Rian Adams Sermon “Shield: Carrying the Weight of God.” Second Sunday of Lent, Year C
A shield normally has one job… the difference between life and death can be how well a shield does that job. A shield’s job is to protect. In the Genesis passage God identifies as a shield – protector – to Abram… Gen 15:1 “Abram, I am your shield.”
It’s clear from the beginning of the story, God desires a relationship with Abram where God protects and guards him.There are many layers in God’s announcement, “I am your shield.” In the original Hebrew, shield (Mah-gane) is usually in masculine form. It means “to protect.” It’s a picture of God’s mighty arm holding a heavy shield that prevents arrows from nicking our vulnerable places.
But interestingly, it has a feminine use too, “to gather under” is one possible translation. God gather’s us under wings of protection. Another, far more enlightening feminine use, is “the thick hide of a female crocodile.” I wonder… can that expand our understanding of shield to include something we wear and not simply something we hold. It’s a powerful image of mother God shielding us with her thick skin. The blows reach her skin, they pummel her, she feels the pain, but it doesn’t breach her.
“Abram, I am your shield.”
When arrows try to puncture our soft hearts, her skin is the shield that absorbs the spear.
The shield imagery doesn’t stop there.
If you google “shield” the first shield you find, in search and images, is the shield of Captain America. I find it interesting to note: The most popular shield on the internet belongs to a super hero.
That hero is the archetypal warrior who is the pillar of justice, good, and morality. Our culture instantly equates a shield with a hero. It’s telling that our association with shield is one made from the strongest metal on earth. If you’re a comic geek you’re probably aware that Captain America’s shield was created by accident.
The shield’s creator worked with mythic Wakandan Vibranium. But the shield’s creation is not without misunderstanding… The metallurgist worked long hours and fell asleep before the final metal blend was complete. He took no notes, so the shield’s contents are a mystery.
The image creatively suggests that the God who shields us will always remain a mystery. We will never fully figure out how, or why, or even when God shields us.
The writer of Ephesians says to take up the shield of faith… There is some kind of mystery to God that we will never fully understand and we must simply hold sacred space for faith.
God protects us in ways that are mysterious. My guess is we can point to pivotal moments in our lives when God shielded us from injury, deceit, or distress. We probably didn’t noticed it then but hindsight, combined with spirituality, helps us see the mystery of God at work in many things.
However, as with any metaphor, it always offers a holy invitation to listen for deeper meanings.
As the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung says, we learn to listen by “cultivating the creative art of inner conversation.
That imaginative conversation reminded me that a shield is weighty.
While I served as a soldier in Afghanistan, my body armor, my shield as it were, was roughly 75lbs of gear. I carried these body shields on my chest and back. Each day I shouldered the weight of my vest, attached the Velcro, buttoned the snaps, and prayed that I wouldn’t need it.
I wore these shields for months on end. What stands out to me is how quickly my body normalized the weight. The armor merged and became one with my body. I wore it like it was a second layer of skin. One post-deployment struggle was feeling naked without body armor. My body familiarized the weight of its shield and it found comfort knowing it was there should it ever be called upon.
But it was not without its difficulties.First, it was heavy. My shoulders are still tense from the weight because it was a constant burden. To this day I get 5 CCs of steroid in my right shoulder every 120 days. The pain is so that I welcome the cold steel of an 18 gauge needle as an old friend who visits for dinner and tells good stories.
Second, the sand in the deserts of the Middle East and South West Asia work their way between the collar bone and the shoulder strap. Hour after hour it rubs and grinds. You treat it with cream and band aids, it doesn’t do much. Every day I was reminded that my body shield was a double edged sword.
The body that it protected was the same body that it injured.
New medical studies say the same. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the number of military personnel who retired with musculoskeletal damage increased 1000% between 2001 and 2010. Military physicians now make the direct connection between the weight of body armor and chronic injuries.
It appears that carrying the weight of body armor for prolonged periods inflicts a harsh toll on the body. That leads me to a curiosity… I wonder what the weight of a shield teaches us about God?
I wonder if people feel like God is a heavy weight to shoulder? “Abram I am your shield… to carry.”
The weight of faith, in a world filled to the brim with governmental tyranny and human suffering, must be a reality we are willing to own. If God is like a shield then we need the spiritual freedom to admit when our arms tire. Although it’s scary to admit we need help, its essencential to grow into our vocations.
Even Jesus tired under the weight of his calling, the Gospels tell us another helped him carry his cross.
The psalmist understood the tension of God as shield.
In Psalm 33 he balances the protection of God with the need to patiently wait. He says, “We wait in hope for the Lord, He is our shield and our help.”
Maybe C.S. Lewis was on to something when he said that God’s glory is a weight to carry. I have friends who wear the weight of God. They shoulder the difficult joy of Christ’s ministry of mercy. But they grow tired carrying the God who protects them.
That’s why Jesus calls us to be a shield to our sisters and brothers! Jesus said,“Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.”
In the original language, mercy literally means a surrounding of compassion. Jesus asks us to be like God… and shield one another with mercy.So when I buckle under the weight of church imposed perfection, love me like a soldier and pull me out of harm’s way. When I’m exhausted, hold up my hands like Aaron and Joshua did for Moses, and when I’m attacked, be Paul’s shield and quench fiery gossip.
Be my shield. Have mercy on me, surround me, as I attempt to wear the wdeight of the God who protects me.
Amen.
Note: This sermon was prepared and preached at Sewanee as part of a doctoral program.
Note: If you’d like to check out my other writings, you can find them here.
Unity: The Spirituality of Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer by Rian Adams
Unity.
We don’t know what it is, but we certainly know what it’s not. Unity is not connectivity. We have plenty of connections these days… Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… even connections at church. The list goes on and on. But are we any closer to real unity with God and one another? I think this week’s lectionary reading confronts a longing deep inside of us for a oneness of heart and soul.
Most agree, “sure we need unity.” But unity of what? Political convictions? Theological persuasion? No. We can’t be that naive because we will never have those things. I think unity is much deeper and more profound than theological creeds and political affiliations. What I propose is a unity in and of self and thus a unity with God by following the way of Jesus.
The lectionary Gospel reading is long and a bit convoluted with John’s mystical language but give it a read and listen for the themes of unity, oneness, wholeness, and consciousness.
The Lectionary Gospel: John 17:6-19, Seventh Sunday After Easter, Year B
(I have edited the reading for brevity’s sake) … They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them [the disciples], I do not pray for the world, but for those you have given me… they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.
I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
An Evolving Consciousness of God
Jesus opens the door to a new idea about God… relationally. He says that God is his father and then he go so far as to encourage his followers to call God “father.” This is a fundamental reimagining of the divine. The disciples, before Jesus changed their realities, probably held the same view as most of the Pharisees of the first century. For them, God was removed, transcendent, the man in the sky, as it were.
Then Jesus comes along and redefines God. God, for Jesus, is relationship. God is “Father.” This God, for Jesus, desires to be in a form of parental relationship with humanity.
Jesus enlarged the disciples consciousness on such a scale that God, to them, became a totally different entity. God moved from a collective mentality to a universal relational presence. It’s quite an evolution in theological thinking.
Christ prays for the conscious, not the unconscious
A theme we see often in John’s mystical language is what he terms “the world.” Do you find it strange that Christ does not pray for “the world” but just for his disciples? “I do not pray for the world but for those you have given me.”
It strikes me as odd. We would assume that Jesus, the Christ figure, would pray for everyone. However, this is not the case. Jesus seems to emphasize quality over quantity. He did not count his success in numbers but in the change in the consciousness of individuals. In other words, “the world” is those who remain unconscious of God’s relationally.
I think the point is that Jesus prays for his disciples who are developing a new consciousness. This new understanding and experience of the divine will be the unity that Jesus prays for. Union in relationship with God and union in relationship with one another, both are of spiritual importance.
A Welcome To The Whole
This is one of those lectionary readings that was cut too short. It stops at vs. 19 but vs. 20-21 is the crux of the passage. It says, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you.”
St. Gregory of Nyssa, a man I would consider a theologian and early psychologist, mentioned this union of “…all be one.” For Gregory the soul of a person was a “populace of souls crowded together, each differing widely from the rest.” The psychoanalysts would agree given how the plurality of souls is reflected in our dreams and the multitude of characters that inhabit them.
The main message is that we are personally united in a unity comprised of diversity. Spiritual unity, then, should blend and harmonize the parts that seem mutually opposed. This is how the self becomes a whole, or as Jesus called it, “one.”
We find this oneness in the many parts of a rose window. Rose windows adorn churches and cathedrals. They are a symbol of many parts that make up a whole. In the rose window from All Saint’s Chapel, Sewanee, TN, the Holy Grail is the center. The Grail represents the highest spiritual consciousness: the union of spirit with matter. In the Grail, so says the Christian myth, God becomes the matter that enters the human being. We see this in the symbol of the wine becoming the blood of Christ. Nature and spirit yearn for one another and the union is realized in the Grail.
The Rose Window and the Mandala
Mandalas fascinated Carl Jung. For him they represented the integration of the soul into a whole. There are many parts and pieces that make up the whole mandala or rose window. This unity of parts is the real secret to a union of the whole. He comments on this gospel passage in Letters. He suggests that the secret to understanding the passage is “in the integration of all those parts of yourself into a whole.”
In John’s Gospel, wholeness and unity does not simply refer to the individual but to the faith community as well. There is a call to be unified in Christ… in the way of Christ. Compassion, mercy, and love. That is spiritual wholeness for John.
We no longer have to constantly fight the parts of the self we do not like. The struggle can diminish under the weight of true unity of all parts into one self. This is why so many people struggle for life balance, they only have room for what Hillman would describe as “one part of the self that is informed by religious morality.”
Relationship With Others
Here the German psychiatrist Fritz Kunkel is probably closer to John’s Gospel than Jung. For Kunkel, reality was not simply in us but between us as well. To paraphrase, unity is not found in an isolated unit but in a person who is purposefully in a relative and conscious relationship with others.
For me, unity is both, and. Unity is a fusion with what God loves (love, compassion, and mercy, expressed in our relationships to one another) and a conscious acceptance of all the parts of the self. So we should, as Jung said, integrate the contraries.
It’s hard spiritual work but no regrets will come from it. Finally, my poem Journey touches on the subject. If it can be useful to you, find it here.
Love God, love yourself, and love your neighbor,
–Rian