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St. Michael and all Angels, 09/29/2013
Sermon on Luke 10:17-20, by Paula Murray-Stuckert
17The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" 18He said to them, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
He was very young, not quite eleven years of age. He had been near death when the helicopter crew brought him into the trauma bay. In fact, he coded, his heart stopped on the operating table not once, but several times. After surgery he was moved into pediatric intensive care, and his parents were told that it was touch and go. For weeks he was in and out of surgery as one complication after another required treatment. When I met the lad and his family a second time they knew he was going to live, but that didn't mean he was going to live easy. He was paralyzed from mid-back down. He would never walk again. He would need help with the most basic self-care tasks for the rest of his life.
Young boys, a loaded shotgun under the bed in the parents' bedroom, and more bravado than smarts led to an all too familiar tragedy. You would expect the child and most especially his parents to be overwhelmed and overcome by grief and guilt, but I didn't hear a word that spoke of the parents' guilt for their mismanaged firearm or the child's grief at his much changed life. Instead, I heard tales of angels; angels lighting up the trauma bay, angels sitting on the edge of the bed in the intensive care unit; angels guiding the surgeons' hands. Nowhere in that triumphant recital of angelic visitors did I hear a thing about the parents' failure to lock up a gun or a child ding-donging around with a dangerous weapon or even praise for God's help through a terrible time. Every time we got close to something painful, something real, the conversation turned again to angels.
Even a new made chaplain can understand why mom or dad might want to talk about angels instead of addressing the stupidity that led to that loaded gun under the bed in a house full of kids. A child might want to talk about what makes him special in a good way, as opposed to special in a sad way. Nor am I contending that angels are not real; Scripture certainly attests to them. But way too many people out there have heads full of angelic fluff, so full, in fact, of that angel magic that there is no room for Jesus Christ.
So, for instance, you can smooth out life's bumpy road by consulting with the Archangel Michael online through something called crystal attunement guided meditation. No need to live in faith and hope, trusting in a good and gracious God for your needs present and future. When you die, some believe you become an angel, meaning there are Christians with visions of themselves pirouetting about the heavens in flowing gowns and tresses like some Victorian lady out for tea. If this were the case, though, there would be no need to preach and teach the resurrection of the dead. Guardian angels have long been a part of at least the folk theology of the Church. Some early Church Fathers, taught that baptized Christians or human beings generally were watched over by an angel (Origen, 183-254 ad and Jerome, 342-420 ad) who guides and protects. The notion was popular enough that in the early seventeenth century a feast day for guardian angels was instituted in the Roman calendar. Fast forward 498 years, angels are everywhere, from the stone angel trumpeting Christ's return in the local cemetery to the framed picture of the guardian angel watching two little children cross a bridge over rushing water. That's the image I'm most familiar with; I grew up with just that picture hanging over the light switch in my childhood bedroom.
It comforted my mother to hang it there; to leave us in the care of the angels over the night hours when she was not watching. And, it was a comfort to me also as a child. And clearly, some angels have a protective function according to Scripture. We read, for instance, "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways" (Psalm 91:11). Angels care for Jesus during his forty day trial in the wilderness (Matthew 4:11; Mark 1:13), and in both Matthew 4:6 and Luke 4:10-11 we hear the Devil assure our Lord he can throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and come to no harm for "it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you.'" Angels warn and protect Lot and his family, encouraging them to leave Sodom (Genesis 19), and angels lead and protect Israel (Exodus 14, 23, 32, 33, and Numbers 20). It is the Angel of the Lord that preserves Daniel and his companions from the fiery furnace (Daniel 3) and the lion (Daniel 6), feeds Elijah as he flees persecution (1 Kings 19:5), and releases Peter from his prison (Acts 15). But nowhere are angels called "guardian angels" in Scripture, nor is it assumed that , they guard everyone.
What can be assumed from Scripture is that angels are creatures of God, wholly and completely dedicated to their Creator. The angels are the "ones who do his bidding, obedient to his spoken word....his ministers that do his will as we hear in this morning's psalm. Those that were not totally obedient to their Maker were cast from his side, among them Lucifer whom we call the Devil these days and his followers. It is with these narcissistic fallen beings with which heaven and earth do battle under the leadership of God, until Christ returns and the victory already won is made manifest in the resurrection.
Angels are, like humanity, creations of God, but unlike humanity, spirit and not flesh. As immortal spirits, angels do not make families, as human beings do (Luke 20:36). Though they may appear to be human, as they did to Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18:2-6; 19:1-3), his brother Lot in Sodom, Daniel (8:15; 10:16) as he struggled to interpret a vision, and as they may yet appear to us, as strangers in need of hospitality (Hebrews 13:2), at other times their description is quite odd. There are multiple attestations, especially in the apocalyptic and prophetic works like Revelation or Ezekiel of creatures with multiple sets of wings, eyes all around, and body parts that look like lions or eagles. In other places in the Bible, including the scene at Jesus' tomb (Luke 24:4 ) or the ascension (Acts 1:10) the angels are described as beings of light, dazzling in their brightness like Jesus at the Transfiguration, reflecting the glory of God. It is not surprising , then, that human beings confronted with the holiness of God's angels are struck with terror. Too close an encounter with the holiness of God, even if indirect, is a threat to human life. And so the first words of the angels are often, "Fear not."
The angels work singly, as Gabriel did in the divine birth announcement of Luke, and as hosts or armies, as witnessed, again, in the Gospel of Luke, when hosts of angels announce the child Jesus' birth. They are supernaturally strong, rolling the stone away from Jesus' tomb with ease, but they are not all powerful. Angels are knowledgeable, but even they do not know the hour of Christ's return (Mt. 24:36).
For all of their startling and quite extraordinary characteristics, angels are bit players in the divine drama of salvation, not the stars. Like any actor who plays a secondary role they move the events of the play or the narrative forward but they are not themselves the subject of the story. Angels do important things, but the purpose of their work is to point to the star, to the character at the center of the action, and what he or she accomplishes. Apart from their protective function, angels appear to point to the Triune God in one of several ways. First, the angels constantly worship God (Hebrews 1:6) and praise him. From everlasting to everlasting they bless his glorious name (Nehemiah 9:6), crying, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory" (Isaiah 6:3). God alone is worthy of worship, and the angels in their many voices direct heaven's and earth's praise to his glory.
While the angels bless and honor the Lamb that was slain for our sin (Revelation 5:13), some among them serve as footmen or generals in the spiritual battle waged between God and his Adversary. Many a western Christian is unsure of what to make of the apocalyptic and militant nature of the battle fought between the Archangel Michael and the Dragon of Revelation 12, or indeed, of any notion that there might be such a thing as spiritual warfare or angelic contributions to holy wars waged long ago. It is the conclusion of that battle that Jesus references in our Gospel reading this morning. Michael defeats the dragon, which represents Satan or the Devil. The Dragon, overcome, falls to earth. Rejoicing with the seventy disciples sent out on their own to witness to the coming kingdom of God at the success of their mission, Jesus says, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning." What Jesus meant by that was their successful preaching and teaching helps lead to the defeat of God's Adversary, for remember, the Dragon falls to earth only to continue the battle here. Even as the angels fight the good fight for humanity and indeed, the whole of creation, so do those who follow Jesus even now, contending with sin and death for the righteousness and the life of the people of God.
God's people, his Church, wage that battle with God's Word and the aid of the Holy Spirit. The last, and the greatest task of the angels as described in the Scriptures is to do likewise, to proclaim God's will, his Word. The word angel is angelos in Greek or malakh in Hebrew, both of which means "messenger." From the announcement of Sarah's not yet conceived son's name to Moses' burning bush to the cowardly Gideon's captaincy of the army of Israel to the announcement of the incarnation or the resurrection, the angels bring word to human beings that God is about to do a new thing in them, through them, with them, for the salvation of his people.
God is about to do it. Not the angels, not even the human beings receiving the message. It is God's work done through the angels and our own poor selves, and his Word we proclaim. We do not draw attention to our own small part in his work. It is never about us. It is always about what God has done through Jesus Christ for a sin weary, war weary world. The battle was won on the cross of Christ, and vindicated when the tomb was emptied of his newly resurrected body. Yet the skirmishes between the forces aligned with death and sin and those committed to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit continue. We fight on the side of the angels when we contend daily with our own deadly tendency to curve in on ourselves, to make everything all about us, to impose our will on his creation. We also fight on the side of the angels when we struggle, too, with the evil born of individual sin and then magnified by human malice and corruption so that whole organizations or nations are embroiled in conflict and its dread followers, corruption, selfishness, greed, impurity, poverty, famine, and death. But those struggles, waged on earth and in heaven, will come to an end. We rejoice in God's victory. We give thanks that our names are written in the book of life. We pray, "Come Lord Jesus," and we await his return. We confess our sins, praise him for his blessings, and feed and clothe our neighbors in need. We wait on him who committed himself entirely to our salvation. And finally, we join in the angels chorus, and we praise Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and for evermore.