Armor of God

Advent 4 / 1A: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122

Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

The Rev'd Cameron Partridge

November 30, 2025

Good Morning, St. Aidan’s. On this Thanksgiving weekend, welcome to what is for us and others observing a seven-week Advent its midpoint. And as the wider church now officially enters this season today, the church year begins anew. Our anchoring gospel text now switches from Luke to Matthew. Yet though the texts shift, you may notice, the themes continue. I can remember how, when I first really started to pay attention to the flow of the assigned readings from week to week, I couldn’t but notice how in the late fall they turned toward themes of cosmic judgment, often through apocalyptic passages. Not necessarily the most inspiring of themes. Often the texts made me uncomfortable. But then I would think, at least when Advent begins with the impending arrival of Christmas a mere four weeks later, the apocalyptic texts will stop. But then they didn’t! I remember being so confused. Over time as I learned more about Advent, I came to realize that the season actually begins with the second Advent – Advent being a latinized rendering of the Greek Parousia, the arrival or coming of Christ – before turning to the first. The season leads with texts associated with the second coming of Christ, the arrival of the risen and ascended Christ whose judgement is part of the process that brings the new creation into full flowering – the kingdom or reign that “will have no end,” as the Nicene Creed puts it. Then as Christmas indeed approaches, the focus shifts from the second Advent toward the first coming of God the Son among us, the birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph.

And so, not surprisingly, this morning’s texts, especially from Matthew and Romans, take us once again into Second Advent territory. They call us into a stance of anticipation, to prepare for the coming of Christ and his kin-dom, disrupting human quarrelling and distraction and founding us upon the solidity of divine justice and peace. One aspect of this preparation described in our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans, alertness, is described as an awakening. “You know what time it is,” Paul writes, “how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep” (Romans 13:11). This is the Advent alarm clock. Do not press snooze. Wake up, get up and, as our passage from the Gospel of Matthew emphasizes, stay awake. “Be ready,” we hear, “for the Son of Humanity is coming at an unexpected hour” (Matthew 24:44).  But how are we to stay awake, exactly? How do we prepare as the waiting continues? If this waiting is not meant to lull us into a passivity, like falling asleep at the airport gate in the middle of the night such that we nearly miss our flight (as I have come dangerously close to doing), how are we to approach this faithful waiting? How might we think about it?

This is where another image, a form or habit of faith, comes in: the donning of Christ of a kind of clothing. At the end of our passage from Romans Paul writes, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” If this idea of wearing Christ seems strange – and it might! – it is not actually unusual. The association of faith with and as a kind of clothing is strongly connected to baptism.^[1] Early Christians were baptized without clothing in fact, and then clothed in a clean white robe upon their exist from a river or other body of water, or a large baptismal font. The idea of stripping away your older clothing was associated with symbolically dying to your previous self, being washed clean and “buried with Christ” as Paul writes of baptism in the sixth chapter of Romans, and then rising into newness of life (6:3-4).^[2] The famous passage from Galatians that characterizes new life in Christ as being without the binaries of “Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female” is preceded by the declaration “all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:28, 27).^[3] But our passage from Romans associates a specific kind of clothing with staying awake: armor. “Let us… put on the armor of light,” he declares (Romans 13:12). The association of faith with armor or weaponry is not limited to this passage.^[4] Paul’s writings use this turn of speech in other places, characterizing faith with a defensive stance that I, for one, do not favor. Yet if I take his point that faith should be characterized by a spiritual alertness, a watching for and participation in the in-breaking of God’s kingdom and a wariness against the misuse and mischaracterization of faith – something to observe in headlines every day as Christian Nationalism takes further hold in this country – I find myself open to receiving this image in a new way.

The week before last I stood in this space with the “I AM Who I AM” banner in the background and recorded a video for the wider church. It was the closing pastoral message of a formation resource that several of us in TransEpiscopal, together with Aaron Scott, the Gender Justice Officer of the Episcopal Church, put together over several months. Others have recorded Bible studies that have not yet been released. The message I recorded was written by Aaron, and it was a true honor to share it. An excerpt was released for Trans Day of Remembrance. But the part that was not excerpted, the beginning of the video, centered on another passage about the armor of God from the letter to the Ephesians (6:10-13). It is a passage I associate with my days in evangelical settings – though I grew up in the Episcopal Church, I had some formative experiences in evangelical summer camps, a real spiritual mixed bag I must say, truly deepening my faith in significant ways, and alienating me from it in others. The “full armor of God” in that context could have a quality of sealing oneself off from and even preparing to battle against a hostile world. As a gender nonconforming teen in a Christian world that at best did not know what to do with the likes of me and at worst sought to make me into a straight young woman – someone I decidedly was not – the armor of God could become a way of inhabiting my faith that sought out strength amid and protection from a hostile world or church. As a catcher in little league and later in women’s softball, all that gear – the shin and chest protector and especially the mask – could sometimes evoke this armor image for me as well. 

And so it was very striking to look into the camera and speak of “putt[ing] on the full armor of God,” in the language of Ephesians (6:11). But what moved me so deeply was how Aaron contextualized and reinterpreted that armor. ὅπλον, from our Romans passage, or πανοπλία from Ephesians are terms that come out of the Roman imperial context of Paul and of Jesus. More specifically, the image of armor was a function of the “Pax Romana” the Roman “Peace” that was a false peace, as Aaron wrote, “a title that distorted the meaning of the word ‘peace’ beyond all recognition.” He (and I) continued, “The ‘peace’ of this era in history was state, social, and spiritual violence. It is the same so-called ‘peace’ that crucified Jesus.” In this context, the idea of faith as the “armor of God” was actually, Aaron continued, a “counter-practice and counter-worldview to the violent divide-and-conquer of the Roman system.” It represented the “collective effort [of the Ephesian Christian community] “to organize themselves, to care for one another, and to proclaim and demonstrate that another way of life was possible.” And so we might ask, what does such a counter practice look like? If, as the formation resource argues, “the ‘peace’ of empires is structural and social violence, then our full armor of God has to be” not more violence, but rather, “our relentless tenderness with one another, with all marginalized people, with all people who love mercy and do justice.”^[5] I cannot tell you how moved I was to read out those words. The armor of God took on a whole different meaning for me as I stood here and shared this vision, thanks to Aaron’s beautiful writing.

I think of the communities I have heard of or been part of over the years, like this one, whose members wear such faithful fortification even as the world around them, around us, reflects imperial violence in ways both dramatic and subtle. On this day before World AIDS Day, a day that the current presidential administration has declared it will not honor this year, even as it also has slashed funding for AIDS and other vital health care research, drug trials, I hear the Advent call to alertness, to put on the armor of light, through an anti-imperialist lens.^[6] I think of the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco that met in this space for a period in (I believe) the 1970s, whose ministers Kittredge Cherry and Jim Mitulski preached of MCC as “a church with AIDS.” They wrote movingly in a 1990 essay of “eschatological living,” using theological terminology of the “the end times,” as our gospel passage references, to make sense of their community’s daily experience living “with the end in sight.” For them, amid grief and rage at a political system that would not acknowledge HIV/AIDS, “liv[ing] with the end in sight” meant donning the habits of the realm of God, “an alternate way of living.”^[7] Such living embraced vulnerability, interdependence, and sharing across differences of theology and experience, as the podcast “When We All Get To Heaven” dramatically and beautifully shares through audio clips and rich storytelling.^[8] Here again is an expression of the full armor of God, the armor of light, not as some sort of divine invincibility, a battle stance against a hostile world. Rather, this armor is an alertness to need, a faithful embrace of shared vulnerability and mutual interdependence. As theologian Lisa Powell writes in a liberationist intersection of disability and queerness, when “our eschatological imagination is limited by our fear of dependency and loss or lack of self-sufficiency… our vision of God's reign [is] constrained by” the notion that we must be always be “independent individuals.”^[9] But what if our practice of faith, our alertness in this Advent threshold, is to the in-breaking and celebration of a kin-dom that is an eternal “journey into the glorification or perfection of mutual care, interdependence, and vulnerability,” a divine realm in which “we become increasingly intertwined, thus more defined by our relationships with God and each other, more transparent in our need, more vulnerable, more eager to meet the needs of another, and ever replenished.”^[10]

I saw a vision of such a realm this week here in our Thanksgiving dinner. We had the largest numbers at that meal since before the pandemic. It was full, it was delicious, it was beautiful. I hear a further call to alert participation in God’s in-breaking reign as we prepare to break ground on our new kitchen in the new year as we await permits. I hear that call as we support one another in so many ways in this season of challenge. Our invitation this morning in this Advent threshold, is to practice our faith by putting on Christ, putting on the full armor of God, an armor of light, not in defensiveness but in humility and openness, in interdependence and mutual care, in vulnerability, looking forward to the transformation of this world, committed to participating in the in-breaking of God’s kin-dom here and now. May we take up that call together in joy.

^[1] Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 155

^[2] Meeks, 151-157

^[3] Meeks, 155

^[4] E.g. Rom. 6:13, 2 Cor. 6:6, 2 Cor. 10:4

^[5] Quotes in this paragraph are from “A Closing Pastoral Message to Trans and Nonbinary People, and Those Who Support Us” written by Aaron Scott and included at the close of “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: A Resource and Formation Guide for Supporting the Full Inclusion of Transgender People in The Episcopal Church and Beyond.”  

^[6] Apoorva Mandavilli, “Trump Administration Will No Longer Commemorate World AIDS Day,” New York Times, November 26, 2025:

 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/health/trump-us-world-aids-day.html; Olivia Le Poidevin, “Trump-era global funding cuts devastate HIV prevention programmes, UNAIDS says,” Reuters, November 25, 2025: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/global-funding-cuts-devastating-hiv-prevention-programmes-unaids-says-2025-11-25/

^[7] Kittredge Cherry and Jim Mitulski, “We Are the Church Alive” in ed. Letty M. Russell, The Church With AIDS: Renewal in the Midst of Crisis (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1990), 165, 166.

^[8] Lynne Gerber and Eureka Street Productions, When We All Get To Heaven: https://slate.com/podcasts/when-we-all-get-to-heaven

^[9] Lisa Powell, The Disabled God Revisited (New York: T&T Clark, 2023), 134.

^[10] Powell, 135, 137