Shielded

Ephesians 6:16

With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Paul sees a war going on all around him. And if one is in a war, then one needs to be dressed accordingly, hence, he describes the armor necessary for the conflict—belief—working his way through each gift of belief and how it protects us. 

But stop a moment…haven’t we all had enough of conflict? Everywhere we turn, someone is yelling about something; someone is berating someone else; and it all becomes wearisome. We want respite. We want something other than what we deal with every day. We want shelter. We want solace. We want a kind word. We want a gentle assurance. We don’t want someone badgering us into yet another battle.

Ironically, Paul is actually offering us such a haven. As he describes the armor of God, he is actually creating a protective embrace from God for us. 

Not all armor is meant for violence. Some is actually equipment for peace, even the peace that descends so deeply within us, we call it “shalom”—the perfect peace of the first Sabbath when even God could rest from all labor. 

Take the piece of equipment from today—the shield.

A shield is a piece of equipment for a specific task—it is meant to be a protection from projectiles of any sort. In Paul’s day, a Roman legionnaire had use of two shields. One was small and compact, meant to be used in close quarters to keep spear thrusts or sword pokes at bay. The other was large, rectangular, and meant to be lifted overheard, sheltering a group of two to four soldiers from a shower of arrows or rocks. A platoon working together could create a canopy covering all of them so they could advance sheltered to where they needed to be. 

Pardoning the history lesson, let me bring that image home.

For me, my morning perusal of the news has become a frightening experience. I dread the next piece of lunacy from on high, something else to throw us all into momentary chaos. I wish I had a shield to blunt the blows from the darts carrying fear, worry, and anxiety. And I wish it was big enough to protect all of us. That image of an advancing canopy of shields seems really promising in times like these. 

And that is exactly what Paul offers—the shield of faith—one we can use individually and communally as we strive to live with God here and now.

Here, we need to pause and deeply consider what exactly faith is.

Often, we define faith as no more than belief. We believe in God. We believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We believe the Holy Spirit breathes among us, constantly bringing us into the redeeming presence of God. 

That’s all good. 

But there is more that comes when belief transforms into faith. What comes through faith is not only the ability to believe in God and all of God’s promises, making an intellectual assent to their validity—but also the ability to trust God with everything—everything, including our own lives and the lives of all whom we love. We trust God to be good. We trust that grace abounds. We live accordingly.

It is that trust that makes belief transformative and transcendent.

What that means is that faith gives us the ability to read the morning headlines and not be destroyed by them. It is not that much of a stretch to imagine the destructive power of the news we hear. A ban on people fleeing violence from entering the country—a ban frighteningly similar to the one issued prohibiting Jews from entering before World War II—causes us to fear where this is leading; we fear the entrenching of divisions we hoped could be overcome. We fear making a mistake made before that ended in existential tragedy. Should we begin to act on those fears, then we are destroyed by those fears. We will create the very world we fear will come. We ban refugees because we are afraid of them. Terrorists use that ban to drum up support. Violence ensues that only ratchets up the fear, which, in turn, raises the potential to use more violence to end violence violently. Doom follows. 

God offers the means by which to overcome our fears. We can do so because faith assures us that God is with us—as close as our next breath—if we truly trust the promise of the Holy Spirit, believing it is through the Spirit that we took our first breath. Each breath is the assurance of God’s presence.

Several winters ago, there was a terrible ice storm. Not thinking, I took the trash out as I always do, proceeding down the steps outside our kitchen to the trash bins. I never made it. Well, actually, I did make it to the bottom of the steps, but flat on my back, the bag of trash thrown into orbit somewhere over the house. I lay there, ice pelting me, as I took stock. I couldn’t breathe. It hurt to breathe. It really hurt to breathe. I had my first broken rib. For an instant, I did not think I could breathe. For a fleeting moment, I thought I was done breathing. Funny thing about breathing, though—you will breathe. Even if it hurts. 

Now I would claim that is exactly how the Spirit works within us. When we grow so afraid by what we see and hear, we may be afraid to breathe, afraid to be present, and sure we are done. But we will breathe, even if it hurts so much we don’t think we can breathe. God will breathe for us. God will allow us to take that needed breath. 

Remember that.

No matter how out of control we fear everything is getting, God is still present. God is still ordering the chaos from which all was made. 

Faith tells us it is so.

Hence, faith shields us from all that would break us. Faith shields us from any power that thwarts our lives. Faith offers protection we can entrust ourselves to, for that power is no less than God’s own. God protects us from the stuff close at hand. God protects us from all that rains down upon us. If God is for us; who can stand against us?, Paul wrote to the Romans.

Which brings us to the communal shield—we gather with friends and family who also share our faith. Alone, we are vulnerable, isolated, and find our strength not all that great. But together, we find that our strengths help someone else’s weakness, and vice versa. We share with one another. We support one another. We walk with one another. We protect one another. Together, we can transcend the world as it is because God is with us. We assure one another that this is so.

There is no power greater than God. There is no person greater than God. All we experience is passing. It is momentary. God is eternal. God’s love is eternal. Things may be rotten right now, but they won’t always be that way. My broken rib mended. The day came sooner rather than later when I could breathe freely and easily. I had a shield against the pain.

So, do we all, all the time. God is with us. We are with one another.