Confirmation Sunday 2007

27 May, 2007 

   The very centre of downtown Atlanta is called Five Points because of the convergence of Marietta Street, Edgewood Avenue, Decatur Street, and two legs of Peachtree St. Just east of Five Points is Underground Atlanta a shoppin and entertainment complex. First opened in 1969 it takes advantage of the viaducts built over the city's many railroad tracks to accommodate automobile traffic. One of the first mentions of the area, decades before it was restored documents its importance as an entertainment area for African Americans. Bessie Smith's Atlanta Blues has these opening lines, “Down in Atlanta G.A. underneath the viaduct one day/Drinking corn and hollerin hoo-ray/ piano playing 'til the break of day.”

   Not much has changed. When Janet and I emerged from the subway into Underground Atlanta, we were transported into the unfamiliar world of urban African Americans. The underground hall was clogged with hundreds of swaggering black youths. It was like being in the middle of a rap video. Backwards ball caps. Gold plated teeth. Baseball and basketball jerseys. Girls in impossibly tight jeans and boys with jeans so baggy they had to be held up with one hand. And more bling than we had ever seen. We sat at a kiosk and just enjoyed the show. A wild maelstrom of barking cell phones, halters that left nothing to the imagination, images of Bob Marley, afros, plaited corn rows, earrings, chains, bracelets, rings and brightly coloured sneakers. We might as well have been from another planet.

  Later in the evening as we exited the subway near our hotel we came up into the centre square of the city of Decatur. There was a concert in the park and people lined the grass with blankets. Mostly white people, dressed in khakis and polos, flip flops and sandals. Little children in Gap kids clothing. American Eagle. Abercrombie. Clothing that was familiar and comforting. I breathed a sigh of relief.

   We had come only 20 minutes on the Subway and yet had traveled between two worlds. Each world marked not just by skin colour but defined by the very clothing they wore. It is true what your mother told you, “You are what you wear.”

   I don't have to tell that to anyone here, especially those of you still in school. Clothing tells us who is cool or not, who's in or out. It gives us visual clues as to what group we belong to. What we choose to wear helps create our identity; helps define and articulate our personality.

   Well we didn't invent this notion. The Apostle Paul, writing way back some 2000 years ago knew that clothes defined us. When he wrote to the Christians in the Roman city of Ephesus, he wanted to tell them that as Christians they were different from everyone else. As Christians, they were meant to behave differently, think differently and live by a different set of values than the world around them. So he wrote to them and told them how to dress for success as Christians.

   Like every good preacher he took his example from what people already knew. He told the new Christians in Ephesus to wear amour. But not the armour that they saw Roman Soldiers wear everyday as they guarded the gates of the city or strode through the marketplace. No says Paul, this is different armour. Christians need to wear the armour of God.

  Paul's analogy is a bit off putting for us. Armour is clothing for battle. It's what gladiator's wore, it's meant for fighting, aggression and killing. Why would we peace loving Christians want to wear armour? How can we apply Paul's lesson about armour to us who live in Canada at the beginning of the third mullennium?

  Well first, we are living in a battlefield. We are engaged in a vicious warfare, but a lot of us don't even realize it. We don't get it. Every day we are being bombarded with forces encouraging us to consume in great quantities. To rack up debt in order to feed our lifestyle. There are forces at work that want to convince us that we will never have enough. Every day the media tries to convince us that the world is a more violent, more dangerous place. Every moment our children are being asked to forsake what they know to be true; they are being turned by the forces of selfishness into individuals, concerned only about themselves, their needs, their desires, their wants. Our children are being asked to make important choices earlier and earlier. They are asked to become experimenters, dabbling in alcohol, drugs or sex at ridiculously young ages. Ask any of them. Ask any teacher or principal. Ask any parent. It feels like a war out there.

But it is a bigger war than this. It's bigger than fighting over curfews or what's appropriate to watch or wear. It's bigger than Sunday shopping or whether to buy lotto tickets. Elsewhere in the book of Ephesians Paul says that we are fighting with the powers of darkness, the powers of evil that live inside and around us. We are not simply fighting our own little moral battles. We are not merely fighting battles with booze or drugs or sex or material pleasures as important as these are. No, the Bible says that we are fighting with an evil force greater than ourselves, the very powers of darkness. Who causes the wars around us? Who creates terrorists willing to blow innocent people to bits in the name of their God? Who causes starvation in the world? Who causes global warming? Who slaughtered children and parents in the death camps of Germany, in the streets of Rawanda? Who bombs Israeli towns? It is the power of evil. It certainly isn't God who has caused all this enormous devastation around the globe. The power of evil is insidious, global and there is no place to hide from it.

   Our first instinct is to run from such evil. To pretend it doesn't exist. To protect ourselves from it. Many of choose apathy rather than battle. We numb ourselves with TV and entertainment, with all our toys. We circle the wagons around our families as if that is all that matters. We become apathetic to the world around us where actual human beings are refugees with little water food or security. Apathetic to the poor right here among us. Apathetic to the lonely old folks in our seniors homes. Apathetic to all in need who require our time and possessions and love. We put on our blinders so we don't see them, they are only on television, only in Africa, only in the US, only in Toronto. Not here on the Island.

  But rather than running away from the battles of life and the power of evil living inside and around us, Paul has another alternative, another battle plan. Paul talks about Christians living in the real world, a world filled with evil and injustice. Living in a real world with real evil means it is wise to put on the whole armour of God.

   He begins by talking about standing. In fact he uses the word stand four times. We are to stand, stand against, stand for and stand up. I hope you who are being confirmed today hear this if you hear nothing else. God wants you to stand for something. The world around you wants to make everything relative, it will try to convince you that anything and everything is acceptable. Well that's a lie. God wants you to stand up for what you know is right. God wants you to stand tall in the armour of God.

   So put on the belt of truth. It is wide and strong and protective. Truth in all your relationships. Know the truth about God and God's love. Tell the truth to your spouse, your children, your parents, your school mates. Hang onto the truth for there are those who would wrestle it from your hand. Live truthfully and never live a lie. Don't live for your parents or your children or your husband or your wife. Live for what you know in your heart to be true.

   Then, put on breastplate of righteousness.  Right relationships. Healthy relationships.  Good relationships with all those around you and even yourself.  Find right relationships and not wrong, sick and demeaning relationships. Surround yourself with those who know right from wrong. Look to your parents.

Then put on foot protectors of peace.  Stop looking for a fight with yourself, your parents or siblings, your classmates or your co-worker.  Be a peacemaker; work hard for peace and towards peace in all your relationships. Look for the best in the other. Bridge gaps. Include those who are different. 

    Then, put on the shield of faith.  Trust God. Trust that God is with you,  that God is in you. Trust that God will strengthen you for every situation that you are facing.  You can't prove it.  You can't prove God. You can't prove God's inner strength.  But you have been given the gift of trust.  Trusting your self. Trusting God's slow plan for your life.  You can't see it, but you trust God's future plan for you.

    Then, put on the helmet of salvation.  What a gift to know that you are saved, that there is nothing you can do to earn or merit your own salvation, but that salvation and eternal life are a gift from God. You don't have to worry about being saved.  You don't have to question whether or not you deserve eternal life. Eternal life is a given. Don't  worry about it. Don't let anyone tell you that God has forsaken you or forgotten you.

   Put on the sword of the Spirit that is the Word of God.  There is power in the Bible, in the Word of God.  The words of Jesus, the Apostle Paul and the Old Testament are not merely words printed on pages of a dusty book that we pull out when the preacher is coming or when we have an occasional Bible devotional.  God's words are living words, intended to live in us.  Learn them, memorize them, recite them so that God's words are constantly inside you.  What a resource. Read your bible; be challenged and comforted, find strength in those ancient words.

   And of course, no armour is any good without the heart.  If you don't have the heart within, no armour is worth anything.  Without the heart, you lose. Friends keep a strong heart and a deep faith.

   So where do you get such armour?  Where to you find the whole armour of God?  At the armoury!  That's obvious.  And what is our spiritual armoury?  The Church, the people of God.  From the people of God, from the church some of you have just joined you will learn much about life. We are all mentors to each other. Learn from these people the qualities you need for life.  From the Church, the people of God, learn about faith and right and good relationships and peace and trust and salvation and the Bible.  These qualities  can be found no where else but in the church. Right here. Among these people.  Here is where you can pick up your armour and learn to use it. Friends put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand tall in the day of Jesus Christ.  Amen.