A Sermon for St. Michael's and All Angels

Longer version of a sermon preached at the chapel of Trinity School for Ministry on 9-29-2011



Sermon for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels


O LORD our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world, your majesty is praised above the heavens. Thank you for being mindful of us, for calling us into being in the beginning, and for sending your Son to be with us now and forevermore. Amen.

I am excited that today is the feast and celebration of St. Michael and All angels. Angels are an important part of the story and sacred history that we have received from God. We are told that they are present at all the important events of the history of salvation. They are present in the Garden of Eden in the beginning, and God speaks to Abraham, Jacob, and Moses through angels. Angels of course are present at Jesus’ birth, and they minister to him both after his temptation in the desert and during his long night of suffering in that other Garden, Gethsemenae. Angels participate fully in the mission of God in the church—they break apostles out of prison and bring messages to the disciples in order to get the gospel to go where it hasn’t gone before. Angels are absolutely everywhere in our story and they are intimately involved in the work of God to bring his salvation to pass to the whole earth.


But angels are so very mysterious. We don’t really know where they came from or where they are going to. What we do know for sure about the angels is that they are the preeminent servants and worshippers of God—that they see God and know God and love God not with the partiality or with the eyes of faith that we human being know and see and love God. No. They see him face to face, not in a mirror darkened with sin. They see him and they worship him and they are with him right now in a way that we will some day know for ourselves when Jesus comes again to raise us from the dead. They know his glory right now.


And the angels—the good ones anyway—are made of more noble stuff than we are—they are higher than we are, the Scriptures say— more powerful, more beautiful—in just about every way conceivable. Lancelot Andrewes notes in a sermon on Christmas Day, 1605 that “no long process will need to lay before you how far inferior our nature is to that of angels’ it is a comparison without comparison . . . they are in express terms said, both in the Old and New Testaments, to excel us in power; and as in power, so all the rest. This one thing may suffice to show the odds; that our nature, that we, when we are at our very highest perfection it is even thus expressed that we come near, or are therein like unto, or as an angel. Perfect beauty, as in St. Stephen, ‘they saw his face as the face of an angel. ‘Perfect wisdom in David, ‘my lord the king is wise, as an angel of God.’ Perfect eloquence in St. Paul, ‘though I speak with the tongues of men, nay of angels.’ All our excellency, our highest and most perfect estate, is but to be as they; therefore they above us far.” End quote.


But to what end and purpose? What is the point of celebrating the feast of St Michael and all the angels or what is the point of Lancelot Andrewes preaching a sermon about angels on Christmas day? You may have heard here at Trinity from more than one professor that the purpose of liturgy is catechesis, teaching, instruction. One of our professors here likes to call liturgy a ‘catechetical marinating process’. So in this case, in the case of the angels, in what are we being called to marinate? What does celebrating angels have to teach us about the nature of God and our salvation? David mentions them in his songs of praise to God, the book of Job speaks of them, and the author of Hebrews focuses on an extended comparison between Jesus and the angels for two whole chapters of the book. What we don’t know about angels far outweighs what we do know, so why engage the subject at all? What is the point?


What mentioning angels in all of these cases and throughout the Scriptures and the liturgy does for us is emphasize the mystery, majesty, wonder, and awe of the all-surpassing nature of the salvation that has been won for us in Christ Jesus. Angels are beyond us—we don’t know their history or origins, we can’t contemplate their nature because most of the time they are invisible to us, and we can’t stand in their presence without being overwhelmed and driven to the ground. And these are just angels—we are not talking about God here. If Lancelot Andrewes is right and angels excel us in just about every way possible to an untold degree, how much more does God excel the angels? For one, encounters with angels help us see and grasp just a little bit more of just how infinite the mystery of God really is. If just one angel appears to us a mysterious and miraculous thing—how much more is God himself above and beyond all that. This can help shake us out of thinking of God and treating God as if he were something small and containable and controllable simply because he is unseen and we forget. Angels remind us that the unseen packs quite a lot of firepower—far more than we can ever know right now.


The author of Hebrews is counting on the fact that we have some idea just how much firepower the unseen angels are packing. He’s counting on the fact that we can understand the angels to some degree and that his audience and we have some connection to what they have done and the kind of things they can do. And this is why the contrast between Jesus and the angels is so effective. Here goes the story: God’s own son takes on the nature of human beings—which Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2:7and 9 tell us is a little lower than the angels. This by itself is amazing. Jesus—God himself—doesn’t take on the nature of angels—arguably the “highest” sort of creatures in the cosmos, but rather takes on human nature—something a little more modest and humble. But something has happened since Jesus first became Incarnate in Bethlehem—something, the author of Hebrews tells us, has changed: “After making purification for sins, he—Jesus—sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.” In other words, Jesus’ obedient death on the cross, and everything that he accomplished with that and after that in his resurrection and ascension—particularly, his work in purification as we see in Hebrews 9 “For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” All of these things that Christ has done—cleansing the holy places in heaven as well as the earth—won for himself a name and an inheritance that far eclipses any accomplishment or inheritance of the angels. Not even the angels could save the human race or purify everything that sin had polluted, just like in the book of Revelation no one is found on heaven or on earth or under the earth who is worthy to open the scroll or look into it. John weeps because no one is found worthy—no angel, no human being, except “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, who has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”


It is to this human and divine being that God says, “You are my son, this day have I begotten you.” And “I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son,” and “let all God’s angels worship him.” Jesus is both God and man and he does something no angel can do—that only God can do—he saves. He saves and he will finish the work of redeeming the entire cosmos: “we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”


The angels also reveal something to us about the way in which God has ordered the cosmos, which is especially relevant to this chapter of Hebrews. The general point is that God has made all things good and that they all cohere and hang together in Christ. The particular way that the passage illustrates this is in the fact that it shows us how God has made the cosmos such that no one part of it lords over any other part of it. The angels who are mighty and powerful beyond our comprehension who “excel us far” as Lancelot Andrewes said, do not rule and do not lord over us. Instead, they are all “ministering spirits, sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.” They help us. They protect us from harm. They do the work of servants unseen, unthanked, unappreciated and unnoticed for most of the time—and they do it for frail jars of clay such as ourselves. And you know what? They don’t seem to mind. In fact, the angels don’t even despise us in our sin—rather they rejoice over one sinner who repents. They are not like the elder brother in the parable of the Lost Son—they do not envy us the mercy of God, but rather long to look into the mystery of salvation.


What’s more, it doesn’t seem like they are ever going to rule over us. That’s not their destiny even though right now they have more glory than we do. And we aren’t going to rule over them either. The Scriptures have a couple of things to say about how the eschatological fate of human beings and angels seem to be conjoined. It seems that human beings have something to do with the judgment of evil angels—probably because they have been our enemies from the beginning—and the angels have something to do with gathering up the elect from the earth in the last times. Augustine saw the unity of angels and human beings as being deeply profound—the City of God is that perfect number of elect human beings and elect angels worshipping God together. But there is no concern with mastery or lordship here. Here, it seems that the higher exists to serve the lower and glories in that humble service. And of course we see how this all comes together in the person of Jesus and how Jesus exemplifies this most of all in that he did take on the humble nature of human beings. That he stoops to help us and that this is no embarrassment but rather the glory of God. The glory of God shines in the cross and in Jesus’ humility, and in the fact that he did not scorn us in all of our sin and our weakness, but rather gathers us up and takes us to the Father. Jesus is exalted because of that humble and humiliating service he has done for us.


When Jesus sat down at the right hand of Majesty, he inherited all things—the heavens, the earth, and everything in it. Chapter 2 of Hebrews tells us we will see everything put in subjection under his feet. And Paul tells us we are coheirs with Christ. Jesus has the name above every name, but he is giving the kingdom to us as well. We inherit the kingdom of heaven, the earth, we shall see God, we shall be called Children of God. The angels are for us a witness to all things in heaven and on earth. They show us how deep the miracle of Christ’s Incarnation is. They are an eschatological witness—they show us and remind us of how it will be when we see God face to face and when God brings all other kingdoms to their final end in his one kingdom: the kingdoms of the world are become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. They are a thousand radiant mysteries of God’s creation. But they all point to and they all look to Jesus and they help us see what kind of salvation we have inherited in him.


So, when you are doubting and distressed—and we will doubt and be distressed--and it seems like it is only you and God against all the powers of the world, the flesh, and the devil—take some time to remember the angels. Remember that there are thousands upon thousands of angels who are looking at the face of God right now, who see him in all his glory right now, and who are waiting at God’s command to aid you in the fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil which is the only true fight the Church has right now. And there’s something else, if this helps you: it helps me. It helps me to know that somewhere for some—the angels in this case--there is a really rich and deep and beautiful way that all is right with God. We struggle with sin and with death and every human being has this struggle. But no angel has—the angels that did not fall were perfect in their obedience and they have not sinned and they have never known separation from God and they have no need for redemption. And there’s millions of them. Alleluia, thanks be to God. There is no shadow of sin in all their being and all their life and for them, everything really is perfect with God, perfectly beautiful, perfectly wonderful, all the time. That’s a nice thought and something to look forward to and something to meditate on when things seem bleak here.


Lord Jesus Christ—we thank you that you became poor and suffered and died for us that we might be filled with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. We thank you for the ministry of your faithful angels who do not look down on us with contempt, but rejoice as we learn to follow you and know you as you are. We pray that the glory of God and of angels might be revealed to us today that we might know the height and depth and breadth of the salvation you have prepared for us from the foundation of the world. Grant these things through the power of your Holy Spirit and to the glory of God the Father. Amen.