The Whole Armour of God

1992

9 Aug

1992 (Year C) 9 August / Pentecost 9

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

At 4 pm on 9 August 9 1943, a 37 year old Austrian farmer was taken from his cell in Berlin’s Brandenburg prison, marched in chains to a desk where his death sentence was again read out, pushed into another room where the executioner was waiting, and beheaded. His name was Franz Jagerstatter. He was executed for refusing to serve in the German Army and that should have been the end of the story.

For a long time it was – for the rest of the world, but certainly not for his widow and three young daughters. Franz walked out of his village the February prior to his death, heading for the recruiting depot at Enns. A friend had shouted ‘God go with you Franz’. The answer had come back quietly, ‘You will see no more of me.’ So it turned out.

‘My dearest, beloved wife and all my children,’ he wrote on the morning of his execution. ‘Many actually believe quite simply that things have to be the way they are. If this should happen to mean that they are obliged to commit injustice then they believe that others are responsible ... I am convinced that it is still best that I speak the truth even if it costs my life ... these few words are being set down here as they come from my mind and heart. And if I must write them with my hands in chains, I find that much better than if my will were in chains.’

The story of Franz Jagerstatter stands in stark contrast to the story that we heard told in the first reading this morning, ‘No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life ... Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you.’ There is no all-conquering, all powerful man, supported by the might of God. There is a lonely and almost totally forgotten death. There is no triumph and no victory, only a conviction in the face of a vast military machine that he was doing what was right.

These two stories seem irreconcilable – the one of the lonely death, the other of a powerful, invading nation beating down all opposition. There is no doubt that if given the choice which side we’d rather be on. We’d rather be on the side of the triumphant and alive than the weak and dead. But there is also recognition, in most of us I guess, which one of the two reflects more accurately the true cost and the reality of discipleship.

I suppose this is actually admitted in the second reading we heard today because for all the imagery of war, of shields, helmets and swords; the shield of faith is not the defence you’d choose if you were facing bullets. The helmet of salvation is not renowned for warding off blows to the head and the sword of the Spirit is not a strategic weapon.

No, the weapons and the armour of God will not defeat our enemies as we might hope. Paul actually admits it ‘and having done all … stand’. There is an end to all our action to face what is coming to us, just as Christ faced his own death. That is the truth. We are not being encouraged to join an all powerful army, which has been promised victory. We are invited to lake up our cross and follow a Lord whose way to God is by defeat and isolated death on a cross.

I end with a prayer and you are asked to make the response: