The Armor of Light
November 30, 2025 • First Sunday of Advent, Year A
Isaiah 2:1-5 • Romans 13:11-14 • Matthew 24:36-44 • Psalm 122
I.
One of the images for the Church that has faded away recently, at least in our tradition, is the idea of the Church Militant. The vision of the Church Militant is that we are but one branch of the Church, joined to the Church Triumphant, which is the saints in heaven. Our branch, though, which is comprised of those of us who are still on earth, continues to fight and struggle against sin and the devil.
This imagery is particularly prominent in nineteenth-century hymnody. The hymn “For all the saints” describes us as soldiers who must be “faithful, true, and bold, fight[ing] as the saints who nobly fought of old” – that is, we must fight battles the way the saints did in their day so that we may also attain that “yet more glorious day.” The text of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” invites a direct connection to war, comparing the church to a “mighty army” doing battle against the gates of hell. Even the more sanitized text of “Lift high the cross” says that under the triumphant sign of the cross, “the hosts of God in conquering ranks combine.”
But although these metaphors undergird some of our most beloved hymns, we don’t often think of ourselves as soldiers of Christ, marching under his banner. And perhaps that’s not a bad thing. These military images of the Church seem to have reached their peak during the era of colonial Christianity, when the Gospel was spread by force, associated with imperial power, and used to subjugate people rather than to bring them into the light and life that God desires for each of us in Christ. If not understood fully, these images may seem to invite us to direct the army of God at other humans, rather than at the spiritual forces of wickedness. They may even tempt us to believe we can spread the kingdom of God by force and fear, rather than by love and hope. So I think we do well to minimize some of our imperial and military images for the Church, lest they lead us to promote a false gospel that is not, in fact, Good News to those who hear it.
II.
At the same time, though, we are presented today with a peculiar image from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, which is echoed in the Collect: “Let us cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” By way of explanation for this instruction he writes: “you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”
I think Paul is imagining us as being in that pre-dawn time before a great battle. We can’t sleep anymore because of our great anxiety about the finality of what is about to come. The anticipation hangs thick in the air. Those last preparations are made, in a hushed silence, not so much out of reverence as with a sense that there is nothing more to be said. “You know what time it is”: the decisive moment is about to arrive.
So what is this moment that Paul has us girded up in anticipation for? What is this decisive battle for which we are preparing?
It is the second coming of Christ, in which, as we say every Sunday, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” For Paul, and I think for us, this arrival – this advent – of Christ is not a far-off legendary event to dream about but rather, as today’s Scriptures exhort us, an imminent event for which we ought to be prepared.
In fact, that is really the preparation that this season of Advent invites us into. While Advent is, of course, the season leading up to our celebration of the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day, it also uses that event as a springboard to help us think about and prepare for his second coming at the end of time. Jesus himself says that he will be coming “at an unexpected hour,” like a thief in the night, or like the great flood that caught everyone except Noah unawares.
These are not comforting images, but neither is the converse. For Jesus not to return would mean that God has already done all he can for us and that things will just go on the way they are now: that the daily suffering of innocent people, the unjust systems of oppression that harm all of us, and the personal forces of wickedness that attack at each of us have no real end. That would make us a people who have no hope.
Rather, our hunger for God’s justice is our prayer for Christ’s return—Come, Lord Jesus! The prophet Micah says that God “does not retain his anger for ever, because he delights in showing clemency.” Our prayer is that at the last, because we are Christ’s heirs, “we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.” Our hope that we confess each week is that his return will be awful in the original sense of the word: filling us with awe at the majesty and might of his presence, his body still bearing the scars of his crucifixion but robed in the dreadful majesty of his resurrection, pronouncing that judgment on us that is full of both justice and mercy.
III.
So Paul commands us to armor ourselves with light, to cast off the works of darkness [which he describes in great detail] and to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
This linguistic parallelism is striking. The armor of light is clothing ourselves with Christ. And where have we been clothed with Christ but in baptism? Many of us wore a white garment at our baptisms, signifying precisely this clothing. So we who are baptized already possess this armor. We have chosen to walk as children of light. We have renounced sin, death, and the devil. We have turned to accept Jesus Christ as Lord. And we have already died with him so that we may also be resurrected with him.
What we must do now, in this season of expectation and anticipation, is hold that identity close. For two thousand years we have waited, and for all we know we may have to wait two thousand more. But Christ is coming into the weary world once more. To quote “For all the saints” again: “And when the strife is fierce, the battle long, steals on the ear the distant triumph song, and hearts are brave again and arms are strong. Alleluia!”
In this season of Advent, we remind ourselves of the distant—yet imminently close—victory song of our Lord. We clothe ourselves with the armor of light by reaffirming and continuing to grow into our baptismal identity. To reinvoke the battle metaphor, this is a time to reassess our own spiritual fitness. If we are soldiers of Christ, then we ought to train for that role. What training do you need to do to be ready? For “the night is far gone and the day is near.”
Our baptismal vows provide some guidelines for spiritual fitness. It doesn’t mean being perfect. It means being repentant for our sin and seeking God’s forgiveness, sharing in the teaching and fellowship of the Church, participating in worship and prayer, and proclaiming the Good News in our communities. And the opportunities for practicing spiritual disciplines in this community are many.
I invite you, then, in this season of Advent, to consider: how will you strengthen your armor of light? How will you prepare to meet Christ however he comes, whether as the baby in the manger, in the bread and wine at the altar, in the face of a stranger, or face to face?
The King shall come when morning dawns
and light triumphant breaks;
Hail, Christ the Lord! Thy people pray,
come quickly, King of Kings.
A poem for reflection
Come, Lord Jesus! Do I dare
Cry: Lord Jesus, quickly come!
Flash the lightning in the air,
Crash the thunder on my home!
Should I speak this aweful prayer?
Come, Lord Jesus, help me dare.
Come, Lord Jesus! You I call
To come (come soon!) are not the child
Who lay once in the manger stall,
Are not the infant meek and mild.
You come in judgment on our fall:
Help me to know you, whom I call.
Come, Lord Jesus! Come this night
With your purging and your power,
For the earth is dark with blight
And in sin we run and cower
Before the splendid, raging sight
Of the breaking of the night.
Come, my Lord! Our darkness end!
Break the bonds of time and space.
All the powers of evil rend
By the radiance of your face.
The laughing stars with joy attend:
Come, Lord Jesus! Be my end!
--Madeleine L’Engle, in From the Weather of the Heart (1978), reprinted in The Ordering of Love (New York, Convergent, 2020).
~The Rev. Charles Martin