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….
