Michaelmas Sermon – Sunday 29th September
Twenty years or so ago, when I was a curate, there wasn’t much room for angels. Biblical angels, real angels had rather gone out of fashion. Nowadays, it seems, angels have made a bit of a comeback in popular culture. But these appear to be rather insipid saccharine angels – in shops you can buy glass or crystal angel figures, or an angel in my pocket: all sorts of commercial little good-luck angels.
Real angels, strong angels, still aren’t as present to us as they used to be. And this is true not only in terms of devotion and spirituality, but in academic theology as well.
All through the last century until the late 1990s hardly any theologians gave angels much attention. Before this, one of the few people to have given angels any sustained study was a man called David Gregg who was an American Presbyterian in the late 19th century. Gregg was a good Calvinist, and as such was deeply concerned that no one should be idle, even in heaven. So he drew up a detailed work schedule for the angels, based on some of the descriptions of the book of Revelation:
Mondays trumpet blowing
Tuesdays pouring out the vials of wrath
Wednesdays rolling the wheels of providence
Thursdays hurling thunderbolts etc etc.
Unfortunately in the end poor Mr Gregg became so absorbed by his vision that he was committed to a mental institution in Brooklyn, New York.
It is said that after this he became an Anglican!
On most days in the Christian year we can more or less ignore the question of angels but today is Michaelmas, this is St Michael’s Mass – and so we rather have to confront the issue of angels head on today.
Some people may have been brought up with the idea of a guardian angel – perhaps that when you were a child you were awarded a sort of celestial bodyguard to keep you from any kind of harm.
But with the world as it is today, the idea of guardian angels raises more questions than it answers: Where are the guardian angels for the people of Ukraine or the Sudan today? For the Israeli hostages or all the thousands of refugees in Gaza and Lebanon?
Where are the guardian angels over the children and teenagers on our streets who are the victims of knife crime or gang violence? No: there are just too many theological difficulties with the traditional guardian angel idea to make it very satisfying.
And if we look closely at the New Testament, we find that the image of the guardian angel is not there very much anyway. Michael and the other angels who inhabit the Scripture are not generally occupied in plucking people from physical harm. If we look, they seem to be doing something else.
One is visiting Joseph, whose fiancée is pregnant - without his actually having done anything that might result in that condition: at least as far as he can recall. Another is having a heart-to heart with Mary as she puzzles about the child growing inside her.
There are several making a big noise on a hillside on the outskirts of Bethlehem to some puzzled shepherds. There is one on the mount of Olives with Jesus on the threshold of his arrest and execution; and there are one or two with Mary Magdalen and the other women at an empty tomb: women who are wondering whether some cruel hoax has been played on them.
And all of these people have one thing in common: all of them, every one, is standing at a boundary place. Joseph standing at the boundary between suspicion and trust. Mary standing at the boundary between doubt and faith. The shepherds at the boundary between indifference and wonder… Jesus at the boundary between life and death; the women at the boundary between utter desolation and resurrection joy.
All of them are looking back on what has happened in their lives, everything that has gone before, and they are asking: What has it all been about? And they’re saying: Given all that has been, can I really step forward in faith into an unknown future?
And there are the angels, there at the boundary-places of human experience.
And strangely enough, they all say the same thing, these angels: they all declare to the people at the boundary: Don’t be afraid. It’s God’s future you are stepping into and God’s purposes are sure. All things are working together for good. Don’t be afraid.
I often think it is helpful that Michaelmas falls at this point in the year, when so many people have started a new term, a new experience at school or college or moving to new opportunities at work. Many at this time of year are at a boundary place in their lives, when they have to look back and think: What has it all been about? And ask themselves: Given all that has been, can I commit myself to an unknown future?
And each Michaelmas comes the reassurance of the angel voices saying: Don’t be afraid. It is God’s future ahead and the promises of God are sure. All things are working together for good.
Often later in life also, we find ourselves at boundary places – of retirement perhaps, or loss of the opportunities that we took for granted; the boundary places of illness or bereavement. We may find ourselves asking: Given all that has been; can I really step forward into the future and accept that I am in a new place with new relationships and new influences? Here again, if we allow ourselves to listen, we will find that the voices of the angels – those voices we hear every time we come to worship - are saying: Don’t be afraid. It is God’s future you are stepping into and God’s promises are sure. And all things are working together for good.
And there are times when it is we ourselves who may be able to speak the words of the angels to other people: to people who stand at the boundaries between doubt and faith, hope and despair, life and death: the boundaries where dragons prowl around. This is never an easy place to be – but so often it is a privilege, strengthened by the times we have joined with the angels in worship here, to speak for other people those words of the angels:
Don’t be afraid. It is God’s future that we are stepping into together and God’s purposes are sure. All things, all things are working together for good.