Suiting up

Like a lot of guys my age, when I was a youngster in elementary school and junior high, I was a space-nut. Other people followed their favorite baseball or football team--- and I certainly loved my Red Sox!—but I was a crazy about space. I knew the names of the original seven Mercury astronauts (Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton – any questions?) and most of the Gemini crews, too. But I was especially interested in this because my dad, like a lot of the dads where I grew up in central Connecticut, worked in the aerospace industry working to put a man on the moon. At one point, my dad worked for the company that made the EVA suits… the space suits that would be used on the moon!

If you go to the Smithsonian, you can see Neil Armstrong’s space suit, and I knew some of the folks who designed and made it! So, whenever the lectionary lands on this particular passage from Ephesians that likens Christian living to putting the whole armor of God, I think of spacesuits.

Armor has made something of a comeback in the military and in police-work with the advent of super-strong, lightweight materials that can stop (or at least slow) a bullet, but not so long ago the only thing in modern life that was anything like what you see in the movies of pages helping a knight suit up for battle was the image of the astronaut in the clean room being readied for space flight.

The space suit is an amazing thing. It makes the person who wears into a little spaceship, where they can for at least a few hours wear their entire environment and be protected from the vacuum and extremes of space. If one is going to walk on the moon, or repair a solar panel on a space station, you can’t leave home without it.

Some scholars wonder if Paul even wrote the letter to the Ephesians. Well, whatever. It’s still scripture. And what the writer is talking about what it takes to be ready to live the Christian life in a difficult time: “take up the whole armor of God,” we read, “so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. 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. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Here we have an image that everyone who lived in the Roman Empire knew, and often feared—the helmeted, armored soldier-- to illustrate that the Christian life is neither lived by accident nor alone. That while we ourselves face temptations, and have to make faithful decisions everyday, we also need one another.

That’s because to put on the armor of God, we need someone else to make and fit the armor. We can’t put it on alone. It’s a tough world out there. Your spirit will be tested. We live in a harsh spiritual environment, so if you are going to go about your business of loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and loving your neighbor as yourself in such a tough environment, then don’t leave home without your faithfulness.

Paul (or whomever) is not shy about his allegory: you need to know and rest in the truth of the Gospel, our behavior must reflect what we believe, and that we are to be ready to apply the lessons of the life in Christ and we must be ready to move and go where we are needed.

Jesus would remind us that we must also be fed. His ongoing discourse about Jesus being the bread of life, reminds us that our very being is immersed and transformed in Christ at baptism and that we are fed by him in word, in sacrament and in community such that our very identity is changed and marked by Christ.

Still, I am drawn back to that image in Ephesians about armor, and that image of the astronaut in the space suit.

Think about your baptism. Most of you can’t remember your own, unless you were blessed to be baptized as an adult. I think about may still remember when my kids were small the various rituals we’d undertake to get them ready for the world: whether it was putting on a snowsuit before they’d play outside on a winters day—you know those outfits that keep a kid warm but also keep a kid from moving—or the now ever-present car-seat, baby carrier. But even without the special clothing, I recall the making of lunches, the checking of backpacks, the rituals of saying good-bye as they went to school and we went to work. “Make it a great day!” “Get even smarter!” we’d say and they’d roll their eyes as they endured all those embarrassing kisses as they went out the door. It wasn’t an astronaut’s clean room or a slow-motion walk down the gantry but we sure were sending them out into a new, often unknown, sometimes hostile environment, and we hoped that we gave them everything they needed.

To live life as Christ’s own forever, we need food—and that we find in the word of God and in the sacramental life—and we need the tools of faith—knowledge, wisdom, faithfulness, attentiveness to God. To get what we need, we have Christian community. Not just the little, miniature Christian communities that are our households—as fleeting as they are—we also require the intentional and ongoing Christian community we call the Church. You can’t put on the whole armor of God alone. We need a crew… a support team… other friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.

I heard an interview once before he died where Neil Armstrong who said that he felt guilty about getting all the adulation for being the first on the moon because, first, he was aware of the thousands of people who made it possible for him to get there. He said that he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Like the firefighters and first responders and the soldiers and sailors we thank for their service, he said repeated that he was only doing his job. If I could say anything to one of my childhood heroes, it is what I would say to each and every baptized person I meet: if life is lived faithfully, grounded in God’s grace and love, then we are all doing our jobs; and none of us can do our jobs alone. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.

Wear the whole armor of God, live a faithful life with integrity and hope. And don’t forget, we all help each other put on what we need to live faithfully everyday as friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.

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Here is a link to the bulletin and to a video of the liturgy at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida for Sunday, August 22, 2021

Here is a link to a video of the sermon for Sunday, August 22, 2021.

Here is a link for the propers for the day.