Poolesville Presbyterian Church
08.26.12; Rev. David Williams
It helps to have the right gear. As a pastor, for instance, that gear involves bibles and study bibles and bible journals and books about the bible and books about the books about the bible. Some of us also have books of rude limericks about bible characters, but the less that is said about that the better.
You’ve just gotta love biblical scholarship. It makes understanding texts like today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus so much easier. In reading through some of the latest thinking about Paul’s letter to the church of Ephesus, for example, you would discover three interesting things. First, it’s probably not written by Paul. Second, it may not have been written to the church at Ephesus. And third, it may not have been a letter.
Other than that, things are pretty much as they seem.
This letter-ish thingummy is one of what Bible scholars call “deutero-Pauline” writings. That means that it was most likely not written by the Apostle Paul himself, but by one of his disciples writing in his name. Scholars believe this for a variety of reasons. Ephesian 2:20, for example, seems to assume that the apostolic period is over, which would be odd had the Apostle Paul been the one writing it.
Then there’s the writing style. Paul had a very consistent voice, style, and vocabulary. Paul was a sharp and brilliant rhetorician, whose prose is elegant and readable. The author of Ephesians also had particular style and vocabulary, one shared by Colossians. One of the more notable features of that style is a tendency to layer words on top of words that mean the same thing, like saying “..in the strength of his power.” There’s also a tendency to spin out some really, really long sentences. For instance, we have this one sentence from Ephesians 1, which is, in the Greek, the single longest sentence in all of scripture:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love, he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth, for in Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory, for in him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.
The New Revised Standard Version breaks that out into six sentences, both for readability and because having liturgists pass out while trying to read it is a liability issue. This is clearly not Paul writing.
Even if this isn’t written by Paul, it’s still clearly written from the perspective of someone who was formed in the crucible of Paul’s teaching. From that foundation, the author of this letter presents us with how we are to deal with life, once we’ve had the audacity to assert that we are disciples of Jesus Christ.
A significant part of that is the recognition that the journey of faith is not all butterflies and cute widdle puppies. Ephesians is an eminently practical book. The faith it teaches engages with and shapes the actual life we lead, and life ain’t easy. Into that reality, the writer of Ephesians pitches out a series of metaphors for what it takes to cope with the things we struggle with in this world.
For imagery, he goes to the world of armor, and specifically the armor that would have been worn by a Roman soldier. The “shield of righteousness,” for example, was a thyreos. This wasn’t a little round buckler, but a large curved rectangular thing, behind which you could hide your entire body. The shoes for one’s feet would have been hobnailed sandals or short boots, perfect for both traction and protection.
It might seem to some a bit odd talking about wearing the hobnailed war boots of peace, in the same way that it would be weird talking about wielding the Cheap Chinese Knockoff Kalashnikov of Love. But I do get armor as a metaphor, perhaps because I wear armor several times a week.
Negotiating the Capital Beltway during the height of rush hour on a motorcycle might not be quite the same thing as fending off a ravening horde of orcs, but it’s close enough. Every once in a while, I’ll see a fellow rider trucking on by in sandals, shorts and a t-shirt, and one of those little beanie helmets. I don’t get this. If you were riding a bicycle on a giant high-speed 80 grit belt-sander in the midst of a herd of charging rhinoceroses, you’d want as little exposed flesh as possible. Few things are better reminders of how fragile we are as human beings. Up-armoring yourself just makes sense.
The armor needs of motorcycling are a little different than the needs of first century combat, but the concept still stands. For riders, there are two primary things that motorcycle armor needs to do. It needs to protect against abrasion, and it needs to protect against impact.
Abrasion is the belt-sander part of the equation, the road that can inflict road-rash as you slide across its surface at sixty seven miles an hour. In a slide across asphalt at highway speeds, that can be forty or fifty yards. Jeans wear through after five yards. That isn’t fun. To avoid this, riding armor needs to be stronger than flesh. Leather works well, but high-tensile strength ballistic nylon is equally effective, letting you slide to a stop unharmed.
Impact is the other part. If you’re thrown from the bike, you can come down really fast, much faster than our Creator intended the human body to fall. Here, motorcycling armor...and most particularly the helmet...needs to absorb the blow. Oddly enough, a really really strong and indestructible helmet is not your friend. Rigid and inflexible helmets were made for a while back in the 60s, and it was found that they do one of two things on impact. They can transfer the energy to the head inside them, which is bad. Alternately, they bounce. If your head is inside them, this is equally bad. You need a helmet that absorbs the blow, allowing itself to be destroyed so that you can survive.
It’s not quite as martial, but I think the writer of Ephesians would have appreciated the value of a good motorcycle riding gear metaphor.
There are times in life when you fall, and you fall hard. Having a faith that can take the impact of that blow is a good thing, so that the mess of your self isn’t splattered all Humpty Dumpty over the cold cold ground. There are also times in faith that you fall, and the fall doesn’t end right away. You slide for a while, across the existential asphalt of your life. So to speak. Those times can last longer than we could stand on our own, and abrade us down to nothing. Those can be deep, deep wounds, against which a robust faith is absolutely essential.
Those aren’t the terms we hear in Ephesians, but the basic principle that is being taught in this passage is the same. Ephesians, as a book of practical theology, teaches that the journey of Christian faith is not a short one. It requires engagement with the world, which will involve encounters with the brokenness and darkness that will inevitably test and challenge us.
In those inevitable encounters, a robust and flexible faith is absolutely essential. It’s the right gear for the job, worth seeking, and worth having. So seek it, and armor yourself round about with it, because our journey is both long and challenging.
Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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