8/25/24 Sermon
I realized the other day that I had my 14th anniversary of being ordained. Which means I graduated Seminary 15 years ago. Which means I’ve been serving churches and preaching for about 17 years now. These anniversaries and dates used to be important to me. They aren’t so much now. They’re kind of fun to remember and realize how much time has passed but that’s about it. In all those 17 years of preaching and teaching and working with churches, I’ve only preached on this text from Ephesians once besides today. And when I saw it was coming up in the lectionary for this morning, my first instinct was to just switch scriptures and preach on something else. I have an aversion to this scripture for some reason.
Now, I’ve been doing this long enough to realize that if I have a certain aversion to a piece of scripture, that it usually says something more about me than it does the scripture. So, I thought I should probably look at that and examine it. And honestly, sometimes I don’t like things just because they’re popular. Like John 3:16 - for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. I don’t have any problem with what it says, but I call it the brown eyed girl of scripture. It’s so overplayed and I’ve heard it so often that it loses any sense of meaning or impact - just like the song brown eyed girl by Van Morrison. I suspect that it’s part of the problem I have with this reading from Ephesians. It’s just so overplayed and overdone that it seems trite and cliche to me.
But I decided I would do what I’ve recently started doing when I had something I wanted to think through and meditate on. I’d read this scripture and then I’d go to the gym to lift heavy things for really no reason at all. But its nice because no one bothers me and I can be in my own little world to think through stuff. So there I am at the gym grumbling to myself trying to think of what to say this morning and bemoaning that this is the text and because God has a sense of humor and likes to torment me, as I’m sitting there, this guy walks past me with this t-shirt on that has a Spartan helmet and shield laying on top of what looks like a bible. And sure enough! Its says put on the armor of God… My eyeballs almost rolled out of my head.
And then what happens? My Christian warrior brother at the gym picks up some dumbbells off the rack, lifts them a few times, and then just sets them on the floor and walks away… Now I thought about grabbing him and pointing out that in this passage, we put on the armor of God to fight evil and what he’s just done is considered evil. But I ended up distracting myself by questioning why its evil and turning the whole situation into an examination of Christian morals and ethics. Which may not fit the exact theme of this specific part of Ephesians but the entire letter is about how a good Christian acts and behaves in society. So lets look at this.
Everyone who spends any time in a gym knows that re racking your weights, putting them back in the correct place for the next person to easily find is the right thing to do. There are even little signs around the gym reminding you that this is the clear and expected norm. It’s easy to do. It takes barely any effort at all. Further than that, its not only easy to do, but its objectively the right thing to do. And except for like a medical emergency there’s no reason at all someone can’t simply put the weight back where it goes. But its also not illegal. No one is going to arrest you or write you a ticket for not doing it. You aren’t going to get banned from the gym for just leaving your weights on the floor like a monster. I mean, really worst thing thats going to happen is that you’ll be silently judged by a minister who’ll end up using you as a sermon illustration. That’s about as bad as it gets.
And just like there’s no real punishment for not putting them away, there isn’t any real reward in it either. No one is going to thank you. Balloons and confetti aren’t going to pop out from the ceiling. You don’t get a discount on your gym membership for doing it. Theres nothing really to compel you either way. If you put the weights away where they go, you’re doing it because you’re a good person and its the right thing to do. It’s a case study in whether or not people are good at self-governance. But I thought maybe the gym is too small of a sample size and might not be terribly relatable. So what about grocery carts?
Zero effort to put a grocery cart in the stall. No reward or punishment for doing so. You may risk damaging someone’s car if you don’t. You make everyone’s life easier if you do. Yet, how many stores have you been to where they’re just blowing around the parking lot like tumble weed? It reminds me of the Philosopher George Hegel who basically summed up morality and virtue with the question: Do you do good so you are good or do you do good so that good is done? In essence, if you do something Good for the reward and recognition, then you are doing so because you are compelled to do it. Is that really virtue? But if you do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing - that’s where the virtue lies. Jesus talks about this when he talks about doing good deeds in the dark where no one but God sees. Even Nietzsche says that if you mandate virtue, it ceases to be virtue - because you have to do it then.
Now, we could argue - as many do - that doing the right thing like re-racking your weights or putting the grocery cart in the stall - or that doing a good deed makes you feel good - and that could be a reward of sorts. But I’m not sure that counts as being compelled to do the right thing or being mandated to do it, as Nietzsche says.
But when I think about this whole armor of God metaphor in the context of what else is being said in Ephesians, I think in some ways this is what Paul is talking about. That the way we protect ourselves against evil, the way we defend ourselves against the devil or outside influences that would cause us to essentially suffer due to our selfishness or self-interest or greed - and I really do think that’s the basis of most if not all of the evil and sin in the world. The way we guard against those things is by doing the right thing, doing what is good, so that good is done and not for some reward, and not because we’re compelled to do it. If that guy wanted to put on the armor of God as his shirt suggested, then he would have put away his weights. He would have taken just a little more time to not be thoughtless but to be thoughtful of others.
It seems funny to me that Christians spend so much time on the fact that we don’t earn our salvation or God’s Grace - that its just given to us freely - that we forget that once we really recognize and realize what that grace and gift of salvation is, that its supposed to fundamentally change and shift the way we work and operate in this world. And sometimes when we think about that shift that its supposed to make in our lives, we blow it up to such epic proportions that it seems unrealistic and unattainable. We can’t all do what Mother Teresa did. We can’t all give up everything we are and have to serve the poor or do some grand gesture that we think can change the world. And we forget that oftentimes being a Christian and changing the world starts with and means living more ethically in our day-to-day ordinary lives.
Gossip less. Don’t be mean to others. Disagree with grace and not vitriol. Put your shopping cart in the stall. Smile and be nice to people. Be patient and give grace to service workers even if they make a mistake. Essentially be a good person even when there’s nothing to compel you one way or another. That’s what being a Christian means. That’s putting on the armor of God. Just be a good, decent person who does good so good is done.