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.