The Whole Armour of God

I finally worked out what I'd done wrong so that the recording didn't record on the last two sermons!  There were several changes from the text, so do have a listen.....

Last week, Robert and I took our grandsons to visit the museum of Jewish life, up in Camden Town. It is actually quite an interesting museum to visit in its own right, but the main reason we went was that there was a temporary exhibition about the life of René Goscinny, the man who wrote the text of the Astérix books with his colleague, Albert Uderzo.

Now, I expect you all know Astérix the Gaul, who, with his friend Obélix, lived in a little village in Brittany which refused point-blank to accept the Roman rule that covered all the rest of what is now France. And specialised in making the local troops’ lives a misery. But it’s about those Roman soldiers that I want to think this morning, and I’m hoping we can get a picture of a Roman soldier, as drawn by Mr Uderzo, up on the screen.

I’m sure, of course, that you have heard about God’s armour before! The belt of truth – truth is so vital to all our dealings with God, and with God’s people. It’s not just about always telling the truth; that too, although there are times when that is not the kindest option – you wouldn’t tell anybody that their bum looked big in this, even if it did, and you certainly wouldn’t tell a grieving widow that her husband had been the biggest crook going and you had loathed his guts! It’s about telling the truth, but it’s also about being truthful about yourself, especially to God. You see, it’s no good hiding the bits about yourself that you don’t like – God knows them all anyway.

And you know all this stuff, too. You know about the breastplate of righteousness – God’s righteousness, not ours. You know about the shoes of the Gospel of Peace – for although we are called to fight against what St Paul calls “the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”, although we are called to fight against them, we are called, above all else, to be peacemakers.

You know about the shield of faith – how it is used, not just to protect ourselves, but to protect each other, too. The Romans knew about that, and Mr Uderzo drew at least one picture of them in “tortoise” formation. Could we see that picture?

Although in one book I read, it is described thus: “The Company had tried that formation—practiced it often, used it rarely—but the sergeant remembered how it felt, how it hindered the troops, blinded by the shields, crowded together. It was hard to walk without bumping into someone, hard even to breathe when they'd done it in the hot southern climate. She didn't think cold would make it easier.”

Moon, Elizabeth. Deeds of Honor: Paksenarrion World Chronicles (p. 94). Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

So not easy – but if it protects your friends? Anyway, once again, you know all about this; you will have had sermons on this passage many times. The helmet of salvation, too, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, St Paul tells us.

Our Roman legionary had all these things – well, their earthly equivalents, anyway – and both St Paul and his readers would have been familiar with them, as they would have seen the legionaries out and about in their towns, perhaps garrisoned there, perhaps just marching through. But it was a picture they all knew. This is what a soldier looked like. They knew all about belts and breastplates, shoes and helmets, swords and shields in ways that we can only know from pictures and cartoons. Although we do see our police with riot shields sometimes, and we know they wear bullet-proof vests and helmets on occasion, so perhaps it’s not quite so strange to us, if we can put it in modern terms.

But how do we get this armour? How do we “put on the whole armour of God”? Where do we find it? Are we terrible people when we find we don’t have much faith, or much righteousness?

Um, no! The clue is in the name – the whole armour of God! It is God’s armour, which God gives to us as we need, when we need.

I am sure you’re familiar with the phenomenon where a phrase of Scripture simply jumps out and hits you in the face, even though you have read that passage many, many times before. The other week, I was preaching on the story of Daniel and Bathsheba, and while someone was reading the story to the congregation, this verse jumped out at me. This is God speaking to David through Nathan the Prophet: “I made you king of Israel and rescued you from Saul. I gave you his kingdom and his wives; I made you king over Israel and Judah. If this had not been enough, I would have given you twice as much.”

“If this had not been enough, I would have given you twice as much.” Sometimes we struggle – well, I say “we”, but I know it’s true of me, and thus tend to assume it’s true of everybody – sometimes I struggle to think of God as generous, of God as the one who gives and gives and gives! We only have to ask! It’s not like that awful prosperity theology which says you have to “prime the pump” by giving, usually to the preacher, vast sums of money so that God can bless you. God doesn’t work like that. God gives and gives and gives, because God loves us.

And so it is with the armour that we need to protect us. God gives and gives and gives more than we need. We don’t have to plead and beg with him, but just say “Help!” and the help is there. Jesus has won the victory over the powers of evil; we may struggle to resist temptation, and perhaps we feel we lose more often that we’d like. I know I do….

But the point is, we need to practice all this. I’ve said this before, I think – we choose to be God’s people, we choose to let God love us, but so often we don’t practice it. We don’t spend time with God – and St Paul tells us, in our reading from Ephesians, that prayer is the best weapon there is. We don’t spend time with God because spending time with God very often involves looking at ourselves, and really not liking what we see! So we avoid God, rather like Adam and Eve did in the garden after they had eaten the fruit.

And, of course, that is totally the wrong thing to do. What we ought to do – and I’m speaking to myself every bit as much as to you – what we ought to do is to spend more time with God, look at the bits of ourselves we hate, and give them to God, too! And then spend as much time with God as we can – not necessarily praying in words all the time – we couldn’t, anyway – but being aware of God’s presence with us.

It isn’t always easy. In our Gospel reading, we heard how many people found Jesus’ teaching about eating his Body and drinking his Blood far too difficult to cope with, and went away. We have grown up with eating his Body and drinking his Blood through Holy Communion, so it doesn’t disgust us the way it did his first hearers, but we all have our own sticking-points. But when Jesus asked the Twelve whether they, too, wished to leave, Peter replied on their behalf: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

“Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life!”

That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it. We have chosen to serve God, we have chosen to put on the whole armour of God. We have chosen to be God’s people. And God himself will give us what we need to enable us to be God’s person in a largely secular society. What we need, and more than what we need – the whole armour of God, in fact.

We didn’t have our Old Testament reading earlier, but I’m going to have it now, to end this sermon, as in it, Joshua asks the people to choose whether they want to serve God or not. And the people choose to serve God. So Nike and I are going to read the beginning of the reading, and then we are all going to join in the verses where the people reply. They’ll be up on the screen. It’s from Joshua chapter 24. And let us use the people’s words as our prayer of recommitment to God.

Narrator: Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem.  They stood before Joshua and before God.  Joshua retold the whole story of their people. He started with Abraham, reminded them of the hardships of slavery in Egypt, and recounted the way God led them out of slavery.  He reminded them that God had been with them while they wandered in the wilderness and had given them their new homes in the Promised Land.  Then Joshua said to all the people,

Joshua:  Now therefore honour the Lord, and serve God sincerely and faithfully.  Put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.  If you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

Narrator:  Then the people answered,

People: Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight.  The Lord protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.  And, the Lord drove out before us all the peoples who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for the Lord is our God.

Therefore, we also will serve the Lord, for the Lord is our God. Amen.

It's you, dear

This is substantially the same as the sermon I preached three years ago!  And yet again, the recording didn't work - I think I need a new app.   However, it is not the end of the world, as something set me off coughing and I couldn't really stop, so perhaps just as well....


I want to talk about our Gospel reading in a minute,
but first of all, we need to look at the Old Testament reading,
the story of David and Bathsheba.
This is, in fact, the second week of this story –
you may or may not have heard the first part last week,
but just in case you didn't, I'll recapitulate.

David is now King of Israel and Judah, a united kingdom.
He has built a very splendid palace in Jerusalem,
and is one of the richest and most powerful men in the region.
And, like many rich and powerful men, he has a high sex drive, and, of course, many women find riches and power very aphrodisiac.

So David can more-or-less have any woman he wants,
and, quite probably, the reverse is also true –
any woman who wants the King can have him!
And there is Bathsheba, Uriah's wife,
who allows herself to be seen while having her ritual bath –
and responds to the King's summons.

Unfortunately, what neither Bathsheba nor David had any way of knowing, given the state of medical knowledge back then,
was that when you have just finished your monthly purification rituals is when you are likely to be at your most fertile.
And so it comes about that Bathsheba finds herself pregnant,
and there's no way it can be anybody other than David's.

And they panic.
David could arguably have got away with it,
but he wasn't going to abandon Bathsheba like that, and, it's probable that it was she who panicked.
Uriah, from what we read about him, strikes me as very much the kind of person who always does the right thing,
no matter what the personal cost to himself,
and in this case, the right thing to have done was to have had Bathsheba,
who had obviously committed adultery,
stoned to death.
Yes, killed.
Even if he hadn't wanted to do that.
He was far too prim and proper to sleep with his wife while on active service, no matter how hard David tried to make him do that –
if he had, he would have accepted the coming child as his own, and their problems would have been solved.
But he refused, because his country was at war and he was a soldier on active service,
and wouldn't even go and see Bathsheba, even when David got him drunk, but just slept on his blanket in the guard room.

So David feels he has no option but to get rid of Uriah,
which he does by causing him to be sent into the front line of battle,
and get killed.
And as soon as it is decently possible, he marries Bathsheba.

End of story?
No, not quite.
You see, it might seem to have all been tidied up and nobody any the wiser, but they had forgotten God.
And God was not one bit pleased with what David had done.

So he sends Nathan the Prophet –
brave man, Nathan, wasn't he? –
to say to David that there is a man who only had one sheep, just one, and a rich bully had taken that sheep away from him.
So David said, well, who is this bully, I'll deal with him –
he can't get away with that sort of thing in my kingdom, so he can't!
And Nathan looks him in the eye and says, “It's you, dear!”

And, then David sees exactly what he has done.
The lust, the adultery, the deception, the murder.
He looks at himself and does not like what he sees, not one tiny little bit.
He doesn't know what God must think of him,
but he knows what he thinks of himself –
and he knows, too, that he needs to repent.
Which he does, and some of the words he is said to have used have come down to us:
Have mercy on me, O God, in your great goodness;
   according to the abundance of your compassion
      blot out my offences.
  Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness
   and cleanse me from my sin.
  For I acknowledge my faults
   and my sin is ever before me.
 Behold, you desire truth deep within me
   and shall make me understand wisdom
      in the depths of my heart.

Turn your face from my sins
   and blot out all my misdeeds.
  Make me a clean heart, O God,
   and renew a right spirit within me.
  Cast me not away from your presence
   and take not your holy spirit from me.
  Give me again the joy of your salvation
   and sustain me with your gracious spirit;

And so on.
There's a bit more, but I've not quoted it all –
it's Psalm 51, if you want to have a read of it.

Anyway, the point is, his repentance is genuine, and he will be reinstated.
The child will not live, though.
And there is that lovely scene where the child is born,
and David is told that it cannot live –
it hasn't “come to stay”, as they used to say –
and he prostrates himself before the Lord in prayer.
And the baby duly dies,
and the servants are at a loss to know how to tell him,
thinking that if he's in that sort of mood, he might well shoot the messenger, but when they have stood outside the door for ten minutes going “You tell him,”
“No, you tell him!” he realises what's going on –
and when he finds out that the baby has died,
he astonishes them all by going and washing his face and going to comfort Bathsheba,
and when asked, he points out that while the baby was still alive, there was hope that God might yet be persuaded to let it live,
but now that it's dead, there's no hope;
and yes of course he minds,
but it won't help anybody to lie on the floor rolling about in grief.

And as we know, just to round off the story, Bathsheba and David do eventually have another child, who becomes King Solomon, arguably the greatest King of the combined kingdoms.

David's main fault, I think, that started the whole sorry saga, was greed.
He was greedy for life, and for women, and for pleasure.
He wanted to have it all, and had to learn the hard way that it wasn't all his.

Jesus says much the same to the followers in the Gospel reading, doesn't he?
It takes place almost immediately after Jesus has fed five thousand or more people with a small boy’s packed lunch.

He then sends the disciples on ahead of him, so he can spend some time in prayer and being quiet for a bit –
in some of the gospels, we’re told that he’s just heard about his cousin John’s execution and needs a bit of space to grieve.
Anyway, he then walks across the lake to join the disciples,
and next day the crowd finds him on the other side of the lake than they’d expected.

But Jesus reckons they’re not following him because of his teachings,
but because they want another free lunch.
“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs,
but because you ate your fill of the loaves."

And this is not what he plans for them.
“Do not work for the food that perishes,
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.”

Jesus points out that in the wilderness, it wasn’t Moses who provided manna for the children of Israel to eat, but God.
And it is God who gives the true Bread from Heaven.
“I,” said Jesus, “am the Bread of Life”.

You know what I’m reminded of here?
The story of woman at the well, a little earlier on in John’s Gospel.
She asks Jesus to work the pump for her, which he duly does, but he tells her that he is the Living Water, and any who drink of that water will never be thirsty again.
Same sort of principle.

Many –
not all, but many –
of those who followed Jesus did so because they wanted the spectacular.
They wanted a free lunch from a small boy's packed lunch.
They wanted to see the healings, the deliverances, the people collapsing on the floor as evil spirits left them, and so on.
They weren't interested in the teachings,
in the way your faith has to manifest itself in actions or it isn't really part of you,
in loving their neighbour, in feeding the hungry....
they were wanting to believe in Jesus without having to become Jesus' person.
I don't want to pre-empt what you'll doubtless hear about next week,
but many of them walked away when the teachings got too hard for them to cope with.

And what about us?
What about you and me?
Are we just interested in the next thrill,
the next sensation,
the next fashion?
Are we willing to be Jesus' disciples,
and pay the price that the Bread of Life requires –
all of us.
Even the dreadful bits, even the bits that we'd rather keep hidden.
David had to surrender all of himself before he could receive God's forgiveness.
Can we do that?
It's very far from easy,
and I don't pretend to be able to, at least, not all the time.
It has to be a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment surrender.
And when you find you've taken yourself back again, as it were,
then it's all to be done again.
What it needs, of course, is the will on our part to be Jesus' person,
even if we don't succeed all the time.

King David was not a wicked man.
He did a very evil thing when he allowed his lust for Bathsheba to overtake his common sense, but normally he was God's person –
and when it was pointed out to him where he'd gone wrong, he came back.

My friends, let's be like David.
When we go wrong,
when we take ourselves back and live our own lives again,
and when we realise we're doing that,
then let's recommit ourselves into God's hands.
He will be there to welcome us back with loving arms.
“There you are, there you are at last!
Welcome home!”
Amen.