wipe your nose

SERMON PREACHED AT ST PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN,

ST PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN, and the MISSION HALL, GLENORCHY

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28^th, 2024

 

Ephesians 6:10-20

 

Excuse if you will two brief preambles before I address the famous passage from Ephesians. The first is to say that I do not believe that in Anglican preaching we remain totally enslaved to preaching from the gospel passage, and I feel that for now we have extrapolated as much as we can from the bread sayings of Jesus in John. 

And secondly I will confess that there are occasions when I feel no sermon within me. I kind of know that many would be delighted if I said, arrgh let’s skip the sermon. I would be delighted too, accept that I sincerely believe that breaking open the word is a fundamental responsibility of a clergyperson, week by week.

Enough. As I say in my notes, I heard this passage from the tail end of Ephesians at the closing service of every term of my five years at prep school in Whanganui. The gravelly voice of Rodney Gould interned the words sombrely. This little boy, yet to become the adolescent atheist that he later was, felt the solemnity of the responsibility to which he was being commissioned. Put on the armour of God.

I can't speak for that enigmatic man Rodney Gould, but I suspect in many private school settings the armour of God resembled a private school uniform far more than it resembled the heavy baggage of the First Century soldier. And the duty of every small prep school boy was to remember to keep his shoes polished, his nose wiped, his knees clean, and not to use naughty words. I'm not sure about the command regarding my nose, but I'm pretty darned sure I failed the rest of the expectations of either Rodney Gould or the author of Ephesians.

But by the time that author, who I suspect was a disciple of Paul rather than Paul himself, wrote his letter to the church in Ephesus, Christ-bearing was becoming no trivial matter. Jewish and Roman leadership alike were getting a little bit antsy about this new cult, for at its best Christians were thumbing their nose at religious hypocrisy and at state corruption. And that is no easy stance to maintain without ruffling a few feathers, and, worse, gaolers’ keys.

All this passed over the head of that small boy, his mind already drifting to whichever James Bond movie he was going to watch over the holidays, and whether there would be time to fit in some riding lessons before school went back. 

And it is incredibly easy for it all to pass over our head too. There is at present little in our world that resembles the world of the First Century Ephesian Christians. We are not being persecuted for our faith, though we are perhaps being shouldered out of the place of honour in society that we had come to see as rightfully ours. 

That shouldering aside is, in my belief a work of God’s Spirit, for as a Christian people of God we had come to trust in shibboleths of social standing rather than Christ’s call to integrity and to seating others in the seats of honour. 

We are not being persecuted for our faith, though we may have to learn, as the early Christians did, that our faith is only one in a marketplace of many and of none, and the task of proclaiming Christ and him crucified, as Saint Paul puts it, can only be achieved by the integrity of our lives, and by the whispers of our love for our neighbour, and especially for the disadvantaged.

None of that crossed my mind as I listened to Rodney Gould and thought of the excitement of a two hour drive home, for even then to be in a moving vehicle was my greatest joy. And I would not dare to claim that in the five decades since I have gained any greater comprehension of God or gospel. 

But I have come however stumblingly, to recognise the importance of God’s claims on my life, God’s demand that I offer myself as a living sacrifice, what our writer calls keeping alert and always persevering, not just in our prayers but in our whole of life witness. 

And as I think these words I am reminded of a song that some of you may have known from a Christian singer of the 1970s, Keith Green, killed far too young in a plane accident, and wise beyond his years. He prayed to his God and mine, “make my life a prayer to you.” 

If and as we pray that prayer we may indeed be donning the whole armour of God.