Ambassador In Chains

Good MORNING. Paul’s description of himself as an ambassador in chains led me to one of history’s most underrated stories, so let’s start there. It was a long time ago, the year 1219. Everyone was dirty back then. It was the middle of the 5th crusade, a great war between Europe and Islam, and a special ambassador was sent on a mission, not for a European king, but for the Kingdom of God.

Here’s the catch. You know how sometimes people say they are on a mission from God. And you know they’re either really arrogant, or crazy. Well, this time, I would bet on him telling the truth. In the middle of a war between European and Muslim forces in Egypt, this Italian says, “God is sending me to go and try to bring peace, not with an army, but by preaching the Gospel to the Sultan of Egypt.” Sounds crazy. He traveled 4 months from Italy to the Nile, sent a message across the enemy lines, and then surrendered to the Muslims, trusting them to take him to their leader. Absolutely crazy! But everyone knows his name, because the ambassador was a 37-year-old named Francis of Assisi.

Francis believed that God wanted him not to join the crusader forces attacking Muslims, but to go and preach the Gospel. Many crusaders thought he was being foolish, even his cardinal, but he went, and spent weeks talking with the Sultan about who Jesus was, and why he had come, all while the fighting raged on between the armies.

Sadly, the sultan didn’t convert, but this, I believe, is the exact picture Paul is trying to paint of what our job is to be as Christians, ambassadors not for an earthly Kingdom, but a heavenly kingdom.

Our Ephesians epistle lesson this week continues from last week, where, hopefully some will remember, Paul was chained to a Roman soldier, awaiting a verdict that could result in his beheading. Facing death sharpens people’s priorities, and Paul’s chains became instruments to advance the Gospel.

As we look at Ephesians 6, I want to visit that image again, as Paul develops it even more. There are two important pictures here. The most popular is the soldier he is chained to and looking at. Borrowing some of the imagery we saw in Isaiah 59, Paul describes the Roman soldier’s armor and uses it to give a picture of the armor we as Christians should be wearing. Then, at the end, he reshapes the way we think about strength and power in the Christian life.

Paul asks for prayer that “words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.”

Pause there for a moment. Ambassador. In chains.

There is a tension in that line that I want us to carry with us. An ambassador is someone who represents a king in Paul’s time, or a nation in ours. Someone who speaks with authority, and carries a message from his government to another government. An ambassador has dignity, and the weight of a nation behind him.

But, like Francis, Paul is an ambassador who is a captive in a foreign land. He is not standing in a palace, he is sitting in a cell. He is not wearing a sash, he is wearing chains, attended not by servants, but guards.

If we start at the beginning of Ephesians 6 we get images of belt and breastplate, helmet and sword. The Roman soldier wears armor to intimidate, to enforce, to dominate.

Paul looks at those soldiers and their armor, and he sees something very different. The armor he recommends is not about violence, it is about faith, truth, righteousness, peace, salvation, and the word of God. Those are not the tools of domination, they are the tools of faithful witness.

Think of David and Goliath. The King Saul wanted his champion, David, to dress in armor, take up the sword, show off his strength. But David walks out with a sling and a trust in God. The world thinks power is what you can do to others, Paul shows us power is what God can do through you. Even in chains.

And what is the most important thing for an ambassador to be able to do? To share the words and message of their king, of their nation, with others. An ambassador needs words and boldness. Paul is not asking for freedom. He is asking for prayers that God will give him words that cannot be silenced by shackles. This is Paul’s theology of weakness. He has learned, as he tells the Corinthians, that when he is weak, then he can show off how strong God is. Here he wants to speak boldly, because the boldness is not his, it is God’s.