Ephesians 6:20-30
I was delighted when Nils asked me to address you this morning - especially as the New Testament reading we had, from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, is a reading which, I remember back in my school days, was frequently followed with the hymn – “When a knight won his spurs in the stories of old”. Do you remember that hymn? Can anyone sing the rest of the first verse? “He was gentle and brave he was gallant and bold. With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand, for God and for valour he rode through the land”
This also
brought back memories of dressing up as knights and going around trying to
injure our fellow knights – always the bad black ones – in the playground.
Well this
idea of dressing up in armour got me thinking – when do we ever get a chance to
do that now – unless we are going to a fancy dress party and, quite frankly,
clunking my way to the bar for a gin and tonic in heavy plate metal doesn’t
appeal to me at all. So is Paul’s
reading out of date? Is his analogy one
which we can relate to today? And how
does this fit in with God’s love for us and wanting to protect us? Swords and helmets seem quite aggressive.
I was
pondering this over a beer in the Hampshire County Cricket Club member’s bar
last week when it suddenly struck me – cricketers are modern day knights aren’t
they? At least some of us cricketing
fans think so.
My apologies in advance for those who don’t
understand the game of cricket but it’s quite simple really – a quick lesson - the
team that’s in is out and the team that’s out is in. It’s basically a game of two men against
eleven others who have short legs, square legs, are silly mid-on or mid-off,
with a wicket running between two sets of wickets, and after five whole days of
playing the game often ends with no result. Being an English game, it relies upon very
good weather which it often doesn’t have and a team often relies upon the worst
batsmen to win the match for it. More
simply, the team that’s out tries to get the team that’s in, out by bowling a
hard piece of cork at three pieces of wood behind a batsman who tries to hit
the ball before the ball hits the three pieces of wood!
Now what
does every batsman need when he goes out to face the likes of Dale Steyn? A
helmet, chest guard, arm guard, thigh guard, pads, gloves, a box and finally a
bat. In fact, armour!
So let’s
have a good look at what we actually have here: somebody ready to face the evil
one – Dale Steyn in my analogy. Somebody
who is prepared.
If we read a
modern interpretation of this bible passage, say from the Message or Good News we
learn, in simple terms, that Paul is telling us that we can expect that the
full force of Satan will be thrown at us frequently and we must work together
as a team to stop him winning. In the
same way, in cricket, our batsman here has also to rely upon his team mates,
especially the batsman who is in with him, to hold his ground and score runs
and fend off the fast ball – the Yorker or the full toss, to keep the runs
coming.
Likewise, God
wants us to stand firm against all that is thrown against his team. In this way he is giving us the armour (the
protection) and the weapons (the bat) to do just
that – not simply to do others down – not for us to score more runs than anyone
else for simply our own sake, but to
work together as a team to combat the forces of evil.
If you
follow cricket you will know that often the weaker player will deliberately
avoid scoring a run in order to keep his stronger team mate on strike for the
next over – (that’s the next six balls) – fully knowing that his team mate is
the better player. Having put on our own
armour, we must likewise use it to protect not just ourselves but others.
It’s not
always that easy though. However much we
protect ourselves sometimes we fail, get hurt or dismissed and it doesn't quite
work out as we thought. You only needed
to ask Kevin Pietersen this weekend what that feels like! But being ready is always half the battle
won.
“Be prepared”
is the motto of the Scouting movement. I
think it should be adopted by the Church too!
That’s what Paul is telling us - Let’s go out as the scouts of
Christ. Let’s score those runs and
dismiss Satan for a duck! Preferably a
golden one!
Amen
Amen
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