The First Sunday in Advent 2010
“Coming soon,” the anthem says. “Coming soon.” “The night is far gone; the day is near,” said the apostle Paul. In the meantime, how do we “lead lives worthy of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:12)?A couple weeks ago, while planning for this morning’s worship, I was going over the epistle lesson for today in the presence of a staff member who shall remain nameless. When I got to verse 13, I said, “Hmmm. No reveling or drunkenness, no debauchery or licentiousness, no quarreling or jealousy.” When I paused at the end of that list of prohibitions, she shook her head and said, “Wow. What else is left?” That verse seemed to put a damper on her Christmas spirit, and that’s why she’ll remain nameless.
A lot of people look at the religious life that way, don’t they? Don’t we? For many people, a religiously committed life is synonymous with a legalistic, rules-based existence. “Thou shalt not. . . .” is the name of the game. I suspect that most of us have experienced feeling that way at one time or another to one degree or another. For many people, Baptists in particular are associated with a rules-based, “Thou-shalt-not” brand of religion. The truth is, we “got it honest,” as they say. It’s in our genes. We’re trying to turn it into a recessive trait around here, but it’s still in our genes.
The very first Baptists who separated themselves from the Church of England in the early 1600s insisted not only on a personal profession of faith but also on leading “a life worthy of God,” as Paul puts it in 1 Thessalonians 2:12. Along with “believer baptism” from which the name “Baptists” was derived, a personal profession of faith and leading “a life worthy of God” were combined by those early Baptists to distinguish their vision of Christian faith and practice from the state religion and the cultural Christianity of 17th-century England. So far, so good.
But here’s where the problem comes. It’s not just a Baptist problem, even though Baptists are famous for it. It’s a universal human problem whenever and wherever the positive is reduced to the avoidance of the negative. Whenever and wherever people try to produce what is good by focusing on what is bad, the good becomes distorted. That’s what happened to many of those early Baptists and to many more of us ever since. And that’s a problem.
Think about it. It’s one of the first lessons of driving. We say, “Keep your eye on the road!” We don’t say, “Keep your eye on the ditch!” The problem with keeping your eye on the ditch is that your where your eye is, your had will imperceptibly follow. We don’t say, “Keep your eye on the tree so you don’t hit it!” Where your eye is, your had will imperceptibly follow. When you are teaching someone to catch a ball, you say, “Keep your eye on the ball!” You don’t say, “Keep your eye on all the places you could drop the ball.” If you train your eye on all the places you could drop the ball, you can’t possibly catch it. But that’s what happens whenever and wherever we reduce the positive to avoiding the negative or try to produce what is good by focusing on what is bad.
It’s amusing, really, how much time and effort Christian commentators down through the centuries have spent interpreting for their readers exactly what is meant by the words in Romans 13:13 that the NRSV translates “reveling,” “drunkenness,” “debauchery,” “licentiousness,” “quarreling,” and “jealousy.” That’s the kind of juicy list that could keep a Baptist preacher occupied for the better part of a Sunday morning or Sunday evening or Wednesday evening—those were the days, weren’t they, when you could go to church three times a week to hear sins expounded on and elucidated?
This morning, instead of spending time obsessing over “the works of darkness” in v 13, I’m going to focus instead to “the armor of light” that Paul tells us to put on as a way of leading “a life worthy of God.” Now, I understand that “putting on armor” may not be an image that’s consistent with your everyday thinking. But we have other expressions that are not so far removed from Paul’s: “bullet-proof vest,” “nerves of steel,” an “iron constitution.” Athletes and wanna-be athletes these days pay a premium to wear a brand of clothing and gear called “UnderArmor.” Whatever you might call it, Paul says that you have at your disposal a protective agency. Put it on.
Paul calls it “armor,” as it is translated in verse 12, and the particular word that Paul uses implies that this protective agency is active, not passive. “Armor,” as we usually think of it, is a passive system of defense, a protection of last resort. Armor was invented to avoid the negative, right? But listen to how the Greek word hoploi that Paul uses in this morning’s epistles lesson is translated in other passages where he uses it. In 2 Corinthians 6:7, hoploi is translated “weapons” in the phrase “weapons of righteousness.” In another passage, in Romans 6:13, NRSV translates the very same phrase less combatively as “instruments of righteousness.” In John 18:3, the betrayal of Jesus reads this way: “So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons,” hoploi. So, the first thing to see about the armor, the protective agency, that Paul is talking about in this morning’s epistle lesson is that it is not merely passive. This armor is not just about avoiding the negative. There is something decidedly active about this armor.
It is, after all, not just any armor. Paul calls it “the armor of light.” Now, I’m aware that “the armor of light” may just sound entirely too Harry Potterish for some of us. Harry’s back, you know, in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I.” Don’t miss him—if you are old enough for its PG-13 rating. It’s dark and it’s scary, and to be truthful with you, when I preached sermon titled “The Gospel according to Harry Potter” the weekend the first Potter film was released nine years ago this month, I had no idea that J.K. Rowling’s seven-book series would conclude with the explicitly Christian symbolism that it does. It never occurred to me that Rowling would turn out to be a kissing cousin of another British master of fantasy, C. S. Lewis. So if Paul’s image of “the armor of light” sounds too much like Harry Potter for your taste, perhaps you would feel better about associating it with C. S. Lewis whose “Chronicles of Narnia” are replete with imagery of light as an expression of the gospel.
But the apostle Paul doesn’t use light imagery nearly as often as I would have expected. The particular word “light,” in the expression “armor of light,” phos in Greek, occurs only six times in the seven indisputably authentic letters bearing Paul’s name. By way of comparison, the little book we know as 1 John uses it five times in its five little chapters. Paul uses it only six times in seven letters. The Gospel of John uses it 16 times. But Paul, not so many times. And that makes how Paul uses the word “light,” phos, all the more important.
When Paul says, “Put on the armor of light,” he is saying “Put on the active presence of the creative power of God.” “Put on the active presence of the creative power of God.” Remember all the way back “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was void and without form and darkness covered the face of the deep, while the spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.” That’s Genesis 1:1-4, and that’s where Paul goes to understand light. Listen to what he says in 2 Corinthians 4:6: “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The light in “the armor of light” is the active presence of the creative power of God that shone not only out of the darkness in beginning, but now “has shone in our hearts” in Jesus Christ, Paul says.
Why in the world would we obsess over the negative in our lives and others’ lives and in our world when the active presence of the creative power of God already now shines in us? That’s not a Harry Potterism, folks. It’s a physical and material reality of our existence every bit as much as it is a spiritual and mystical reality of our existence. Remember how last week in his sermon on Thanksgiving Baxter Wynn talked about the rise of the field of “positive psychology,” psychology that actually studies sane and healthy people to try to understand what contributes to health and sanity. What a novel idea! Well, a similarly quiet revolution has been occurring in medicine in the last fifteen or twenty years. “The science of health” has begun to grow up alongside the science of illness and disease and injury. “Health Science,” according to one physician who practices it, includes the study of “cell physiology, protein structure, biochemistry, evolutionary biology, exercise physiology, anthropology, experimental psychology, ecology and comparative neuroanatomy” (Crowley and Lodge, Younger Next Year, p. 31).
Health science suggests, among other things, that while human aging is inevitable (if we live so long), bit the gradual decay of our bodies and our brains that we associate with aging is not inevitable. Our bodies and brains were designed with amazing capacities to renew and restore and rebuild and regenerate themselves. Our bodies are massive, life-long regeneration projects renewing and recreating and rebuilding cells, tissues and blood and bones. Health science has shown that “daily exercise, emotional commitment, reasonable nutrition and a real engagement with living” (Ibid., p. 34) can not only maintain health but can even reverse the tide of physical and mental and emotional decay that we so often associate with the second half of life. Ironically, even skeptics must admit that the healthy lifestyles associated with rules-based religion turn out to correspond to the empirical observations of health science. But for centuries, science and medicine have obsessed over the negatives like Baptist preachers preaching sin all the time. But in recent decades, health science and healthy religion alike are beginning to focus on renewal and restoration and regeneration. When we “put on the armor of light,” we take up a holistic message of growth and relationship that is as material and physical as it is spiritual and mystical.
In another passage in which Paul uses the word light, phos, he speaks in Romans 2:19-20, not of receiving light but of being light: “a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children.” The “armor of light,” then, is not only a renewing and restoring and regenerating agency grounded in God’s creative power that shines in our hearts for our own salvation and our own health and our own wellbeing. Putting on the armor of light also involves our becoming a light to others who are in darkness. Jesus used exactly that image in the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5, when he said, “You are the light (phos) of the world. . . . Let your light (phos) shine before others” (vv 14,16). The “armor of light,” then, is also our active agency in the world for renewal and growth and restoration and regeneration and relationship.
We are “children of light” (phos, v 5), Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5. He says that we lead lives worthy of God this way: “encourage one another and build up each other. . . . Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (vv 11-18). You may be accustomed to thinking of these kinds of words as standard religious tripe. But the new health science is discovering that the kind of “emotional commitment” and the “real engagement with living” exemplified in 1 Thessalonians 5:11-18, Matthew 5:14 and 16, and Romans 2:19-20 are critically important variables in human health and wellbeing.
What 1 Thessalonians 5 makes clear that we might have overlooked in the other passages is that there is no such thing as “a child of light,” only “children of light.” The light of God’s creative power that shines in our hearts and involves us in becoming a light to others only exists in community, more specifically in a community of encouraging and building up one another, of peace and admonition and patience and seeking to do good to one another and to all and rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks in all circumstances. That kind of community can’t be reduced to rules-based religion. That kind of good can’t be produced by focusing on what is bad. That kind of positive can’t be created merely by avoiding the negative. Why in the world would we obsess over the negative in our lives and others’ lives and in our world when the active presence of the creative power of God already now shines in us?
“Coming soon.” “The night is far gone; the day is near.” In the meantime, how do we “lead lives worthy of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:12)? In this season of light, Advent, in which we prepare yet again for the coming of Christ, may you put on the armor of light, the “true light (phos) which enlightens everyone” (John 1:14), “the light (phos) of the world” (John 8:12, 9:5), and let that light that shone in creation and shines in your heart shine before others. Put on the armor of light.
Photo by Arti Sandhu, by license of Creative Commons.
This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.
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