John 1:47-51

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 that 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 heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

I woke just 5 minutes before the alarm set for 4:00 AM was to go off. I knew immediately where I was—I was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in a hotel room the morning after my completion of a workshop and the morning of my early flight back to Seattle. If I’d had the ability to say anything, it would’ve been: “Argh.” The training session had been intense—three days long, including having to study for and pass an exam. I was beat, really looking forward to getting back to Seattle, to Teddy, to my own bed.

I turned on the television just to provide me with some wake-up noise and stepped into the shower. Five minutes later, towel clad, I walked back into the room and began packing when I heard something—four words, four words that transported me back to Seattle, four words that brought confusion and panic. Those words were: “Washington Mutual bank failure:” I gasped and because I’d been ruminating about our Feast of St. Michael and All Angels today, what I also did was to utter a little prayer addressed to the Archangel Michael. It had something to do with someone, somewhere clad in armor and bearing bright, bright wings coming to my aid, coming to our aid.

And so with this, I entered the long line of Christian people, mostly Catholic or Orthodox or Anglo-Catholic, who have called upon an angel when they felt they needed a special and powerful Godly presence with them or felt as if they needed God’s protection from harm.

The word “angel” is a Greek word meaning “messenger.” Jews, Christians, and Muslims have embraced a belief in angels out of a felt sense that benevolent spirits inhabit our world, benevolent spirits sent from God, to guide, to suggest, to prod, and at times to defend us—to, as one Episcopal priest put it, “give us good vibes about good people and good circumstances, or warn us with bad vibes when we encounter people or circumstances that are not for the good.”

Popular culture has sentimentalized angels and so we can buy little pins and sticky notes sporting cherubs peeking out from behind clouds, wishing us their best or their cutest. What Biblical and extra-Biblical material suggests, however, is that the good and unseen power we refer to with the word “angel” is all about the delivery of unadulterated messages from God to us, messages that are fierce and formidable, more blaze than flicker, more torrent than trickle—fierce, confronting, proddding, loving messages from God.

And so in our passage from the Hebrew Scriptures, we hear of the dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder to mark the spot where a lonely, dispirited Jacob comes to realize that despite all his missteps, he has been pursued and chosen by a God who will stay beside him on the difficult road ahead. In our gospel, we hear Jesus’ own recasting of this same story. No longer will God’s presence be associated with a place where his chosen ones have been touched by God. Instead, Jesus tells Nathaniel that those same heavenly messengers, the angels, will be ascending and descending upon Jesus himself, God incarnate, the one through whom God’ s sustaining presence, God’s very self will be given to God’s people..

And here at least for me is the rub with celebrating St. Michael and All Angels this morning—the image of angels—Michael or Gabriel or Raphael—take our attention into the realm of an unseen world inhabited by bodiless, numinous energies who are for us. It is to this unseen world that we want to run for help when things become confused or the times become anxious.

At the same time we have the image of Christ Jesus, the one through whom the unseen world became seen, the one who forever changed the orientation of our lives to the humble work of love for issues that are within us and for the people and circumstances that are right in front of us.

And so while this feels like a time to call upon every angel we know, the Archangel Michael whose name means: “Who is like God?,” the angel Gabriel whose name means “the Strength of God,” the angel Raphael whose name means “God heals,” while it seems like a time to rally all the energies of the unseen, bodiless and fiercely benevolent love of God to come to our aid, at the same time, we must forever keep our gaze fixed on Christ Jesus, the one through whom the benevolence of God took on our flesh.

What this mean?

It means that during times like these we need and we should rightly seek grounding in a world that is not this one. But this grounding needs to be connected back to the real issues within us, the real people and circumstances that are right before us.

Another way of saying this is that angels are messengers but they will not do our work for us. They are bearers of news from an unseen world of the fierce love of God but it will be up to us to make that fierce love of God seen in this world.

And so with God’s help, it’s up to us:

• Up to us to manifest the Archangel Michael’s name which means “Who is like God?’ by questioning all in our lives that purports to take the place of God.
• Up to us to manifest the angel Raphael’s name meaning “God heals” by following the hints, the prodding toward our own healing and our call to be a healing presence to the world
• Up to us to manifest the angel Gabriel’s name which means “the Strength of God” not by wearing armor and carrying a sword but by being strong enough to persist in reconciliation and peace.

I hope you’ve noticed that I’ve avoided all references to movies or to television shows that focus on the presence of angels who show up to advance the action or to save, advise, warn, or otherwise influence the main character as he or she careens from one bad choice to another. “Amazing Grace” is one of those shows—and it’s worth mentioning. It’s, of course, the story of Grace, a female police officer in Oklahoma City, Grace, who in a desperate moment called out for help. And she gets what she asks for in the form of Earl, an angel who visits her and who bugs her day and night to do the right thing with her family, in her job and for herself.

Holly Hunter is Grace and has just the right personality and presence to pull off the combination of raw honesty, raggedy-ness, resistance to influence, capacity for insight and attraction to relationships that allow us to see what it’s really like to struggle with acting on the message of the fierce love of God when it comes our way, when it begins bugging us day and night to do the right thing in our families, in our jobs, in civic life and for ourselves.

What makes Grace able to act on at least some of Earl’s prodding is the same thing that transforms Nathaniel in our Gospel from being a bystander to becoming a follower of Jesus: the experience of being seen, known and received for who we are, the sense that behind all the prodding, all the invitations to follow where the fierce love of God leads is one who loved us first.

And so blessed Michael, blessed Raphael and blessed Gabriel, come to our aid, bring us the questions, the healing and the strength we need in this day and this time. But help us never to forget that the ladder by which you come to us, the portal by which you appear is Christ Jesus, the one whose flesh is our own, the one whose world we live in.

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Works Cited or Consulted

Grant Gallup Sermon for Saint Michael and All Angels September 29, 2004 

Marva Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down

 

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