The Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066 was one of the most famous battles fought in England. Upon the death of King Edward the Confessor, the royal council, following the dying king’s request, named Harold, earl of Wessex, king. William, Duke of Normandy had been designated Edward’s successor, and had secured Harold’s agreement to his accession to the throne of England. On hearing of Harold’s action he gathered an army of 15,000 men to enforce his rival claim.

Tostig, Harold’s disenfranchised older brother who had been passed over for the earldom and now the kingship, joined forces with Harold III of Norway to attack from the north. Harold soundly defeated this force at Stamford Bridge, in the north of England, on September 25, 1066, but had to march south immediately to meet William’s army at Hastings. In the battle Harold was defeated and killed. John Richard Green tells the story of the last moments.

"At three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still raged around the royal standard, where Harold's huscarls stood stubbornly at bay on a spot marked afterward by the high altar of Battle Abbey. An order from the duke at last brought his archers to the front, and their arrows flight told heavily on the dense masses crowded around the king. As the sun went down a shaft pierced Harold's right eye; he fell between the royal ensigns, and the battle closed with a desperate melee over his corpse."

Retired U.S. Army General John McGiffert, a member of my congregation in San Antonio, was a descendant of Walter Giffard the Younger, one of the four Norman knights who slew the dying king.

The use of pitch-covered arrows, ignited before flight, increased their destructive nature, as fire terrified horses as well as frightening soldiers. The possession of a shield made all the difference in protecting oneself against such a weapon.

St. Paul speaks about the flaming arrows of the evil one, to remind us of the danger of being under attack. It is a vivid image of the destructive way in which we can be assaulted. These arrows can come out of nowhere when we least expect them. We can feel ambushed as they burst into flame around us, and threaten to pierce our souls. Unexpected events that happen to us may be used by the forces of evil to wound us. We never know when it is going to happen. The devil wants to sow confusion and consternation in our ranks so that we cannot defend ourselves and fight back.

St. Paul is reminding us again that this attack comes from an external enemy. The arrows originate in the evil one. We must not believe that they originate in ourselves. Too often, when we are tempted to doubt, and despair, and fear, because of these attacks, we blame ourselves. These attacks will come upon us no matter how strong in the Lord we may be.

Sometimes these attacks are concentrated in a particular time frame, on individuals or groups, in an attempt to destroy the work of God. Jesus experienced an intense attack at the beginning of his ministry. Then, Luke records, "When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time." (Luke 4:13) The devil planned to come back and attack Jesus at an opportune time, a time of weakness or stress, such as he experienced in the garden of Gethsemane. The devil waits in ambush for us to attack when the opportunity comes.

Arrows were most dangerous when they found the chink in the armor, the vulnerable spot, like King Harold’s eye. The attacks that are most dangerous to us are those that find our weakness, where we are most vulnerable. It behooves us to identify where that chink is to be found, where our weakest point is, so that we can apply the shield of faith. Is it memories of painful episodes, or difficult people, or unhappy childhoods, or disappointments, a sense of failure or regret? Is it that which commands our greatest attention, our highest priority, so that it distracts us from what God wants us to focus on? Is it that which feeds our self-esteem, our ego, our pride, so that there is no room for worship of the living God? Is it that which ministers to our comfort level so that we are not willing to venture forth on what God is calling us to do and to become? Are we so concentrating on protecting ourselves from misadventure, from possibilities, from fears, from rejection, that we leave ourselves vulnerable to being attacked by inertia, by cowardice, by self-indulgence? Where is the chink in our armor as a culture, as a nation, as a society? Where can the forces of evil terrorize us by finding where we are most vulnerable? What is being attacked in our day? Where are we being attacked?

Bill McKibben gathered 2,400 hours of videotape - all the programs offered on TV during one day - and after spending a year studying them asked, “What would the world look like if this was your main source of information? His distillation of “all those thousands of game shows and talk shows and sitcoms and commercials” was the single notion, “You are the most important thing on the face of the earth. Your immediate desires are all that count. Do It Your Way. This Bud’s for You.” Consequently, he concludes, “We are led daily, hourly, into temptation.” (McKibben, “Returning God to the Center,” p.47)

What are we to do to protect ourselves? Take up the shield of faith. My seminary motto was taken from 1 John 5:4, "This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith."

Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes, "Faith here means the ability to apply quickly what we believe so as to repel everything the devil does or attempts to do to us... So I define faith in `the shield of faith' as meaning the quick application of what we believe as an answer to everything that the devil hurls at us." Therefore we must know what we believe if our shield is to be effective. See the use of “know” in 1 John 5:13-20.

The victory claimed by faith is that achieved by Christ on the cross. “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Colossians 2:15) Christ defeated the hostile supernatural powers, the hierarchy of spiritual forces that are in rebellion against God. Christ has ‘disarmed’ these forces of evil. He has stripped the powers and authorities just as a conquered antagonist was stripped of his weapons and armor and put to public shame. God in Christ ‘made a public spectacle of them.’ That is to say, he exposed them to public disgrace by exhibiting them to the universe as his captives. The added words, ‘triumphing over them by the cross,’ expands this idea. The picture, quite familiar in the Roman world, is that of a triumphant general leading a parade of victory. The conqueror, riding at the front in his chariot, leads his troops through the streets of the city. Behind them trails a wretched company of vanquished kings, officers, and soldiers – the spoils of battle. Christ, in this picture, is the conquering general; the powers and authorities are the vanquished enemy displayed as the spoils of battle before the entire universe. To the casual observer the cross appears to be only an instrument of death, the symbol of Christ’s defeat. Paul sees it as Christ’s chariot of victory. There is no earthly or spiritual power which hasn’t been defeated by Christ.

Faith is subjective and points to its object - God. Hebrews 11 lists the great heroes of the faith. They believed in God, they accounted him able to do what he had promised. That was their secret. Faith points to God, not to our abilities, to resist the devil. To try to rely upon ourselves, apart from God, to protect ourselves from our spiritual enemies, would be foolish.

Abraham is the man who, above all others, characterized faith, because God had revealed himself in a vision: "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, and your very great reward." (Genesis 15:1) "For the Lord God is a sun and shield." (Ps.84:11)

Dr Victor Matthews has written a Daily Affirmation of Faith, and a Warfare Prayer, which I am making available for use as a shield when you feel that you are under attack.

When Paul exhorts us to "take up the shield of faith", he is reminding us that we need to get hold of it, and not take it for granted. It is too late to scramble around for the shield after the arrows have started raining around us. We would be dead in the ambush. We need to take up our shield of faith daily. We protect ourselves by taking it up, and training ourselves how to hold it up.

In science fiction the intergalactic travelers use protective shields to protect their space-craft. They activate their magnetic or electrostatic shields in order to deflect the enemy’s attack. We must activate our shields of faith if we are to protect ourselves against the forces of darkness. We activate our shield of faith, we take it up, when we pray, affirming our faith, claiming what we believe.

“Grant me faith, O Lord God;

more than acknowledgment of your being,

more than a deep veneration for Jesus of Nazareth,

more than an honest repetition of Creeds,

more than convinced assent to Catholic doctrine;

But a faith like Christ’s faith

undiscourageable, invincible, glowing, and complete.

A faith in my Father,

who made me and all the world,

who loves me and has redeemed me by his own Son;

a faith in my Savior,

who loved me more than his own life

and imparts to me his own Spirit;

a faith in the Holy Spirit,

breath of faith, giver of faith, life of faith;

a faith creative and abounding in good works,

not in word but in prayer,

indefatigable, indomitable, moving mountains;

faith all from you, in you, and unto you,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

my Lord and my God.” (Eric Milner-White)

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