Preached at St Luke’s Creemore, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, for the Regional Ministry of South Georgian Bay, 29 September, 2024, the Feast of St Michael and All Angels.
Readings for this Sunday: Genesis 28:10-17; Psalm 103:19-22; Revelation 12:7-12; John 1:47-51
This Sunday is serving triple duty for us.
First, because tomorrow, Sept 30, is the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, it’s an opportunity for us to reflect on how we as God’s people have not always recognized our indigenous brothers and sisters as fellow Canadians and as fellow Christians. As Bishop Andrew said in this week’s letter to the Diocese, we are called “to build together a country, and a Church, that – as we promised in our baptism – respects the dignity of every human being”.
Second, today is an opportunity for us to celebrate the way we are starting to be church, which we call regional ministry. Isn’t it wonderful to look around and see a full church, to see new people, and to think about how we can pool our resources, ideas, and talents? As I’ve said this month, this is a new way of thinking that breaks with our old ideas of churches as siloes or as franchises. One example of how we’ve been doing that lately is our Tuesday bible studies hosted by All Saints and ably led by Olivia Crowe from Prince of Peace, with a mixed group from both churches. This shared project is a great example of how our churches can offer more when we work together.
Thirdly, today in the life of our church is the Feast of St Michael and All Angels. While St Michael and All Angels would be a great name for our amazing regional clergy team, that’s not what we are celebrating today. This feast, St Michael and All Angels, falls on Sept 29 in the church calendar and as our scripture readings have shown us, is an opportunity for us to think about those mysterious and wonderful creatures that we call angels, and also to think about their place in our faith and in Christian belief.
Now you may not think much about angels in your day to day faith life. That wouldn’t be surprising, they don’t occur frequently in scripture, they aren’t mentioned in the creeds, and as part of the spiritual realm they are largely unseen and their role can seem unclear to us. Indeed, for some of us, even for professing Christians, it may be difficult to believe in angels because we are so strongly influenced by rationalism and materialism.
And yet angels are everywhere in popular culture. Think of:
Angels in the Outfield
Angels with Dirty Faces
Charlies Angels
Touched by an Angel
Angels in America
Angels are used to sell everything from cream cheese to lingerie. We think of angels getting their wings, and we think of them as being cute and bumbling, like Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life. It may well be that there are more people who believe in angels than there are people who believe in Jesus, which, if so, isn’t surprising, because where as Jesus makes demands on his followers, angels in popular belief often seem like fairy godmothers.
So what if anything are we as followers of Jesus supposed to think about angels? While they are mysterious, angels are in scripture and in the teachings of the church, and so we can say a few things about them. We can start by saying that they are created by God who made the heavens and the earth. So they like us in that they are creatures; they are not gods and we are not meant to worship them. Unlike us, they are spiritual beings who are able to live in the presence of God, but they also have the ability to move between spiritual existence and material existence, which is why they can appear to humans as God’s messengers. Indeed, the word angel comes from a Latin word meaning messenger.
The psalmist describes angels as “mighty ones who do his bidding, and hearken to the voice of his word” (Ps 103: 20). The word “mighty” explains why angels can be terrifying when they choose to be seen, while the phrase “do his bidding” tells us that angels are obedient to God’s will and are agents of God’s purposes. And God’s purposes for us are good and loving, which is why the first thing angels usually say in scripture is “don’t be afraid”, which tells us that their role is to bring us closer to God who wants to save us.
While the work of angels is largely invisible, we get a glimpse of their work in our first reading (Genesis 28:10-17), Jacob’s vision of angels ascending and descending the ladder from heaven to hearth, leads us to think that there are many angels (see also Matthew 26:53, when Jesus refers to “twelve legions of angels”. So why are all these angels going back and forth between heaven and earth? We don’t know, but if the holy angels exist to do God’s bidding, and if God’s wants to save us, then surely it’s safe to say that the angels are working on our behalf.
In a fascinating podcast, Fr. James Brent says that the work of the angels is to draw us closer to Christ. Anything that prompts us to pray, any impulse that leads us to an act of charity, he says, might be an angelic influence. Likewise, Fr. Brent suggests that the idea of the guardian angel is not just a childish story, but has a wholesome purpose that we should take to heart, because as the story of St. Michael suggests, angels can be seen as protectors.
Angels are thus opposed to the demonic forces who try to undo the work of God and who seek to pull us away from God. Who or what is the demonic? It’s something we should take seriously, but not live in fear of. I’ve always liked what C.S Lewis said, which is that it’s a mistake to think too much or too little about the forces of evil. But if we agree that evil exists as a force or power in the world, then we can also say that angels exist to help God save us from these forces. The story of St Michael in our second lesson is an example of how the angels serve God’s primary purpose, which is to resist evil and death. Jesus consistently opposes the forces of evil. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ first miracle is to free a man from an evil spirit. Christ wishes that all of us are freed from the power of evil and death, and the angels exist in part to bring us closer to Christ.
I realize that much of what I have said may seem esoteric and far-fetched. The idea of our world busy with invisible, divine activity is difficult for a materialist mindset to accept, and almost as difficult for those who see God as being far-off and detached from the world God made. But why would a God who made the world out of love, and who wants what is best for us, keep a distance from that world? As Archbishop Rowan Williams has written, the possibility of angels remind us that created world is actually more mysterious that we can imagine, “pulsing with something unmanageable, terrible, and wonderful, just below its surface”. And surely, if the world is full of God’s activity and full of God’s angelic agents, then should we not strive to care for it, as God’s angels care for us?
So in this homily, I have suggested that angels are part of the Christian story, that we glimpse them in scripture, and that they exist to help God in God’s work of saving us. It’s not childish to believe in angels. If the idea of a guardian angel comforts you, then embrace it, as part of your faith. It’s okay to ask our angel for help when we don’t have the concentration to pray, and when are sad or in despair, we can ask our guardian angel to quiet our troubled minds and lead us back to Christ. If that is a comforting idea for you, then I encourage you to take it to heart. After all, if God loves us, and if God created the angels to help us, then the angels must also love us.
It is not childish to believe in angels. Their existence is testified in scripture and in the teaching of the church. We may not see them, but we can draw comfort in their presence as a sign of God’s commitment to us and of God’s involvement in our daily lives. And, as a final thought, we can see them as role models, for if angels exist to protect us, to help us, and to guide us, then we can initiate their work by protecting, helping, and guiding others. In that way we can serve and love God in our earthly realm, as the angels serve and love God in the spiritual realm, for God’s will for us is that, when we are raised on the last day and perfected, we too may become angelic.
No comments:
Post a Comment