“Needful Things”

Ephesians 6:10-20

August 24, 2003

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

I would like for us to begin our sermon this morning with a story. I do not mind admitting to you that I am not all that fond of the story, frankly because it and stories like it scare me at a deep level. I think that I was in seminary when I first heard this story.

Let me set the scene up for you. The story happens in a small town. You know this kind of town, don’t you. It is the kind of town where everyone knows everyone else. There is a coffee shop in the middle of the town’s square where most of the men and some of the women gather every morning for a cup of coffee after the first things of the day are done and the kids are settled in school. It is the kind of place where on Friday nights, the entire town gathers at the high school for a football game or travels to the neighboring town where the fifteen and sixteen and seventeen and eighteen year olds are trying their best to make the state play-offs. It is the kind of town that is policed by a local sheriff and a couple of deputies and where crime, for the most part, doesn’t happen. Most of the calls to the sheriff’s office are for help getting cats out of trees and things like that. Even the name of the town seems inviting. After all, wouldn’t you like to live in a town whose name is Castle Rock? Now I do not know if it is there, but can’t you just imagine a motto on the sign as you enter the town. There under the town’s name and it’s population, according to the latest census might be these words, “The Perfect Hometown.” That is the way that it was until the devil came to town, literally and physically. In this story, he arrives in a vintage, black, Mercedes Benz and opens up a shop whose name is Needful Things. For a few days the town watches and walks by the newest store in town. Brian, a curious nine year old, is the first one to notice the open sign on the front door. He gently pushes the heavy door and as it opens, it pushes a bell on the frame letting the devil know that Brian is there. The devil greets Brian as he begins to look around the store, not really finding what he wants. Finally the devil asks him, “Brian, what do you really want?” With a gleam in his eye, he says, “A 1956 Mickey Mantle card. My dad and I have the entire collection of 1956 cards, everyone that is, except Mantle’s.” It seems that out of thin air, the devil pulls out a card. Not only is it a 1956 card, it is also signed, “To my good friend, Brian.” As a collector of cards, Brian knows that there is no way that he could afford such a card, but he asks for the price anyway. Well, it seems that the devil, or Leland Gunt, as he is called in this story, is in a bargaining mood. The devil is always in a bargaining mood. So for only ninety-five cents and a simple deed, an act, that no one else would know about, Brian has the card of his dreams.

One by one, throughout the course of this story, almost all of the folks in Castle Rock come into Leland’s store, Needful Things. The devil offers them a choice, a chance to buy something that they think that they need. The cost is never that much, but every purchase requires a deed of misunderstanding. For Brian, his needful thing was the baseball card. For another it was a letterman’s jacket in which the man, when he puts it on says, “This was a part of the best hour of the best day of my life.” For another, it was a small figurine and for still another it was a small chalice. Everyone, in this story, has a needful thing, including the Catholic priest and the local Baptist preacher.

Here is where the story turns ugly. Do you remember me saying that there was a price tag that went along with these purchases? The exchange of money was not significant, but the deeds that accompanied them were. You see, the devil had little Billy throw apples at a lady’s house and it just so happened that the woman blamed another woman, with whom she was fighting. They confront each other and it is not a pretty sight. Time after time, instance after instance, there is a conflict that is fueled by a misunderstanding. A deed is done against someone a deed done against someone else, when all along two persons who seem to be at odds with each other, think that the deed is done by the one who they are at odds with. Can you see why I do not like this story and stories like it? Even the Catholic priest puts a knife into the four tires of someone’s truck. It is these deeds that tear up this small, friendly, Mayberry kind of town.

There is a great moment near the end of the story, when the town’s sheriff, the only one who has not purchased a needful thing, goes to see the priest. He finds him in the church and he asks, “Do you believe in the devil, father?” The priest answers, “I guess that I have to. You can’t have one without the other.” Then the priest turns to the sheriff and asks, “Do you believe in God, Alan?” Alan answers, “What does the devil look like, Father?” The priest answers, “Look like? Well, I suppose that he looks like you and me.” The sheriff says, “So he could get his claws in us without our knowing it, making us do things that we normally would never do, terrible things?” The priest answers, “No, I don’t think so, Alan. People have a choice.” Alan then looks at the priest and says that the devil is in their town. The priest looks back at him and says, “The devil is always here, Alan. He’s always in our hearts, but with the good Lord’s help we can cast him out.” With a determined look in his eye, Alan says this line to the priest, “Father, the devil is out there in our streets!”

I think that the apostle, Paul, would say, “Amen” to that. For sure it is one of his main concerns as he turns toward the end of his letter to the Ephesian church. You have heard me say this, but let me say it again. This letter begins with a discussion of who God really is and His power that is at work in the world. In the early part of the letter, actually in a word of prayer that he offers the Christians in Ephesus, he claims victory for all of us when he prays, “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead, seated him at his right hand in heavenly places, far above all power and dominion and authority and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church.” So Paul has claimed that God has defeated everything, including death, with the resurrection. In this early part of the letter, Paul says who God is and near the end of the third chapter, says that we must be rooted and grounded in Him. Once Paul has established who God is, then he turns the discussion to who we are and what we must do. Paul wants the church, among other things, to be unified, to be one body and in order for that to happen, there are certain things that we must take care of and certain behaviors that are appropriate. Paul covers those things in the fourth and fifth chapters of this letter and they include things like speaking the truth, dealing with anger in a timely manner, working honestly, using words that build people up instead of tearing them down, forgiving one another, and imitating God. Paul even offers words on how we are to treat each other in our households. The fifth chapter of Ephesians is probably one of the most misinterpreted passages in all of scripture. When Paul says that wives are to be subject to their husbands, he is not talking about submitting graciously. When sermons like that begin, sometimes I say, “Preach it, brother.” and then I’m nudged by Susie who is sitting next to me. I am just kidding. I cannot tell you how many weddings that I have been to where that scripture was used and used in the wrong way. Preachers sometimes miss the word from the fifth chapter, “Husbands love your wives. He who loves his wife love himself.” I am sorry, that’s another sermon for another day.

But then something happens by the time that we arrive at the tenth verse of chapter six, our scripture lesson for this morning. Can you see the sharp and unmistakable turn that Paul makes here? It all begins with the word, “ Finally.” What is this final thing that Paul wants to say? Well, Paul wants the folks in Ephesus and the folks in Little Rock to know that evil won’t just go quietly into a dark night. I wish that it was that easy, but it is not. Evil is real, I think Paul is saying here, and that there is something that we must do to resist it. Isn’t the next line a great biblical line? “Put on the whole armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” You see, the real danger for the people in Ephesus was maintaining and not giving up on their faith. Paul, their pastor, sitting in a prison cell, writes to them about not giving up. Can you see him there? He looks old now and tired. He is not sure that he himself will see life outside of prison walls. Perhaps he is hunched over a desk, with a quill pen in his hand. He has written all these great words and he has tried to encourage them with a last word, an important word. “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh.” But you know that it is. For two and a half chapters, Paul been talking about the struggles with anger and licentiousness and wrangling and all of those other kinds of battles that the Ephesians and people like them struggle with every day. It is a struggle with them, those kinds of things, but there is a bigger struggle, thinks Paul. How can he let them know about how to handle the bigger struggle? Perhaps Paul looks up from his desk and sees the prison guard just outside his cell, with his full armor on, his helmet, his breast plate, his shoes, his sword. Maybe Paul sees all these things when the idea comes to him, “Ah, yes. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God.”

Church, I want you to do me a favor this morning. Go with me to Paul’s prison cell. If you are a little leery of being inside, stand outside the cell, near the bars. Give the guard a once over. Look at him up one side and down the other. Notice the things that protect him. We don’t have time to look at all of the pieces of the armor, but could we look at a couple of them this morning?

First, let’s look at the soldier’s helmet. Now Paul says that the helmet is the helmet of salvation. But what does it protect, really? It protects the head. You might even say that it protects the mind. What some of you may or may not know is that in my growing up years, I was a pretty good baseball player. For a while I was a second baseman, but then one day at our Little League practice, Kermit Smith hurt his hand. The coach asked me if I could catch. I had never caught before, but I was willing to give it a try. I loved catching for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I was close to every play. Kermit’s hand got better, but by then I had won the position. I loved putting on the gear, the shin guards, the chest protector, and the helmet. Church, would it surprise you to know that several times for several years, I got hit in the head with baseballs and bats? I know, it explains a lot, doesn’t it?

I wonder if there are two more vulnerable places in our walk with Jesus than our heads and our hearts? The head and the heart together help us make just most of our decisions, don’t they? That is what is so spooky and so telling about the story that I shared with you at the beginning of our sermon. Leland Gunt made offers and the people of Castle Rock, and they made choices. They chose the needful thing that required them to do something that they really didn’t want to do. I think that it was the theologian, Flip Wilson, who first said, “The devil made me do it the first time, ever since then, I’ve been doing it on my own.” Do you know that feeling? Do you do things, do you say things, do you think things that later, given even half the chance would take back? Have you ever thought, “Why did I do that? Why did I say that?” Listen to another line or two from the opening story. All chaos is breaking out in the middle of town. The priest and the Baptist preacher are out there fighting when the sheriff offers a word of reason, “He came to destroy us, to make us destroy ourselves. We’re all decent people and he’s preyed on our weaknesses, our hatreds, our greed, our prejudices, our fears. He runs on hate and he’s used it against us.” Now friends, you need to know first that evil is real. There is no denying it in the world. It is real and it is everywhere and there is nothing that you can do about it. These things that Paul says protect us are gifts from God. They are things that God has put at our disposal. These things are at your finger tips so that you can stand against the wiles of the devil. These things are gifts from God because goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than death. Death has been swallowed up in victory, if God is for us who can be against us!

I have just got to say one more thing, and I know that it is getting late. Near the end of the passage with all of the things on us protecting us, Paul gives us the best thing that helps us, God’s greatest gift to us. Prayer. Prayer. Paul says to pray at all times, to pray for one another, and to pray for him, specifically for him to say bold things. Evil is real and powerful and the only way to survive it is prayer. Let us pray.

(The opening story is a Stephen King story and now movie. I do not recommend it for viewing in any shape or form. The language in it is horrible. I have not read the book and so I cannot recommend it either. But here is what I know, the story provides a nice lead in to this scripture lesson).