(A sermon for Remembrance Sunday)
I have a momentous and important announcement to make.
We are at war!
No, I’m not speaking about Syria. Or Iraq. Or Afghanistan.
Those are wars we can see. I’m talking about another war. This one, you can’t see. But it’s just as real, and even more important.
Because as well as the world you can see, there’s a whole world you can’t. Angels are real. The devil is real, and so are bad angels that we call demons.
And the evil angels are out to cause as much hurt as possible. Their favourite weapon to hurt us is ourselves. They want us all to be as selfish as we can. They want us to ignore God, and how he says we should live. They want us to look after number one. And by doing that, we cause untold hurt to ourselves, and to other people in the process.
And so we are at war. The devil and his angels want to spoil life, make the world a worse place. While we want to make the world a better place.
This idea of invisible beings, of heavenly creatures, of a battle between good and evil, is unfamiliar to many of us today. The only reason most people pretend to believe this stuff at Halloween is because they don’t believe it is real. Maybe some of you even think I’m slightly mad to believe in invisible beings, and a heavenly war. I believe it because Jesus did.
But if you lived in the ancient city of Ephesus, in the First Century AD, then all of this was very familiar. Magic was big businesses, with books of spells alone worth millions. Much of it may well have been a fraudulent sham, but everybody knew that there is more to life than the things you can see. Everyone knew that there were invisible forces, good and bad. Everyone knew that we are at war.
And so, when the apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Ephesus, he said this:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
So we need to fight. God has given to Christians the armour we need, both to defend ourselves, and to go on the offensive. Here’s how that reading went on:
Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled round your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
But let’s be honest: What chance have we got?
If you watch films, or TV like Doctor Who, you’d get the impression that this is easy. Any individual can use their ingenuity to defeat a host of supernatural beings bent on causing harm. The reality is that none of us would survive the situations we see on our screens. We have no chance against angels we can’t see. Even worse, the problem is in our hearts. We are fundamentally selfish. We do not want God to be God.
All is not lost. Two Bible passages were read earlier in the service. As well as the extract from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Ephesus, we heard from the prophet Isaiah, written about 800 years before Jesus died and rose again.
Isaiah pictures God looking out at the world, with all the mess and all the sadness. Who can rescue us? Who can be the super-hero we need to deliver us from our selfishness and all the pain that comes from it. Answer? There’s nobody! We all need to be rescued ourselves. None of us is available for the job of saving the rest of the world.
So God does it himself. He straps on his armour. He destroys everything that is bad, and everything that is sad. In the chapters around that reading, it’s clear that Isaiah is actually speaking of Jesus, 800 years before the event. When Jesus was born, God became a human being. When Jesus died on the cross, God put on his amour. He defeated sin, death and evil once and for all. Jesus’ death looks like his moment of defeat. It was actually his greatest triumph.
Those two Bible passage are linked. Look closely at them: The armour is the same in both. When Paul wrote to the Ephesians, he had the passage from Isaiah firmly in mind.
The Christian life is a battle. We are at war.
It’s a war we could never win. We could never defeat the evil in the world, malicious spiritual creatures, and the selfishness in our own hearts.
So God did what we could never do for ourselves. In the person of Jesus, he went into battle, and dealt the decisive blow against evil when Jesus died on the cross.
But we are still at war. The battle that clinched the war has been won, but the war is not over. The devil still exists. We still have a tragic capacity to hurt ourselves and others with our selfishness.
So we need to do what Paul says. We need to put on the armour God has given us. It’s the armour Jesus has already worn, so this means clothing ourselves in the knockout blow Jesus has already dealt. And then we fight. We fight every tendency for our old selfish ways to resurface. Because if we are trusting Jesus, we are new people. We don’t live that way anymore. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
We are at war! It’s a war that’s already been won. But we need to make sure we’re on the winning side. One day, Jesus Christ will return, and all pain and evil, all selfishness and suffering, will be gone. But until that day, there’s plenty of fighting to be done.