Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

September 30, 2007
The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (transferred)
Mark Lloyd Taylor  

“What do you believe about angels? Where do they fit in your theology?”

Someone asked me that question two decades ago at the end of an interview for a teaching job I really wanted. Despite hardly sleeping at all the night before – in a strange bed where I wasted hours anticipating questions and agonizing over answers – I had a good interview. I thought I spoke with particular brilliance on the mystical experiences of medieval Christian women. Then the question about angels.

I suppose I believed in them; but honestly, I had never given angels a moment’s thought. My theology was directed above and below the angels: above, thinking long and hard about God’s love and God’s power; below, pondering human beings, their injustices to one another, and Christian responsibility within the political order and the natural world.

I do not remember my answer to the question about angels. I suspect it was theoretical and idiosyncratic, extrapolated from my views of God and human beings. What I lacked back then was any vivid, experiential connection to angels rooted in communal, liturgical practice. The patterns of prayer here at St. Paul’s have furthered my education.

In the meantime, our culture has gone and rediscovered angels. Cards, books, pictures, little statues – whole retail establishments selling angelic goods; movies and a prime time television series. Who is your favorite Hollywood angel? John Travolta? Andre Braugher? Or that adorable redhead with her Irish brogue? Whichever you prefer, they have all been cast as “guardian angels”; their primary role, in the words of today’s collect, to “help and defend us here on earth.”

Without denying that angels do help and defend human beings, acknowledge with me that our readings for this Feast of St. Michael and All Angels show them, instead, doing angelic things only indirectly related to human affairs. Jacob dreams of angels traveling between heaven and earth on a ladder (Genesis 28:10-17). John sees warfare among the angels (Revelation 12:7-12). Nathanael is promised a vision of angels ascending and descending on Jesus Christ (John 1:47-51).

This morning a different insight from our collect entices me, that God has “ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals” – the distinct ministry of angels, their secret life. I believe that even when, especially when, they are not directly involved in our human lives, angels may nevertheless benefit us. A dream or vision of the secret life of angels can lift us up out of our loneliness and cause our problems to shrink down to their true proportions as in the light of morning.

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So, the story of Jacob’s ladder.

Jacob was not simply weary with travel one day. He was running for his life, trying to escape his twin brother Esau’s vow to kill him in revenge. Jacob’s story unfolds a family drama as old as Cain and Abel and as contemporary as Brad Pitt and Aidan Quinn in “A River Runs Through It” or Amir and Hassan in The Kite Runner. Hatred between siblings and competition for parental approval. A parent who favors one child over another. Spouses who settle their own scores through the children. Running away from home to start over. Staying at home to pick up the pieces. Marrying the wrong person. Spending, or committing to spend, an inheritance before the parent has died. Familiar themes, aren’t they?

Born grasping at his brother’s heel, Jacob later preyed upon Esau’s vulnerability to cheat him out of his birthright. Then, colluding with his mother Rebekah, Jacob impersonated Esau, deceived old father Isaac, extorted the patriarch’s blessing, and in a single instant stole from Esau both his position as eldest son and the inheritance meant to secure Esau’s well-being. Esau is understandably furious. He plots to kill Jacob the deceiver. But Rebekah, always on the lookout for her favorite son’s interests, warns Jacob of Esau’s intent. Jacob leaves home immediately, hoping to flee through the wilderness to the ancestral land Abraham and Sarah inhabited two generations earlier. Jacob finds himself all alone, in a strange and desolate place, with the ground for a bed and a stone for his pillow.

I imagine that despite his weariness, Jacob could not get to sleep right away; or, having fallen asleep, might have awakened in the middle of the night. I imagine sleepless Jacob reliving and regretting the past, the deceptive ways he had exploited Esau’s weakness, Isaac’s blindness, and Rebekah’s preferential treatment. I imagine sleepless Jacob terrified of the future. Would he survive the wilderness journey? What sort of welcome would he receive from his mother’s kin? Having given up everything to go into exile, how would he make a life for himself? Where could he acquire flocks and land? What about children? What about a wife? How worthless now his inheritance and birthright back home!

Finally sleep comes and Jacob dreams. He dreams of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. The angels of God ascend and descend on the ladder. But the angels do not come to help and defend Jacob; they go about their own God-given tasks quite independent of Jacob’s plight. Nevertheless, his glimpse of their secret life enables Jacob to survive. God suddenly stands next to Jacob – not before him, but beside him, sharing the vision – and speaks reassuring words. Jacob awakes fully in the present. “Surely the LORD is in this place – and I did not know it,” he says. “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16-17). For once Jacob the heel-grasper forgets about himself. He sees through the fog of deceit, regret, and fear to the reality of the world around him. He discovers he is not alone; the wilderness teems with the angels of God. God’s presence fills him with awe: the house of God in a strange and desolate place; a stony pillow the gate of heaven.

Of course, this is not the end of Jacob’s story. He has a long, long road to travel. He will deceive again. And the tables will be turned on the deceiver – seven years of labor to marry his beloved Rachel, only to find her sister Leah given to him instead. This insistence on the rights of the first born daughter must have felt to Jacob like payback for his deception of Esau and Isaac. No, Jacob’s ladder is just the beginning – a small, almost imperceptible turn one night from despair to recovery, the first dawning light of transformation. Jacob’s dream was a gift. He did nothing to deserve it, could do nothing to extort it. Decades later, from this small turn, Jacob would take responsibility for his actions. Once again in the wilderness at night, Jacob must wrestle with an angel of God and return to face his aggrieved and estranged brother. A second gift; Jacob anticipates retaliation, Esau offers forgiveness.

This morning as you glimpse the secret life of angels on Jacob’s ladder, or the next time you cannot sleep at night, look at yourself differently. In the angels’ ascent from earth to heaven, see your human journey to God. Climb the ladder. You desire connection to God and separation from all that holds you down. Ascending with the angels, be assured of God’s accessibility. Your bed of regret and fear is the gate of heaven. Then descend with the angels. You do not strive in vain. The ladder reaches all the way down to earth. God is gracious. God reaches out to you. In the wilderness of your life God makes a house.

You are not alone. All around you unseen minds and hearts are ceaselessly active. Beyond your exile and your return, your despair and your recovery, the world teems with the angels of God. Dreams of their secret life promise to lift your eyes up from your loneliness. Seen from the angels’ vantage point, the problems that cast such giant shadows during your sleepless nights shrink and resume their true proportions as in the light of morning. Surely God is in your place and you did not know it.

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Our gospel lesson retells the story of Jacob’s ladder. Listen again. “When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you get to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’” (John 1:47-51).

Jesus replaces Jacob’s ladder: he becomes the new house of God and gate of heaven. Ascending on Jesus the ladder, our journey to God is supported and our separation from all that holds us down strengthened. Descending on him, God’s gracious outreach is made visibly, tangibly one with our own humanity.

A person, Jesus, who walks and talks and encounters people all over the land of Israel replaces God’s presence in that one awesome place. The house of God and the gate of heaven stand before everyone who meets Jesus, including Nathanael.

The focus shifts in Nathanael’s story from a human dream of angels to God’s vision of human beings in and through Jesus. Before Philip invited him to “come and see,” Jesus had already seen Nathanael, seen him in his truest self, seen him perhaps as Nathanael had never seen himself – a guileless descendent of Jacob the deceiver. Before Nathanael believed in Jesus, Jesus believed in Nathanael. Long before Nathanael confessed Jesus as Son of God, the eternal Word confessed Nathanael as God’s beloved child.

This morning as you watch with Nathanael the angels ascending and descending on Christ Jesus, or the next time you cannot sleep at night, believe in your bones that you and the person to your left and the person behind you and all of us in this room and on this planet have always, already been seen by God. Not spied on by the cosmic shopkeeper of your childish fears; not judged by the gaze of a vengeful brother or disappointed father. Treasured instead by a proud divine mother whose cosmic womb bore you; a faithful divine lover who heals your deepest hurts; a rambunctious divine friend who delights to play and work alongside you.

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But how difficult it is to think ourselves into new ways of acting. Thank God, our Sunday liturgy invites us to act ourselves into new ways of thinking. For in a few moments, we will leave behind human prayers of intercession in which we ask God to help and defend us and those we love. At the gate of heaven that is our altar, we will climb Jesus the ladder with hearts, hands, and gifts raised to heaven. In this house of God, we will invoke the descent of the Spirit on that same ladder. Then we will step into the secret life of the angels and join their pure song of praise: “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord.” And as Christ’s body, we will be sent out into the world carrying the house of God and the gate of heaven with us; sent out to wrestle with an angel, to return and face Esau, to watch for Nathanael under the fig tree. Our dream of the angels of God gives way to Jesus’ vision of us. Jesus’ vision empowers us to see others as they may never have seen themselves: the very house of God and the gate of heaven.

Amen.