An Easy Life?

I recently asked my phone what I needed to do to make my life easy. It gave me a lot of advice. Some of it was even good advice. Get enough sleep. Create a budget. Go for a walk every day.

Some of the advice was oddly specific. Use an electric toothbrush. Drink celery juice every morning. Only buy one brand of socks.

I’m pretty sure I’ll never add celery juice to my daily routine, but the rest of the tips were at least worth considering.

The real problem was the question I asked: “How can I make my life easy?” The algorithm was apparently too polite to give me the real answer.

“How can I make my life easy?”

“You can’t.”

To be fair, most of the responses did change the word “easy” into “easier.” The online self-help gurus weren’t promising miracles.

But the truth is that whether we seek out challenges or do our best to avoid them, our lives won’t be easy. At least not all the time.

And that’s not all bad. We learn from hard times. Challenges force us to learn and to grow, teach us compassion. But it’s still not much fun when you’re in the middle of it.

One of today’s readings answers the question I should have asked. Not “how can I make my life easy?” But rather “how should I respond when life is hard?”

I’ll get to the advice in a minute, but first let me give you some context.

The early Church didn’t look much like our gathering this morning, in a prominent building on the main street in town with service times posted outside. Back then, the Roman Empire was in charge of pretty much everything, and if you wanted to be seen as loyal to the emperor, you had to publicly worship the Roman gods. Christians who weren’t willing to do that set themselves up for persecution. To become a Christian was to make yourself vulnerable. To become a Christian was to see in Jesus a vision so compelling that you were willing to take that risk.

The letter to the Ephesians might have been written by Paul to the church in Ephesus. Or it might have been a somewhat later document with a broader audience. Scholars disagree on that. But either way, it was written to people who found themselves on the wrong side of power. It would be more than two hundred years before Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire.

The original hearers of today’s scripture reading would have known (and maybe feared) the soldiers of the Roman legions, the force that held the empire together. Today when we think of a soldier, we picture someone wearing a camouflage uniform and carrying a rifle. But in Paul’s time, a typical soldier wore a tunic, a belt that that signified his rank, chain mail or an armored breastplate, leather sandals or boots, a helmet, and he carried a sword and shield.

In other words, in describing the armor of God, the author of the letter to the Ephesians was drawing a direct parallel to something his readers and listeners knew well. Belt, breastplate, shoes, shield, helmet, and sword. The tools and garb of a soldier of empire.

That’s curious, though, if you think about it. Later in history, the Church would take up its own arms, ally itself with power, and at times even become the persecutor. But in those first centuries, Christians were mostly pacifists. They didn’t have an army.

So why all this martial language?

The letter to the Ephesians wasn’t trying to teach anyone how to fight a war. It wasn’t even urging active resistance to the powers of the day. But it did have something to say about how to respond to challenges when they inevitably come.

“Take up the whole armor of God,” the letter says. But wear a belt not of leather, but of truth. A breastplate not of bronze, but of righteousness. Wear shoes that will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. Carry a shield of faith, a helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.

The imagery of the letter to the Ephesians is vivid. “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” All that talk of powers and principalities can sound like the stuff of horror movies and superstition. But is it, really?

Whether you understand the letter’s language literally or metaphorically, it speaks of something that’s true. Life involves struggle. And following Jesus doesn’t make that struggle go away. Sometimes it brings new struggles of its own.

So sure. Try to make your life easier. Get enough sleep. Create a budget. Go for a walk every day. Even drink celery juice if that works for you.

But when the self-help tips fail you, when you find yourself in one of those moments when you face threats and challenges on every side, try this:

Be strong. Stand firm. Keep alert. Pray, for yourself and for one another. Proclaim the gospel of peace. And wherever you go, carry with you truth, righteousness, faith, salvation, and the Spirit.

Take up the whole armor of God.

That’s pretty good advice. Then and now.