this had happened (and the news spread quickly), I called my dad that Saturday night (it happened on a Saturday) because I wanted him to know I was thinking of him, and I was praying for him. I was trying to support him. What I knew was one last tragedy that he had to walk through, and walk with his congregation on. When I called him, he was on the phone, trying to find her parents, who had gone off on vacation so that he could tell them what had happened. He had just finished talking with them, and he said to me, “John, when I talked to her father (her name was Loren), all he could say to me was, ‘God has forsaken me.’ That was the only phrase he could say. ‘God has forsaken me.’”

 

So I began to pray for him. I prayed for Loren’s father. And I prayed also for my own father. I was praying for both of these fathers. The one that I hadn’t met, but saw the overwhelming grief that he was contending with; and also the one that I knew personally. I was praying for these fathers, together.

 

Saturday night, I prayed that God would just hold him together. That God would just enable him not to emotionally become undone.

 

On Sunday, I prayed that God would go with him as he went to meet that family at the airport, and that God would give him the strength and words to speak as he sought to comfort them and to lead them back home, and to try to lift up some sign of hope for them in the midst of an overwhelming grief. I prayed that God would guide and lead him, that his own resources would not be completely depleted.

 

On Monday, I prayed that the Spirit would help him in a creative way to find words that would be a part of designing a large memorial service for that community on Tuesday.

 

On Tuesday, I prayed that the Lord would strengthen him as he stood before not only that family, but the wider congregation, the community, and try to interpret for them the Good News of the Gospel in the midst of that tragedy. I prayed Tuesday that God would stand behind him and help him not to feel forsaken.

 

And on Wednesday, Wednesday morning, I called him and I said, “Dad, are you there? Are you still there?” He said to me, “John, God did not forsake us. God did not forsake us.”

 

I don’t know at that moment, Wednesday morning, if that’s what Loren’s parents were affirming. Not at that soon point. But it is what my father said. And it was enough for me, that morning.

 

God has not forsaken us. And he said, “We have been surrounded by the prayers of her extended family, by the prayers of this congregation any by churches in this Presbytery and across the state. We’ve heard from people in Montreat, and in faraway states. People who knew these young people, or just knew they were headed to this conference. Christians throughout the world have phoned and e-mailed and sent us notes, and we have felt and seen the signs and the evidences of the reality of the love and presence of God in the world in the midst of this tragedy, in the midst of this evil. We are still here. God has not forsaken us.”

 

That was enough for me that morning.

 

Yes, Paul is right. There is evil in the world. It is present, it is real, it is organized, and it is aggressive. But the apostle wants you to know that God owns the world, and not evil. Paul wants you to know that the reality of the world belongs to God, and God has not left you defenseless. God has given you this armor. God has given you this shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation, and the breastplate of righteousness, and the belt of truth, and the shoes which will help carry people to proclaim the gospel of peace. And the sword of the word and the Spirit, and the word is prayer.

 

God has given you the armor of love and righteousness that you might be able to go out into the world and, the apostle says, stand firm. Be an agent on God’s behalf. Seek, as a soldier of God, to bring the reality of God’s love to bear in the contention that the world has with evil. To lift up the witness of the triumph of love over evil.

 

God equips you with this armor and gives you this task. It is an enormous responsibility. Do not forsake it. It is an enormous privilege. It is entrusted to us. Pray.

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006