Revelation 12: 7-12 John 1: 47-end
The creative world of music, art and literature has relished for centuries the lure of angels on its poetic imagination. Mediaeval theologians developed the concept of ranks of angels of which there are supposedly nine: seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, princedoms, powers, virtues, archangels and angels. If you ever want to remember that angelic order, just sing the first verse of the hymn ‘Ye watchers and ye holy ones’.
And there were those mediaeval philosophers who debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
In this Eucharist, we acknowledge the grace, mercy and peace which come from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
But regardless of the romantic excess to which they have driven their devotees, angels remain agents of the divine and – it seems to me – that part of their attraction lies in the fact that we may indeed make of them what we will because they are un-define-able – in other words, without limit – which is also, of course, true of the grace of God of which angels are messengers or channels.
How apt then, if you think about it, that limitless grace is conveyed by limitless agents. And so un-define-able are they that, as the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it so beautifully, we should not forget to show hospitality to strangers for, by so doing, some have entertained angels unawares.
And how apt also that Michael, the prince of angels, is the one spiritual being whose wings span the scriptures of all three of the great Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam – acting thereby as a channel of grace between people who otherwise often find themselves in an uncomfortable tension with each other – mostly not realising that there is an agent of God’s grace common to all three of those faiths who, as Michael’s name in Hebrew implies, is like God. A stark contrast to the very un-god-like behaviour of people of faith when they cross swords over the pages of their scriptures. An angel is therefore also potentially an agent of peace.
The Feast of Michael and All Angels contains a rich repository of story and imagination – so colourful and glorious that it may often hide the simple truth that angels reduce the distance between the divine and the human to a mere hairsbreadth and can also reduce the distance between us and our neighbour likewise if we did but remember that our neighbour might well be an angel in disguise.
And who is my neighbour? said the lawyer to Jesus – a question which led Jesus to tell the story of the Good Samaritan so that the answer to the question ‘who was neighbour to the man who fell among thieves?’ was ‘the one who showed him mercy’. An angel is therefore also an agent of mercy.
Which means that, on this great feast day, we celebrate grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ – as we do in every celebration of the Eucharist, surrounded by angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.
It may be that our devotion to reason conflicts with our appreciation of the poetic imagination as if the two were somehow incompatible. The artist Raphael’s famous but moody-looking little angels in Dresden’s old masters art gallery might make angels seem rather implausible and perhaps a day like this provides us with a moment to look beyond the implausible to a more realistic understanding of those agencies.
For in this way the grace, mercy and peace of God are realised in our troubled world such that anything which strips the veil of misery from people’s faces and allows them to come face to face with grace, mercy and peace is an angelic moment wholly necessary and totally plausible and we can make ourselves agents of those godly devices and share in the ministry of angels.
We celebrate the Eucharist day by day and our liturgy is very clear that, in doing so, we rub shoulders with angels. And perhaps this is not because there are some sylph-like creatures floating – renaissance-style – somewhere above our heads in the sublime but because our fellow worshippers are potentially angelic.
So, it may not be a case of ‘Be an angel and put the kettle on’ but much more about an obligation for us as Christians and followers of Jesus Christ to live lives of grace, mercy and peace so that we are agents of those divine attributes.
That question about how many angels dance on the head of a pin is – in part at least – a criticism of those who argue about God while God’s people suffer round about them.
It’s an observation – if not actually articulated in those terms – which people who look in on our church debates often make of us. Which begs the question: what grace, mercy and peace emerge from our church debates or are they ungracious, merciless and belligerent?
Perhaps when we debate we should consider that we might be debating with angels unawares. In fact, when we do anything, we should consider that we are engaging with angels unawares. Or maybe let’s be less unaware and more aware of the God-like, Christ-like, role we have to be angels of grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ – on the feast of Michael and All Angels and every day.