St Michael and All Angels
St Michael and All Angels
A sermon by Ross Meikle, Missioner For Young People
Sunday 29 September 2024
The temptation on a sermon on the feast of St Michael and All Angels is to either try to explain angels (to somehow make sense of them) or to explain them away (to disregard them somehow).
I aim to resist both of these. Angels are beyond simple explanation, so I won’t try to simply explain. But also they are a fact of our faith, so I cannot simply explain them away. And they’re not just a fact of our faith – but also other faiths – the Abrahamic faiths and beyond.
Angels are present throughout the Scriptures… and we are co-worshippers with them every time we gather to praise God. An especial reminder in the Eucharistic prayer – with angels and archangels and all the host of heaven singing: Holy Holy Holy…
They’re also very present throughout our Cathedral, and chatting with one of our Guides on a Wednesday about angels – she drew my notice to the strength, power and majesty that angels are depicted as having in our stained glass. Keep your eyes open and find them. I also asked some of the young adults who work at the Cathedral about angels. Rosie in Marketing talked about liking St Michael and the sense of protection he offers. Jacob our Organ Scholar asserted their importance in understanding our worship and concluded that, like dogs, angels are for life not just for Christmas.
Insights into angels that I have found helpful have come from the Norwegian writer Jostein Gaarder, and especially his novel ‘Through A Glass, Darkly’ – named after words from St Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church. The books tells the story of a girl dying from terminal cancer who is visited by an angel, Ariel. They have conversations about faith, life, and the nature of the angel. I have since lost the book or given it away but one of my favourite reflections that has stood with me is the conversation around gender.
The angel does not have a gender – they are neither male nor female. And there is a reminder for me of the perspective that has given me as certain friends of mine have come out to me as either non-binary or transgender. The perspective offered by angels is what I’m interested in today, as it happens….
A quotation from the book online reads:
“We see everything in a glass, darkly. Sometimes we can peer through the glass and catch a glimpse of what is on the other side. If we were to polish the glass clean, we’d see much more. But then we would no longer see ourselves.”
I like the idea that we are not supposed to see the realm of angels and God’s Kingdom in Heaven too clearly – that instead we get glimpses through Scripture and perhaps personal mystic encounters. That our faith in what is beyond is kept a mystery.
There are books and studies that seek to clean the glass and jump to notions about ‘everyone will have a job in Heaven’ or ‘we can finally ask Shakespeare what he really meant’… However novel or interesting heavenly speculation may be, I find that all too small and all too great a distraction from – as Gaarder puts it – ourselves and the world we live in here and now.
The danger with an obsession with how angels ‘work’ or what Heaven may be like can become a distraction from the Christian imperative to see, find and bring about God’s kingdom and will here on Earth as it is in Heaven. And that obsession leads to gatekeeping: who does and who doesn’t have access. Who is in and who is out. Whose belief is correct and whose belief is flawed. Who has understanding. As if those are the things that matter.
Instead, we get a glimpse so that we may have perspective. For all those who have an unhealthy obsession with people who are non-binary, we get a glimpse of a worshipping community where gender is irrelevant… as it ought to be with us, according to St Paul, for in Christ there is no male nor female. For all those who think that God is distant and uninvolved, we get a glimpse of the work of Gabriel who delivers good news to Mary, Joseph, shepherds and magi. For those who are sick or troubled, we get a glimpse of the ministry of the angel Raphael, who heals and dispels demons. And on this feast where Michael is named, for all those who live in fear and despair that evil will win out – we get a glimpse through Michael of God’s protection of us, and victory of good over evil.
Each of those angels are the agents of Christ from the beginning – and in Christ, the work of those angels is revealed and fulfilled in Jesus: good news, healing, and victory over evil. We dismiss the angels – their ministry and worship – at our own cost. And each of us can embrace this angelic potential in our own spiritual lives and perhaps open up for ourselves a whole new world and way to connect with God.
Yes, Christ is absolutely all that is necessary for salvation, the glimpses offered by these and all the angels are a kindness, and a model of those whose worship and ministries exist only for others, not for themselves. So with us. As we seek to walk closer to God, the angels give us perspective that our prayers and our worship and our lives ought to take us away from ourselves and our own desires, our own obsessions and our own egos … and instead to grow in compassion for the lives and the faith of others.
The angels. A reflection and outworking of Christ’s redemptive work in the world. An abundance of God’s grace in helping us along the way in living a life of love after God’s own heart.
And. Not just for Christmas. Angels are for life.
Amen.