Power for Love

Power for Love

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 10, 2017

Scripture: Isaiah 40:1-11

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Have you ever noticed how Christians do a funny thing with language? We take a particular word that grammatically is an adjective and turn it into a noun. The word I’m thinking of is “almighty.” Almighty is an adjective. It describes something as all powerful. We speak of “the almighty dollar,” and we mean that money has the power to control everything. Almighty isn’t a noun. It isn’t a thing, it is an attribute of a thing. It is an adjective. Or at least it is an adjective except when we apply it to God. Sure, we sometimes use it as an adjective for God. There’s an old hymn that starts with the line “Come thou almighty king.” It’s an adjective there, so sometimes we use almighty as an adjective. Sometimes we use it as an attribute of God, but we do more than that with it. We turn it into a noun. We put the definite article in front of it and call God “the Almighty.” Not the almighty something or other. Just the Almighty. And actually we do more than turn the adjective almighty into a noun. We turn it into a proper noun. We turn it into God’s name. “The Almighty” is our God.

Now, I don’t deny that God is almighty. I mean, how could any reality that is truly God not be almighty? Yet I think calling God almighty raises more questions than it answers. I mean, almighty means all powerful. One on line dictionary defines it as “having absolute power over all.” Absolute power would be the power to do anything. Because we think of God as “the Almighty” we say over and over again that “nothing is impossible for God.” I suppose that’s true, but it certainly is also true that there’s an awful lot we’d like God to do that God presumably could do but to all appearances doesn’t do . I mean, wouldn’t it be great if God stepped in and ended all wars? Or ended every kind of human suffering? Wouldn’t that be great? I suppose it would, and I want God to do those things as much as the next guy; but here’s the thing. God doesn’t do it. God has never done it. So God may be “the Almighty,” but God sure doesn’t act most of the time as if God were in reality almighty the way we think some reality that is almighty should act.

So what are we to make of the paradox that God could do anything but there are are all kinds of good things that God doesn’t do? I think all we can make of it is to look at what God does do and try to figure out from there how we are to live. And we get a glimpse into what God does do (as opposed to what God doesn’t do) with God’s almighty power in our reading from Isaiah this morning. There the prophet sings of how God is going to return the Jewish exiles from Babylon to their home in Jerusalem. That’s what the opening lines of our passage are about. Israel’s punishment for her sins of faithlessness that led, in the view of the ancient prophets, to her defeat by Babylon and the exile in Babylon of her leaders is over. God will ease her way home. That’s what preparing the way in the desert, raising up the valleys and leveling the hills is all about.

And the lectionary gives us this text in Advent. I suppose the lectionary does that because of the lines near the end of our passage. There the prophet says “See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power.” It doesn’t say almighty power, but it might as well have. In the view of this ancient prophet it is God’s power even over people who have never even heard of the god of the Hebrews that is bringing the people home from exile. God comes with power. The prophet says God’s “arm rules for him.” God’s “arm” here is a symbol of God’s power mentioned in the same verse. God comes with power. With a mighty arm to rule. That’s one thing our text this morning says.

OK, but what is God going to do with all that divine power? Immediately after it established that God comes with power the text tells us what God is going to do with that power. It tells us how God is going to use that power. The text continues: “He tends his flock like a shepherd:He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” Yes, God comes with power, but God doesn’t use God’s divine power anything like how we’d probably use it if we had it. No, God comes in power to act like a humble shepherd. The shepherd imagery here is imagery of care and concern not transcendence and force. It is imagery not of God overpowering people but of God tenderly caring from them. For the prophet here we are God’s lambs, and God carries us close to God’s heart. The text says God gently leads the sheep who have young. They are most vulnerable ones, for they must stay with their lambs even in the face of mortal danger. So God cares especially for them. Yes, God comes in power, but God comes with power for love.

This text from Isaiah, written in the mid-500s BCE, isn’t about Jesus. It is about God leading the Jewish exiles home from Babylon more than 500 years before Jesus. Yet it fits very nicely with Jesus, doesn’t it? In this season of Advent we are preparing to celebrate once more the birth of Jesus Christ our Lord. We confess that in Jesus’ birth God came into the world in a special way. In the birth of Jesus God came to us as one of us. Jesus came with the power of God, but how? Did he come descending on a cloud from above. Did he come with armed force to defeat the enemies of God in the world? Did he come with the trappings of royalty? With a golden crown and columns of armed men parading behind him? No, of course he didn’t. We know that. He came as an ordinary newborn human being. A baby. Naked. Completely vulnerable. Utterly defenseless. One completely unable to tend for himself, needing nurturing care in order to survive. He came as love needing love himself.

OK, that’s how he came; but what did he do with the rest of his life? When he grew up, did he use divine power to crush his enemies by force and establish the kingdom of God on earth? No. Certainly not. When he grew up he said love your enemies and turn the other cheek. When he grew up he used divine power a few times, especially divine power over nature—to calm the storm and walk on the water for example. But he never used divine power to harm anyone. He rejected all use of force and called us instead to lives of love and caring for all of God’s people. Isaiah saw God coming with power to tend the sheep. Jesus came with power to tend the sheep too. In the Gospel of John he calls himself the Good Shepherd. He didn’t harm, he healed. He didn’t hate, he loved. With all his power he loved.

And that’s what he calls us to do too. We don’t have divine power. All we can do is appeal to divine power to solve our problems and the world’s problems. And when we appeal to divine power to solve our problems and the world’s problems what answer do we get? We get love. We get the love of God for ourselves in whatever comes our way in life. We get God’s command to love others as we love ourselves. God is the Almighty, but God expresses God’s power not through force but through love. Not through violence but through caring. When we read Isaiah, and more importantly when we worship Jesus, we find that God has power; but God’s power is power for love. It is never power for hatred. It is never power for violence. It is never power for the sake of power. It is always power for the sake of love.

Our Advent theme today of course isn’t love. That’s the Advent theme for next week. Today’s theme is peace, but with God love and peace walk hand in hand. It is in the love of God that we find peace. It is only in the love of God that we find peace. The world can never give us true peace. The world tries to maintain peace through armed might; and that way true peace never comes. All armed might can produce is a lull in the fighting. A lull in the fighting might be a good thing but the fighting always returns. God gives us peace in our hearts not by force but by love. By power for love. Power that lifts up and sustains. Power that calms and heals the soul. Power that loves all people through whatever comes their way in life. Power that suffers with us in love. Power that welcomes us home when our lives on this earth are done. God’s power is the power of the helpless infant born in Bethlehem. God’s power is power for love.

So as we once welcome Jesus into the world here two weeks from tomorrow, let’s remember what God’s power is all about. Yes, God is “the Almighty.” But God is almighty for love. Only for love. God call us to lives grounded in love too. So as we love and adore the newborn Jesus let’s remember that he is our model for loving God and all of creation just as he did. If we will remember that God’s power is power for love we will find peace, the peace of God that passes all understanding. May it be so. Amen.

Practicing Our Hope

Practicing Our Hope

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 3, 2017

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is a time of preparation and anticipation. We prepare to welcome Jesus into the world once again. We anticipate the joy that we know will come. Traditionally, we mark the four Sundays of Advent by lighting a candle for each of the four. As the number of lit candles increases, our anticipation and excitement increase. The increasing light of the candles reflects the coming of the light of the world at Christmas. Each of the four Sundays of Advent has a traditional theme. Today’s theme is hope. We lit the candle of hope, the first candle of the Advent wreath, a few minutes ago. It burns among us now, bringing us the light of hope.

Now, that’s lovely, isn’t it? I mean, who doesn’t like hope? Hope is a good thing, right? We use the absence of hope as a synonym for bad, like when we say a situation is “hopeless.” A “hopeless situation” is one out of which nothing good can come. A “hopeful” situation is one that looks promising, one out of which something good might very well come. So why, then, when I saw once again that today is hope Sunday did I very nearly panic? I’m here to tell you I did. Hope, I thought. How in heaven’s name can I preach on something most of the time I find it impossible to discover in this world? I know that not all of you share my bleak assessment of the condition of our world, but just take a look around. What do you see? War, famine, pandemics, political oppression, massive economic injustice, bigotry and discrimination on all sorts of bases, major world religions (including most of the manifestations of ours) that dehumanize women, and on and on and on. How, I thought, can I preach on something I don’t have? That was the question I couldn’t get around.

But I knew I had to preach today, so I set about trying to overcome my preacher’s block on the subject. I started by looking up hope in the dictionary. After all, if we’re going to talk about hope, we’d better have some idea of what it is. One dictionary I looked in defines hope as “a feeling that what is wanted will happen” or “desire accompanied by anticipation or expectation.” Well, OK. But the problem is that most of the time I don’t have the feeling that what I want to have happen will happen, at least not on the global scale. So I went back to the drawing board, and here’s what I came up with.

Hope, it seems to me, is an attitude not a feeling. It is a way of approaching life; and one way to get at an understanding of that attitude is to talk about what it is not. It does not require us to be unrealistic optimists. Hope does not require us to be Pollyannas, rosily and unrealistically thinking that nothing bad will ever happen. It isn’t an attitude that refuses to look at all the evil and suffering in the world and looks only at what is good. Hope does not mean skipping the front pages of the newspaper and skipping straight to the comics and the heart-warming human interest stories. Hope does not require us to be unrealistic.

Rather, hope is the attitude that looks reality in the eye and says: Nevertheless. Yes, I know I said recently here that that’s what faith is. But the theologian from whom I took that notion also says that hope is faith applied to the future. Hope, as faith applied to the future, takes in all of the suffering, all of the injustice, all of the violence and says: Nevertheless, I will live as though something good could come out of all this evil. I will not deny the evil. I will not run from it. I will stare it in the eye and say: I will live as though you do not have the last word. Hope is a decision. It is a decision to live as though peace, freedom, and justice for all people were an attainable reality in the world.

Now, you may be asking, or maybe it’s just me who’s asking: How is it possible to make that decision? How can we not be so overwhelmed by the violence and injustice in the world that we give in to despair and hopelessness? Well, I submit that there is only one way that it is possible, and that is the way of faith. Without faith in God, it seems to me, despair is unavoidable. Without God, there is no hope; but we are people of faith. We have already made the decision to live in the reality of God. We have made the decision to say yes to God; and in saying yes to God we have said yes to God’s world. The temptation to say no is strong, indeed sometimes nearly overwhelming; but as people of faith we have said yes. Hope is a form of that yes. Hope is the attitude that says: I know that this is God’s world, and I will live as though it were obvious that God will cause the good to prevail. In worldly terms, that isn’t obvious. In faith we say: Nevertheless.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow expressed this nevertheless beautifully and powerfully in the words we know as the carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Perhaps you know it. We’re going to sing it here momentarily. It says: I heard the bells on Christmas Day their old familiar carols play….” In Longfellow’s poem he hears the church bells ringing on Christmas Day, and he is at first overcome with despair:

And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

But in faith he overcomes that despair, for his words continue:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Wordsworth wrote these words in 1864, during the carnage of the American Civil War. In the midst of that unimaginable nightmare Wordsworth somehow found the faith to say: Nevertheless. Despite everything, I choose to believe that God is in charge and will prevail. That is the attitude of hope.

Advent is about that nevertheless, about that attitude of hope. Advent is a time for us to practice our hope. In Advent, liturgically speaking, Christ hasn’t come yet. We hope that God will come to us, but all we have is hope. That situation mirrors our life in the world generally. We live in a world from which God seems much of the time to be absent. We hope that God will come to us, will bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. We hope it, but that’s all. That means that we choose to live as though that were possible, as though that were indeed going to happen. We are able to make that choice because of our faith in God. Indeed, our faith in God requires us to make that choice.

I can’t speak for you, but I know that God is real and is part of my life. I know it because I have experienced it. I have experienced God’s gracious, healing presence in my life, sustaining me in grief and leading me to new life. When I remember that reality, then I find that I cannot remain in that despair over the state of the world that so often threatens to overwhelm me. When I remember the reality of God in my life I have hope. When I remember the reality of God in my life I am able to say “Nevertheless.” I am able to live as though the good were not just possible but inevitable. I don’t know how it is possible, and it sure doesn’t feel inevitable; but when I hold onto my faith then I know that it is.

So, this Advent, season, let’s practice our hope. Let’s look all the world’s horror in the eye and say: Nevertheless. Let’s live in the anticipation of God coming to us in Jesus Christ at Christmas, and let us understand that anticipation as the model of hope, of living as though God’s triumph in the world were inevitable. In faith, we can believe that it is. Amen.

The Trouble with Goats

The Trouble with Goats

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

November 26, 2017

Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

The passage we just heard from the Gospel of Matthew is known as the “judgment of the nations.” Notice that it says that the “nations” appear before the risen, returned Christ. Hence the “judgment of the nations. “ It’s always been one of my favorite Bible passages. True, I don’t much care for the way it ends where it says that “then they will go away to eternal punishment….” That doesn’t sound like Jesus to me. It sounds like Matthew but not like Jesus. But that’s not what I want to spend our time talking about this morning. Rather, I want to talk about something I’ve always joked about in this passage. I used to say “I wonder what Jesus, or at least Matthew, has against goats?” I mean, this passage starts with the risen and returned Christ separating the nations “as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” He puts the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. That, by the way, is a clue that the goats are in big trouble. In the ancient Jewish world of this story the left hand was considered unclean. That the goats are on Christ’s left side means this isn’t going to turn out well for them, and indeed it doesn’t. The sheep, on Christ’s good side, turn out to be the ones he blesses for having done what is right. They took care of people in need, people Jesus here calls “the least of these brothers of mine.” We have to add “the least of these sisters of mine too,” but the text makes the point. We are all called to care for people in need. The goats on his left, unclean side, turn out to be the ones he condemns for not having done what is right. They did not care for the least of these who are in need. The goats turn out to be the villains of the piece, which has always made me wonder what Jesus, or at least Matthew, has against goats.

I mean, I quite like goats, not that I’ve ever really known one. But they’re cute. They act silly. They eat blackberry bushes. More importantly, in the agrarian economy of Jesus’ time and place and in many parts of the world today goats are valuable animals. Some car dealer around here is even running a promotion that goes “Buy a car, get a goat.” Not that you’ll really get the goat, but if you buy a car from this outfit they’ll give money to Heifer Project so a needy family somewhere in the world gets a goat. A goat could really help out a family in need. Goats give milk. When they die they can give meat and leather. There really is nothing wrong with goats. So why in this story do the bad people get equated with goats? I’ve always thought that was kind of funny, but I’d never really thought about it having an important meaning before this last week when I began to prepare this service. I think I have idea about a lesson for us in the way in this story good, useful goats turn out to be the villains, and that’s what I want to share with you now.

The goats in this passage are creatures that appear to be good, useful, beneficial animals but turn out not to be that at all. They turn out to be bad, neglectful at best and perhaps worse then that. And I think there’s a lesson there for us. The way the superficially good goats turn out to the bad points to a profound truth about human life. Evil is never a problem when it is apparent that it is evil. But evil is immensely creative in finding ways to make itself not look evil at all but to look good, to appear to be the opposite of what it really is. I’ll start with an obvious example. I’m sure we all agree that German Nazism was one of the most evil political ideologies the world has ever known. It killed tens of millions of people in its wars and its death camps. It was an ideology that dehumanized people who weren’t pure German and made them disposable. The symbols of Nazism are for us symbols of unmitigated evil.

Yet Hitler did not take power by force. The German people chose him and his Nazi parties to lead the country. Do you think all those Germans who voted for Hitler and the Nazis in 1933 and made Hitler Chancellor of their country thought they were voting for evil? No. They didn’t think that. They thought they were voting for something good. Something noble. Something true. Something that would make life better not worse. Were they blind to the reality of Nazism? Sure they were, but that’s because the Nazis were geniuses at making their evil appear as a good. You can say the same thing about Soviet Communism. It was pure evil, but there are lots and lots of Russians today who long to return to it because they see it has having been good. Evil can and does do harm when it is obviously evil. I don’t think anyone who wasn’t deranged ever thought Charles Manson was good. But evil does far, far more harm when it presents itself as good, which it nearly always does.

So a lesson that I take from Matthew’s judgment of the nations passage is that we must always be careful not to fall for what may look like a good thing when in fact it is an evil thing. We need to learn to see through the slick looking exterior of a thing and see what the thing really is underneath. Jesus does that with the goats in our passage. Sure, he knew that goats are good, useful animals, especially in an agrarian economy like the one he lived in. But he saw beneath the surface. He saw who his goats really were, not useful, decent people who cared for neighbors in need but people failed in that primary duty of the life of faith, failed to care for those in need.

Which of course raises a serious question for us Christians. Jesus could see beneath the surface of people and institutions, but none of us is Jesus. Jesus was at the very least a man with extraordinary powers of discernment. We say he had divine powers of discernment, which none of us does. So how do we undertake the task of telling the sheep from the goats? How do we get beneath the surface of things the way Jesus did with the goats in this story?

Well, we start by being aware of the issue, of how surfaces may not be telling the truth about what’ underneath. We start by never being satisfied with the superficial appearance of any person or any thing. Here’s another example. When a politician, any politician of whatever political party, makes a promise, don’t take that promise at face value. Look at the realities of the context in which the promise is made. All politicians who are running for President from either major political party, for example, promise that they will revise the federal tax code. That’s the superficial promise. When we look below the surface we see, however, that the President doesn’t make tax law. Congress does. The most any President can do is make proposals about the tax code to Congress, which may or may not accept the President’s proposal. So look below the surface of any political promise. See what the realities are. Only then make a decision about how to vote.

Yet there is another issue here, isn’t there. When we see beneath the surface of a thing and discern the realities around it we still have to evaluate it. We still have to make a judgment about it. How are we to do that? Well, we do it the way Christians are called to make any decision. We are called to ask: What does this thing look like in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ? What light to the values Jesus taught, lived, and died for shed on this thing we’re trying to evaluate? Is the thing good for “the least of these”? Is it grounded in love for the lonely and the lost? Does it work toward a world of peace and justice for all people? If it does, accept it. Vote for it. Work for it. But although a thing may look on the surface like it does those things, when we see below the surface we may see that it does not do those things. If it doesn’t, reject it the way Jesus rejects the goats in our passage from Matthew.

When we do that work of discernment we won’t all arrive at the same answer. That’s OK. Jesus rarely if ever dictates answers to us. What he calls us to do is the work of discernment. The work of looking below the surface of things. And the work of making decisions about those things in the light of his teachings. He calls is to see if a goat is really a goat or a wolf in goat’s clothing. That work isn’t easy. Evil is immensely creative in finding ways to make itself look good. It is immensely clever in playing to our fears and weaknesses to get us to do something we really oughtn’t do. It is really easy to fall into evil’s trap. We all do it from time to time. But Matthew’s great story of the judgment of the nations gives us a warning: Make sure that goat you want to buy is really a goat and not something else masquerading as a goat. We’ll all make mistakes when we try to do that, and Jesus always forgives our mistakes. Still, look beneath the surface of things. Make sure a goat really is a goat. Amen.

The Breastplate of Love

The Breastplate of Love

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

November 19, 2017

Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Last Sunday, as some of you may recall, I started the time with the children by asking the two who came forward whether anyone ever said anything to them that they didn’t want to hear. I expected answers like “clean up your room,” or “brush your teeth,” or “go to bed,” or “eat your brussel sprouts.” I got answers like that eventually, but the first answer I got was very different from that. Noah first answered my question by saying “the news.” I kept mulling Noah’s first answer over and over in my mind. Isn’t it odd, and sad, I thought, that a young boy like him would answer a question about things he didn’t want to hear by saying “the news?” Perhaps it only means that Noah listens to more news than most kids his age, but I can’t help thinking that his answer points to something deeper than that. It’s clear, I think, that what Noah is hearing in the news that he doesn’t want to hear is stuff no reasonable, reasonably moral person would want to hear.

And there truly is an awful lot of that kind of stuff in the news these days, don’t you think? I mean, I used to be kind of a news junkie. While that’s partly because I found it important and interesting, it was also because I always figured as a pastor who preached most every Sunday that I needed to know at least as much about what was going on in the world as my parishioners did. But more recently I’ve been listening to a lot less news than I used to, and that was already true before I decided to retire at the end of the year. There is just so much stuff in the news that is too hard to hear. Climate change threatening the very existence of life on earth and at the very least making radical changes in how God’s creatures live that life while we demonstrate over and over again that we lack the will to do anything about it. Continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere around the globe. Threats of nuclear war coming from North Korea and us throwing those threats right back at them. Mass shootings, Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs just being among the recent examples—though not the most recent ones. An accused child molester perhaps about to be elected to the United States Senate. An seemingly intractable problem of homelessness in what we always call the richest country in the world. Millions of Americans without health care or threatened with the loss of their ability to pay for it. The list of horribles could go on and on. So Noah, I agree with you. There is a whole lot in the news that I don’t want to hear either.

Which raises an important issue for us people of faith. How are we to live in a world so full of troubles? What should our Christian response to those troubles be? We could, theoretically, say that the Christian response to a world full of troubles is no different than the world’s response to a world full of troubles. The world usually responds to troubles with force. Sure, people also do great acts of charity in the face of calamities. We raise money for famine relief in Africa. We give to all kinds of charitable organizations in our own country. But the powers of the world are always ready, sometimes it seems even eager, to respond to troubles with force, with violence. Or we could do what some Christians do and say the world doesn’t matter. It’s all going to end some day anyway, and at least the people who think like these Christians will be spirited away from the earth to live in some imagined place in heaven.

We could do either of those things, but I am convinced that neither of them is the truly Christian response to a world of troubles. I think we glimpse a better way in the passage we just heard from Paul’s first letter to the church in Thessaloníki, which is by the way the oldest writing in the New Testament. I think Paul gives us a subtle reference to those violent ways of the world in that passage. There he says that when people are saying “Peace and safety,” destruction will come upon them. I don’t know about that destruction part, but Paul lived and wrote during a period known as the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace. That was a period of around 200 years in which Rome was relatively at peace. But that peace was secured only through the application of massive military force. It was a peace procured through violence. It was a peace created and maintained by military might and the use of what we can only call terror. I suspect that Paul was referring precisely to that kind of peace when he referred to people saying “Peace and safety.” That, after all, was the peace the world knew at the time.

Then a little bit later in our passage Paul says that we should “put...on faith and love as a breastplate and hope of salvation as a helmet.” That’s rather odd imagery, don’t you think? I mean, what after all is a breastplate? It is a piece of armor. Roman soldiers wore breastplates, probably made out of leather not metal but still breastplates. And notice that Paul doesn’t say “hope of salvation as a hat.” He says “hope of salvation as a helmet.” He is once again using, I think, a military image to make his point. Paul is calling us here to use faith, love, and hope of salvation as our armor as we face the world. He’s not calling us to use actual military armor. He’s calling us to use spiritual armor as we face a world that is one of darkness for those who do not know Christ.

Now, a breastplate of faith and love may not sound like much protection in a world filled with automatic weapons and nuclear bombs, and from a worldly perspective I suppose it isn’t. I mean, a breastplate of love won’t stop a bullet. It surely won’t protest you from a nuclear attack in any physical way. You’ll die, or survive and suffer, as much as anyone else if it really comes to nuclear war or even to conventional war. So what sense does it make to say that we have a breastplate of faith and love and a helmet of hope of salvation?

Well, from the world’s perspective it doesn’t make any sense at all, but from a faith perspective it does. See, what true, deep faith can do for us is change our understanding of safety. We might like to think that our faith keeps us physically safe, but any honest look at history tells us that it doesn’t. People of deep, deep faith suffer and die all the time. I always think in this regard of six Jesuits and two others of their household in El Salvador in November, 1989. The Jesuits are of course an order of the Roman Catholic Church. They have become known for their deep commitment to justice and peace. In 1989 six of them were working in El Salvador to bring about a peace between the government of that country and rebels who were fighting it. They wanted peace because the war was being very bad for the poor people of that country. One day a death squad sent by the government came to the Jesuits’ compound and killed six of them along with two others who worked there. The Jesuits were men of deep Christian faith, and it didn’t stop them from being killed.

Then there’s the story of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, the capital of San Salvador. Archbishop Romero had started his career as a priest as a conservative, which is probably why Pope Paul VI made him Archbishop. Romero became, however, an outspoken champion of the poor in San Salvador, speaking powerfully about poverty, social injustice, and the violence of the government in that Central American country. One day he called on El Salvadoran soldiers to obey the higher law of God and not to carry out orders to commit assassinations in the country. The next day, March 24, 1980, two gunmen shot him down as he stood at the altar of the chapel of a hospital. People say his blood mixed with the blood of Christ on the altar. Oscar Romero was a man of exemplary Christian faith. People in Central America call him Saint Oscar, and he is in the process of being declared a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. His faith was great, but it didn’t stop armed murderers from killing him.

So no, the breastplate of faith won’t protect us physically. What it does is change our understanding of safety. In faith we know that we are eternally, existentially safe with God far beyond any mere earthly, physical safety. We know that we are always safe with God. We are alive to God though we die on earth. The breastplate of faith and love gives us that assurance.

When we put on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of hope of salvation we can face that world of violence and injustice in which we live in a new way. A great Canadian theologian who has been central in the development of my own faith, Douglas John Hall, says that faith gives us the courage to look the world squarely in the eye and say “nonetheless.” In faith we need not deny the evil afoot in the world. Indeed, in faith we may not deny it. In faith we can identify it and call it what it is: evil pure and simple. Yet in faith we say nonetheless. Nonetheless I believe. Nonetheless I trust God. Nonetheless I know that evil will never have the last word. Nonetheless I know that the world is in God’s hands and that it is safe there. Not safe from a worldly perspective. Safe from God’s perspective, and that is so much more important.

So in these days when so much of what’s going on the world threatens to lead us into dark despair, let’s indeed put on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of hope of salvation. They will get us through like nothing else can. Armored in faith, love, and hope of salvation we can face whatever the world throws at us and say “nonetheless.” Nonetheless God is good. Nonetheless there is hope. Nonetheless evil will not ultimately prevail, and with faith we do our part to help assure that it doesn’t. With the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of hope of salvation we can be God’s agents for peace and justice in the world. I doubt that either any of you or I will be called to do anything that will get us killed. But we probably will be called to do things of which some disapprove, things that will make us unpopular. So be it. With the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of salvation we can accept that reality and say “nonetheless.” Nonetheless I will follow God. Nonetheless I will be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. I pray that I will have the courage to do it. I pray that you will too. Amen.