At this writing, four members of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Iraq remain hostages under threat of death. Their captors belong to a shadowy group naming itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. The deadline for killing these hostages passed five days ago, with no word yet about their fate.

The Ephesians passage at the heart of this week’s lesson begins with the exhortation to take "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (6:17 NRSV). The Bible Study Guide for this week exhorts us to a battle with worthy knowledge of the Bible, a spiritual skill that parries each of the Devil’s thrusts with an incontrovertible "Thus saith the Lord!"

The Christian Peacemaker Teams display their spiritual blade on the left side of their home page. They begin with "You shall not kill" (Exod. 20:13); run through "Love your enemies" (Matt. 5:43–44), "all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matt. 26:52), "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends" (John 15:13); and end with "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom. 12:21). The CPT workers in Iraq were laying down their lives for their friends, attempting to overcome with their version of good what they saw as evil when four of them were taken in the name of another sword.

So where is the Devil here? In which direction do we point our swords of the word? I think we get some help on these questions from Siroj Sorajjakool’s Spectrum Sabbath School commentary from two weeks ago, in which he warns us, "It is the ’I’ that gets in the way. It is this ’I’ that separates."

Ephesians presents, as the subtitle of the General Conference Bible Study Guide puts it, "the gospel of relationships." In Christ, the wall between Jew and Gentile, the most fundamental human division in the cosmos from Paul’s point of view, has been broken down and the two made one. Any spirit that separates, that destroys relationships rather than builds them, is one of those "principalities and powers" against which the author of Ephesians warns us we must wrestle.

As theologian Walter Wink has established so persuasively in his book, Naming the Powers, Paul’s language of the powers refers not to individualized personal demons, but to ideas and attitudes, "isms" and "ologies," and the institutions and human rulers they create in order to enforce these principles on all human beings under their power. All the principles boil down to a single one, the principle of "I." Here are some examples:

• Race/ethnicity: "I and my stronger, smarter, cleaner kind over the other weaker, dumber, dirtier people." This is the type of "I" principle, as it played out between Jew and Gentile, that it was Paul’s special mission to proclaim conquered in Christ.
• Gender: "I and the other stronger, smarter, cleaner men over the weaker, dumber, impure women—and over any males weak, stupid, or dirty enough seem like women to us."
• The State: "I and my party over all, using government (including police and military) to rule rightly throughout our society and throughout the world." This was the principle of communism, a fallen quest for redemption through domination and violence.
• The Market: "Look out for Number One; I and my property before all things." A fallen quest for redemption through acquisition and ownership.
• The Nation: "I and my country over all other nations of the earth." A fallen quest for redemption through patriotism.

What strikes me about all these instances of "principalities and powers" is that none of them is wholly evil. Indeed, it is hard to imagine living without the order, security, and sense of identity we derive from them. They are all part of God’s good-but-fallen creation. It is not wrong to find meaning, pride, or pleasure in ethnic heritage, masculinity, or patriotism. The evil is in accepting the claim that any of these powers is God, that any of the meanings or belongings they give us is ultimate, so basic that we must kill to preserve them or die trying. "It is the ’I’ that gets in the way. It is this ’I’ that separates."

Jesus Christ, the living Word, in contrast, created us all, including the principalities and powers that move us to rebel against him. In his death and resurrection, he conquered these powers and reconciled all of us to God (Col. 1:15–20).

In this time of human tumult and war, we may too readily become confused about where we may find and know the living Word of God. A year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. president George W. Bush identified the ideal of America as the hope and light of mankind. "And the light shines in the darkness," the president said. "And the darkness has not overcome it." These words from John’s Gospel were ripped from their context in order to claim that America is the Word that was with God from the beginning, the Word that became flesh, that was life itself, the life that is the light of humankind (John 1:1–5).

That is a claim that no power in all of God’s creation can sustain. Whenever any such claim is made, we may confidently lift up our sword, the Spirit, the Word of God, and say, "No, you are not, we are not, God. We will not allow you to separate us, with your false sense of ’I,’ from the reconciling love of God for all humankind."

The Christian Peacemakers now held hostage may have been killed by the time people read these thoughts. I pray not. Scores of people who know their ministry—Iraqi and American, Christian and Muslim and unbeliever—are praying and pleading for their lives. I, too, pray that their captors may overcome the blindness and fear that comes from their own fallen nationalism, their false sense of "I" that separates them in self-righteousness from God and humanity.

I take inspiration from these ambassadors of the gospel of reconciliation, however, remembering that Paul, too, was in chains under threat of death when he made the following request:

Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. (Eph. 6:19, 20 NIV)

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