September 30, 2007 St Michael and All Angels, All Souls' Episcopal Church

St Michael and All Angels
John 1: 47-51

It was several years ago in an ice storm, that a man was involved in a terrible accident on the Turner Turnpike. His car was “totaled”, (almost twisted like a pretzel), but he was unscathed. In the investigation, he said to a trooper with a smile, “My guardian angel saved me.”

September 29^th is the Feast Day for St. Michael and All Angels. This weekend we are celebrating this day and the sermon theme will be different from former sermons. We will focus solely on angels and how they, with faith, can have and want to have eternal significance in our lives!! The Christian Church adopted the belief in angels from its Jewish heritage and used it to express the experience of the unseen spirit world of guardian beings sent by God to minister to you and me.

The collect that we have already heard says it very well. May I read it to you again:

O Everlasting God, who has ordained and constituted the services of angels and men in a wonderful order; Mercifully grant that, as thy holy angels do thee service in heaven, so, by thy appointment, they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
amen

All Souls is a church of tradition. We, who are orthodox and seek to abide by Biblical truth, look to the past in our church history and seek to touch the feelings and the thought processes of our early church leaders. What do they say about angels?

During the English Reformation, of the several festivals that appeared in the medieval missals, this is the only feast to Angels the reformers retained. This particular one was especially popular in England since Michael was the patron saint of  knights. In fact, going further back in the 5^th century, a basilica was dedicated to St. Michael on the Via Salaria………a little North of  Rome……. the first church in Italy in honor of an angel

Michael and Gabriel are the only angels mentioned by name in the canonical books of scripture. In an old cosmological myth accepted by the Jews, there was recounted a rebellion of Satan and his cohorts against God at the beginning of time, whence they were cast out of heaven  At the final struggle at the end of time, between the forces of good and evil, Michael, the guardian angel of  Israel will lead the angelic hosts in definitive victory over Satan, who shall ever thenceforth be excluded from the heavenly realm. Our Epistle from The Book of Revelation has given dramatic and vivid expression to this story, and no one has surpassed the poetic grandeur of Milton’s  Paradise Lost in portraying the cosmic scope of God’s warfare against the forces of spiritual wickedness in high places.

The name ‘angel’ literally means ‘messenger’, whether human or non-human, though sometimes in the Old Testament, ‘angel of the Lord’ is used as a synonym for the Lord Himself. We see this in the colorful story of Jacob and the ladder that went up to heaven, in the story of Moses with the burning bush, we see this in the story of Gideon being called to deliver Israel, etc. The Heavenly Visitor always betrays His identity by word or act, and in each story is at some point treated as God.

Now……..belief in angels as attendants upon God’s court, ministers of His Will, defenders of God’s people was a fairly late development in Hebrew religion. The doctrine was not accepted by the Sadducees, but it was fostered by the Pharisees and in general was very popular with the people. Neither Our Lord nor the apostles ever questioned the existence of angels. In fact, we heard this in today’s Gospel, and, if you remember, angels ministered to Jesus after he was tempted in the wilderness and, as recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus said that He could pray to the Father to have 12 legions of angels sent down.

Modern man, trained in scientific habits of thought, are naturally skeptical about angel-ology and tend to view the whole subject as belonging more to the realm of poetic imagination rather than actuality. There is, however, no necessary reason to deny among the manifold creatures of God’s creation, there exist spiritual beings not subject to the limitations to time and space who serve God to His praise and our benefit in ways beyond our imagining.

St. Francis De Sales once said, “ Make yourself familiar with the angels, and behold them frequently in Spirit; for without being seen, they are present with you.” Do we believe this? Do we who are so competent and independent and sophisticated and hi-tech feel any need for angels? Well, my friends, I hope so. Let us not forget that we are dealing with the mysterious…….we are dealing with the “Heavenly Hosts”, we are dealing with what we can not and probably  should not try to categorize and put down in black and white. God is God. We are not God (even though at times we do try to usurp His role in our individual lives). The heavenly hosts which sang so joyfully that Blessed night in Bethlehem when The Son of God was born into this world, were there for a purpose. I sense a spontaneity here as if those angels were bursting with such a love and joy, they could not be contained. God’s Great Adventure was launched into time and space as it had never been done before with a choir of angels.

So let us not forget that you and I do indeed live among men, but we should acknowledge that there are airy hosts, blessed spectators, sympathetic lookers-on that see and know and appreciate our thoughts and feelings and acts as God continually does send His angel-messengers on errands of Eternal Grace.

Could it be that angels are sent to “touch” us prompting us to do God’s Will. As we know each of us has the Divine within us. Each of us has been created in the Image of God; it is an integral part of our being. We are surrounded by the infinite……there is mystery!  Jesus told us this so many times! How each of us must be awake to the signs around us!!

A man is walking along the concourse of a big city airport.  Hundreds of people move intently and seriously as “ships that pass in the night” seemingly oblivious to any thing or any one other than their own destination and purpose.  The pace seems breathless.  And the man is caught up in the movement of the crowd.  But then, standing near the newsstand, was a young woman, standing still, her arms held high, her hands moving excitedly in the gestures of  “sign language.”  The man stopped and observed, looking first at her and then in the direction of her gestures.  And, yes, across the busy concourse, he could see, through the crowd, the young man, arms held high above the crowd, hands moving excitedly in his response to her.  The man could see the excitement in their eyes, the laughter in their smiles, the obvious love in their exchange, even in this unlikely place! They were communicating and responding to signs

We live in a busy, fast paced, serious, anonymous and distracted world.  But God keeps trying to get our attention and shows us signs. I feel that He sends us angels messengers to get our attention and be awake to God’s Will for us in every situation we encounter. It is here in the midst of our busy world, that we should respond:  “Here I am, over here. Help me to respond to you, O Lord”

You see, so often you and I get “tunnel vision” and fail to shift our eyes to what is above our personal situations. We busily ignor God’s Signs.  Too often we are satisfied with too little. Too often we can’t comprehend the miracles and messages in our lives because our view is too small. We must also seek those things that are not satisfied by reason alone. We must allow the stirrings of faith in our very being!

 We believe, in faith, that Jesus Christ will come again. Perhaps God will use St Michael and His angels in His 2^nd coming as He used angels in His 1^st coming..

From the Gospel of Mark, I read:
“And then He will send His angels and gather the elect from the four winds and from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” 

So it is good for us as we honor St. Michael and all angels and to realize the infinite dimension of God’s love for us as His angels help us each day to do His Will.

 Believe in these angels!

Our Holy Scripture, our tradition and our reason tells us that they are there!

Let us all be awake for their signs, and allow them to fill us and help us and defend us  with God’s Heavenly Grace!!

“In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”