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Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. This lent season has been pretty crazy. As we are into our third worship service streaming online. We're still working out all the bugs. But here we are evening prayer trying to figure out how it works. Now evening prayer this season is all about an American vision of God. They've called it moralistic therapeutic deism, and it has five beliefs. The first is that God created the world and looks down on it. The second is that God wants us to be good, nice and fair, like all the major world religions teach. The third is that the goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself. The fourth That God doesn't need to be involved in your life unless you have a problem. And the last one, the fifth is good people go to heaven when they die. And tonight we're taking a look at that fourth one. The idea that God doesn't need to be involved in your life, unless there's a problem.
Now, we all know the classic story. There is a man who is in a shipwreck, he is out and alone, he's clinging to a piece of driftwood. And while he's out in the middle of the sea, he can see nothing in all the all directions. He has no food. He has no water. Everything looks terrible. And after a day of clinging to this driftwood, clinging out in the middle of the ocean, he cries out to God. Oh, God. I know I haven't talked to you very much. I haven't gone to church. In fact, I've been kind of a bad guy. But if you would just save me this once, I will dedicate my life to you.
At that moment, something shows up on the horizon, a ship coming by and they spot the man on the driftwood and they pull him out and he praises God for about a day and then it's back to life as usual.
That is the perfect example of the way that people feel when they think about God and the necessity of prayer. God doesn't need to be involved in your life, unless there's a problem. That's the therapist part of the moralistic therapeutic deism is that as long as we're doing just fine as long as everything is good, or at least manageable, then we don't need to pray because, well, everything's fine. You don't go to a therapist, if you're happy about life, if everything is doing great. You go to a therapist when you need therapy, when you need someone to help.
So often that's how we see God is that we we turn to him when things are bad. And we asked him for help, only at those times. Now, here's how you know that this is the way we do things in the church. If you ever look at a Church's prayer lists, what are the things that people are praying about? It's all about bad stuff, isn't it? Somebody is sick. Somebody needs help. Someone is facing a difficult, difficult problem. There's all sorts of family problems, different things like that that are going on. The list of requests is long and long and long.
What about the list of thanksgivings, pretty short, usually. But what about the list of, of asking for guidance? How many times have we heard a prayer requests where someone says, "I have a big decision coming up, help me face it." Or even this one, a prayer request that says, "everything is good in my life, God, please keep me focused." So often we treat that relationship with God, as if it's always gonna be there, then we can run to it if we have a problem. This idea that God would be here to help take care of our problems.
It's very different from what Scripture says. In our two readings today, we have a different way of looking at God's relationship with us and our relationship with In the Ephesians reading is that classic passage about the armor of God. St. Paul says, Put on the full armor of God and there's the helmet and the shield and the breastplate, and the sandals and the sword and all of that. But there's a reason he uses that. That metaphor. He wants us to stand, that having put on all of that armor, we will be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against rulers, against authorities against cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." You might looking look about at the way things are going right now, coronavirus everywhere everyone's sheltering inside the church pews are empty. Sounds like Evil doesn't it?
But I think that's not the time when things are most dangerous for St. Paul talks about a constant battle between the Spirit working in us and all of the evil demons in the spiritual forces in this world. And the battle requires constantly being prepared. And so we look at this world and we look around and we say, yes, the devil must be attacking, he is doing all these terrible things. We're anxious and upset, and but I don't think that's quite the case. Isn't it true that when national disasters happen, it draws us closer to God. We look at our own mortality and we say, oh my look at the look at it. What I can't do, I can't control the world out there. I can't stop this disease. In fact, no matter what we're doing, it just seems to be getting worse.
I need to turn to a God who could protect me. And even though there's all this evil doing this disease and people are dying, only God can keep me safe. promises that he can. He does it through Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for you, who rose from the dead for you. To give you the promise that because Jesus is alive, God protects. God gives you his armor to keep you safe.And what happens is when you have that armor on when you run into evil in the world, it actually makes you trust God more.
God uses his word. His grace to draw you closer to him, but the dangerous time isn't when we're scared or hurt. The dangerous time for salvation is when everything is good. See, when everything is good, we start to think, Well, you know, I don't really need to have this armor on right now. I can put it off to the side and wait. There are no enemies on the scene. There's nothing out coming to get me. I'll be fine.
What happens to a soldier who isn't ready to attack. It's even more important in times of peace and joy, to be with God and in his army, because that's when God builds you up and strengthens you for the day that you You need him again, strengthens you for the day when the devil attacks your spirit and soul so that you can cling to the armor that he gives you. Because that's what God does. He gives you His word, the place his very own armor on you. And that will protect you from anything that could try to come and get you.
And how do we do that? How do we be continually connected with God? It all comes through Jesus. That's what Jesus says when he says, I am the vine and you are the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Being prepared, being close to God being sustained by him, comes from being connected to Jesus and right Now, we may be struggling with that. You aren't here to give confession and receive absolution. It's been a week since we've offered the Lord's Supper. But you are here to hear is where you are gathered together around a computer screen somewhere or watching it on a TV. Maybe even your phone. You're here to be sustained by Jesus's work.
Apart from them, you can do nothing. Because we need the grace he gives us we need the love he gets so often during the times of great happiness, the times when we're we're overjoyed by things and everything is going well. That's when we say I don't need it. But it's important for us to be sustained by God through His grace, so that we can face Good and Evil times knowing that God is with us. And that promise that comes with it means that our Savior isn't about taking care of our problems now, but giving us life that lasts forever. It isn't about feeling good.
It's about resurrection from the dead. And so our whole life is pointed towards being connected to Jesus. Use whatever metaphor you like, he is the vine We are the branches and we are fed and sustained by him. Or we are the church under constant attack by the world and by Satan. And God gives us the armor that we wait for Jesus. Either way, because can't just turn away from God until we need something. All we can do is constantly be turning towards him, receive the grace that he promises us. In His name. Amen Transcribed by https://otter.ai