Readings:
Sermon:
Our culture loves angels. They’re a fixture of greetings cards, of Valentine’s Day, Mothers’ Day and Christmas. There are birthstone angels and bumper stickers saying ‘Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly’. Angels are a staple of dodgy T-shirts and even dodgier chat-up lines.
The problem is that these sweet cartoon cherubs are a far cry from the angels of the Bible, calling out to one another across the heavenly vaults ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty!’ Biblical angels are a fearsome choir, arrayed for battle around the Lord of Light, celestial warriors with the praise of God in their mouths and a two-edged sword in their hands.
This vanguard of the host of heaven, rank on rank (as the hymn puts it) are described in the reading from the book of Revelation. They are led by Michael, one of the two angels named in the New Testament. The other of course is Gabriel, the herald who announces to Mary the good news of the coming of Jesus – the word ‘angel’ means ‘messenger’ and is closely related to the word for ‘gospel’ or ‘good news’.
But if Gabriel is the messenger of God, his fellow archangel Michael is God’s warrior, the captain of the angelic army. In fact Revelation also describes a second army of angels – the followers of Lucifer, the dragon, the devil. The prophet Isaiah had described the fall of Lucifer, originally one of the archangels but who set himself up in opposition to God. And Revelation gives us an account of the battle that followed – Michael and the holy angels fighting against Lucifer and his army, defeating him and casting him down.
Michael’s name means ‘Who is like God?’ – a rhetorical question, because the answer is ‘Nobody else is anything like God’! The devil’s mistake was to try to be God’s equal. Many people believe the universe to be the scene of an eternal battle between two eternal and equal forces, Good and Evil, forever balanced and forever in conflict.
But this is not Christian cosmology. For Lucifer is not eternal, but part of the created order. The devil is not God’s equal, but is subject to God’s sovereign rule. His power and authority on earth are only an illusion. For while a cosmic battle is certainly taking place, in fact the devil has already been defeated and all that remains is a mopping-up operation. The victory of Jesus on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead, mean that the devil has no lasting power over those whom God has already redeemed. Evil is still a present reality, but sorrow and pain and death are only temporary – Jesus has won, and so we have nothing to fear.
Remember the 72 disciples whom Jesus sent on ahead of him to proclaim the kingdom of God? When they returned, they were excited that even the demons obeyed the name of Jesus. He tells them that he ‘saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning’. In other words, the devil and all evil have been conquered. ‘His time is short’, says Revelation – he knows that his number is up. And the picture we get in that reading of Michael and All Angels calling out ‘Now have come salvation and power and kingdom and authority’ – is a depiction of a true and present reality, in which we can rejoice.
In the Gospel, Jesus describes the heavens being opened, and the angels ascending and descending. He is recalling the dream of Jacob in the Old Testament. It was a dream of a future promise, but in Jesus that dream has been fulfilled. Angels surround him, seated on his throne, leading the worship of God in heaven. Michael and Gabriel and all the rest of the host of heaven point us firmly beyond themselves, towards the Lord God, the almighty:
At his feet the six-winged seraph,
cherubim with sleepless eye,
veil their faces to the presence
as with ceaseless voice they cry:
alleluia, alleluia,
alleluia, Lord most high!
Questions:
- Have you ever seen an angel? What would you say to someone who tells you they have seen an angel?
- Different angels lead worship, or bring good news, or fight against evil. Are all these things different activities, or different aspects of the same thing?