... And with all the company of Heaven

Today, 29 September, is the feast of St Michael and All Angels. Michaelmas, they used to call it, a term which still survives in Michaelmas daisies, which are in bloom at this time of year. It is a Quarter Day, when, back in the day, rents had to be paid, and rural employment contracts ran from one Michaelmas to the next, so you would have Michaelmas fairs in various towns which were hiring fairs – people whose jobs hadn’t been renewed, for whatever reason, would stand in lines with some token showing what their trade was – a dairyman, for instance, would probably have a piece of straw – so farmers in need of labourers could come and hire them.

You haven’t to pick blackberries after today, either – the old superstition is that the devil comes and pees on them or spits on them or something, and they are no longer worth eating. Basically, it is the end of summer and the start of autumn.

But who were St Michael and all the angels? Do angels even matter? If so, why do they matter to us? And what, if anything, does this festival mean to us today?

What are angels, anyway? They appear to be a different kind of creation, not human at all. I know we talk casually about someone “growing their wings” when they die, particularly of children, but in fact that’s probably not what happens. Our children will, I’m sure, be with God in heaven in some way, but probably not as angels!

There seem to be several different kinds of angels – Michael is described as an archangel, but he is the only one. Although tradition says Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel are also archangels, the Bible doesn’t describe them as such. But there are also seraphim – they are the ones with six wings that Isaiah saw, you may remember: two wings to cover their heads, two to cover their feet, or more probably their private parts, since “feet” is often a euphemism for that in the Bible, and two to fly with. And there are cherubim – not the chubby little baby angels of popular culture, which are more properly called putti, but very grand beings indeed. Two of them were stationed outside the Garden of Eden, with a flaming sword, to stop Adam and Eve going back in there after the Fall. And there were golden cherubim represented on the Ark of the Covenant, and images of them woven into the curtains of the Ark of the Covenant. And God, apparently, spoke to Moses from between the cherubim. And when the Temple was built, the Ark was placed between two great statues of cherubim, wooden statues overlaid with gold.

It’s amazing how often angels of various kinds do appear in the Bible. I did an on-line search, and they seem to be mentioned in practically every book! There are only two mentions of an Archangel, in one instance explicitly Michael, but pages and pages of angels, cherubim and seraphim. So they obviously do matter.

But what do they do? What’s the point of them? Certainly Michael is depicted as a warrior prince, fighting and defeating the evil one. And there is a book in the Apocrypha called the book of Tobit – if you have access to an Apocrypha, either a dead-tree version or on-line, have a read of it sometime. It’s actually a good story that hangs together. Tobit is a pious old man who goes blind when a bird poos on his eyes when he is asleep in the sun; his wife Anna is a bit of a nag; Sarah is possessed by a demon who kills any man she marries before he’s crossed the bedroom door – and she’s been married seven times so far, but is still a virgin. Tobit sends his son Tobias to collect some money he left with a relative some years earlier, and God sends the angel Raphael to accompany Tobias, posing as his cousin Azariah. Raphael helps Tobias defeat the demon and marry Sarah, and then goes and gets the money for him while Tobias and Sarah are on their honeymoon, and then when they get back he heals Tobit’s sight. And then he reveals who he is and departs, reminding them always to praise God.

Mostly, though, angels seem to be God’s messengers. In the Old Testament they tell Abram and Sarai that they are to have a child, much to their amusement; an angel fights with Jacob at Bethel; angels go before the Children of Israel to defeat their enemies and so on and so forth. Apparently there are 290 references to angels in the Bible, not counting cherubim and seraphim. Of these, 108 references are in the Old Testament and/or the Apocrypha, and 182 in the New Testament. Obviously we know about the role of the angels in the Nativity story – how the angel appears first to Zechariah in the Temple to announce John’s birth, then to Mary to tell her she will bear the Messiah, if she is willing, then to Joseph to tell him to marry Mary anyway, and the various disclosures to the magi and the shepherds and so on. And, of course, angels minister to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and in some versions of the Resurrection it is an angel who tells the women that Jesus has risen.

And there is that wonderful story in Acts where Peter is in prison and an angel comes and sets him free, and he thinks he’s dreaming, and when he realises he isn’t, he goes to the safe house where they are all praying for him, and the maid who answers the door is so startled that she leaves him standing there, and they have trouble believing that it’s really him! An angel appears to Cornelius in a vision, and to Philip to take him to the Ethiopian treasury official who wanted to know about Jesus.

Angels also seem to have guard duty – we are told that when the Lord returns, he will come “with his angels”, like an escort, or guard of honour. And they also fight – Jesus comments on the Cross that he could ask the Father who would send twelve legions of angels to rescue him, if necessary, but he knows that’s not part of the plan.

And so it goes on. I honestly thought, when I started to think about this sermon, that there weren’t many references to angels in the Bible, and it was mostly extra-biblical tradition, but I was wrong! Of course, there is a lot of tradition around angels. One comes, I think, from the passage where Jesus says about children: “‘See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” I think it’s that passage that has given rise to the idea of guardian angels, one per person, but I’m not sure whether that is actually what happens.

But why does it matter? Are angels important to us? Why should we bother with St Michael and his angels?

I think, by and large, angels are one of the things we don’t necessarily think about most of the time. They are not, for most of us, something that impinges on our daily walk with God, on our daily journey with Christ. But they are, nevertheless, there in the background. We are told that they rejoice when a sinner repents, when someone says “Yes” to Jesus, perhaps for the first time, perhaps for the hundredth. The angels rejoice. They rejoice when you, or when I, consciously decide, yet again, to be God’s person, to walk in God’s way. They rejoice even more when someone who had never made that decision makes it for the first time.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us not to “forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” Although angels, apparently, don’t actually eat or drink, but they can make it look as though they are doing so.

Angels lead us in our struggle against the powers of darkness. You remember how St Paul tells us to put on the whole armour of God? “Our struggle,” he reminds us, “is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Angels are the ones in the front line of the battle, and bear the brunt of the struggle.

We are not to worship angels. It’s made pretty clear that they, too, are created beings who worship their Creator. In fact, we sometimes invoke their aid in our hymns, as in some of the ones I’ve chosen for today. Angels can, perhaps, help us in our worship. And, if you remember, in the great prayer of thanksgiving, in our Communion service, we say “Therefore, with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven, we proclaim your great and glorious name, forever praising you, and saying,” and go on into “Holy, holy, holy.”

And on that note, let’s do just that, and sing together….

Pride and Prejudice

Our Old Testament reading this morning came from a book you may never have heard of – the book of Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus, the book of the Church. It didn’t make the cut into the Protestant Old Testament, although Catholics see it as canonical, but for us it is part of that collection of books we call the Apocrypha, which we are told to study “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet not apply them to establish any doctrine.” But once in awhile the Lectionary throws up a reading from the Apocrypha as an alternative, and I think, particularly where it resonates with the Gospel reading, it’s no bad thing to have a look at it.

Anyway, this book was written, or possibly compiled, by someone known as Joshua Ben Sirach, who was a Jewish scribe who had lived in Jerusalem, and who may have been living in Alexandria when he compiled the work between about 180-175 BCE. We know who wrote it because, uniquely among the Old Testament and Apocryphal writers, he signs his work. And there is a prologue to the Greek version, written by his grandson in 130 BCE who translated it from the original Hebrew! There are far more Greek manuscripts of it available than there are Hebrew ones, although a large portion of the Hebrew version was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Anyway, that’s all very interesting, but what was he about? Basically, it was a collection of ethical teachings, rather like the book of Proverbs. I must admit I’ve not read all the book, although I have skimmed the first few chapters, and he writes a great deal about Wisdom, pretty much equating her with God Himself, as the apocryphal writers are apt to do. And a great deal of it, as in the passage we just heard read, is to do with pride.

Pride, we are told, begins when a person abandons the Lord. Pride begins when a person abandons the Lord. Pride, says ben Sirach, is like a fountain pouring out sin, and whoever persists in it will be full of wickedness. A fountain pouring out sin. Strong stuff, no?

The thing is, though, he’s right. Pride is the worst of sins – if sin can be said to have any “worst”, because it is the one that totally turns us away from God. C S Lewis had a lot to say about it in his book, Mere Christianity, and I propose to quote from it, because he says it better than I could: “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.  Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

Lewis goes on in this vein for some time, saying that Pride is essentially competitive – I’m not too sure he’s right there – and then we come to the heart of it:

“But pride always means enmity – it is enmity. And not only enmity between human beings, but enmity to God.

“In God”, says Lewis, “you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Of course, Lewis points out, it’s not pride to be pleased when someone pays you a sincere compliment – as long, that is, as the compliment doesn’t lead you to believe you’re cleverer or prettier or a finer person! As long as you delight in the praise, and don’t start thinking you must be a grand person to have merited it. And he also points out that it’s fine to be proud of your school or your father or your children as long as you don’t start thinking you must be a grand person to have been to such a school, or had such parents or children. The “Aren’t I clever, knowing a famous person” syndrome is alive and well today!

And obviously Pride, as in the carnival of that name, is fine, too – again, as long as you don’t think yourself rather superior for being part of it, or, indeed, rather broad-minded for enjoying it even if you aren’t gay!

Jesus, of course, knows all about it. In our Gospel reading, we saw him and his disciples – dare I say being amused by the people who obviously thought they deserved the best place at table, and being asked to move down…. As Jesus said, it makes far more sense to go down to the bottom, less honoured, places at the table and be asked to move up than to try to grab a place at the high table and be told in no uncertain terms you don’t belong there! Although I can see, as I’m sure you can, a danger lurking there whereby you rather ostentatiously go to the lowest place and look, expectantly, for the host coming to move you up a bit! And, indeed, it’s all too easy to see how, if you were to give a dinner for those who couldn’t return it, you could feel rather good about yourself in the wrong way: “What a good person I am to help out at Robes”…..

As I said, Jesus knew all about it. Look at the story he told of the Pharisee and the tax-collector who went to pray at the same time, and the Pharisee was all, “Oh God, I thank you I am not like this tax collector; I tithe and I fast and I’m generally a Most Superior Person, thank you very much.” But Jesus said it was the tax collector, who knew himself to be a sinner, who went away right with God on that occasion.

I heard a story once of a Sunday school teacher who was discussing this parable with her class, and at the end, she said “Now, let us thank God that we are not like this Pharisee”. Hmm – all well and good, until the moment I found myself thanking God that I was not like that Sunday School teacher!

No, pride and God are basically incompatible. Or rather the wrong sort of pride is. It can be very insidious – we go, imperceptibly, from being delighted that we have become God’s person, that we have been cleansed, forgiven and made whole, we go from that into thinking that we must be a pretty good person, really, to have allowed God into our lives.

Or, worse, we take this sort of thing to heart and, knowing that we are apt to be a bit proud on occasions, we think we must be truly terrible people, and quite beyond redemption. Which is another sort of pride, isn’t it – pride in one’s own sinfulness!

You know, this sermon feels very thou-shalt-nottish, which is not at all where I want to leave it. Pride is a very great sin, it is the sin that brings us into total opposition to God. Ben Sirach warns us, that whoever persists in pride will be full of wickedness. That is why, he tells us, the Lord brought terrible punishments on some people and completely destroyed them. And not only people, he says, but nations and empires, too. And if I were to leave it there, we would all be in a very sad case.

But there is hope. After all, we aren’t supposed to try to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We aren’t supposed to strain and strive and continually fail and hate ourselves for so doing. No, my friends, not that. Never that.

If we try to overcome our faults in our own strength, we will fail. And we will become proud of ourselves for trying – I try far harder than he does, of course. I’m sure God will reward me better than him.

No, that’s not the answer. And continuing in our pride isn’t the answer, either. Let’s face it, we’re all guilty of feeling proud, some of the time. But if we continue, we will cut ourselves off from God, and perhaps end up worshipping what we think is God, but is in fact a god, made in our own image, who thinks we’re really rather brilliant!

God knows what we’re like. God knows our struggles, our failures, our weaknesses, our tendency to think we’re rather good for allowing Him to heal us…. And God goes on loving us and forgiving us and healing us. No matter how often we take our eyes off him to look at ourselves, or to look down on our neighbours, as soon as ever we realise what we’re doing, as soon as ever we turn back to God with an, “Oh, sorry!” or “Oops!” then God is there, forgiving us, healing us, helping us to grow into the person we were designed to be. “The Creator,” says ben Sirach, “never intended for human beings to be arrogant and violent.” And that being so, the Creator will help us become humble and peacable folk, the peacemakers who Jesus told us were to be given the kingdom of Heaven. Amen.