Proper 21C-19 (& St. Michael and All Angels)
September 29, 2019

O God of St. Michael and All Angels, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Although today is the 16th Sunday after Pentecost in what the Church calls “ordinary time,” today is also the date appointed for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, which, technically will be observed in the wider Church tomorrow since this year it falls on a Sunday. And the Jewish New Year begins this evening marking the beginning of the Days of Awe. So I want to say that this is no ordinary time. I want today to be a day to celebrate the whole company of heaven, giving thanks for the ministries of angels. Perhaps you’ve heard Jane Siberry’s beautiful folk song, “Calling All Angels.” It’s a song for us. The refrain goes, “calling all angels, calling all angels – walk me through this one, don’t leave me alone. We’re trying, we’re hoping, we’re hurting, we’re loving, we’re crying, we’re calling, ‘cause we’re not sure how this goes.”

I do understand that in our context, it’s not considered particularly sophisticated or intelligent to talk about calling on angels, or about having encounters with angels – not with the supernatural kind, in public anyway. Although many people admit to having had divine encounters with angels in private conversation with priests. (Maybe that’s why we all need priests!) Of course we are wise to discern the difference between the effects of privilege of race or gender identity or socioeconomic circumstances and the assistance of the divine. And surely there is a vast difference between the luck of finding a parking space in the Back Bay and any ministrations or messages of love or comfort received in moments of extreme vulnerability or grief or poverty of any kind. It seems to me that pondering angels is an activity for people of faith and not for people of certainty.

If you are a person of certainty, I invite you to loosen your grip on that certainty a little, at least for the next hour or so, and spend some time pondering and giving thanks for messengers and ministers of love (which is what angels are), remembering times when you might have been helped and defended by the holy angels of God. I invite you to imagine that there also might be times that you don’t remember, that you didn’t even notice or give thanks for, the attendance of angels. 

Biblically speaking, angels (messengers and ministers of the Holy One of Love) can be invisible or entirely visible, both non-human and entirely human. Sometimes an encounter with an angel seems easily identifiable in real time, and but most often it’s only in hindsight that we suspect that one has been on the receiving end of a divine message or ministration. We who think we are not Biblical literalists nevertheless often apply a literal standard to the Bible – our own post-enlightenment, scientific or historical literalism to our Holy Scripture that it was never meant (or imagined) to address. For people of faith (that is to say, people of uncertainty), in ancient times and in the present, it’s not so much that seeing is believing, it’s that believing is seeing. Sam Portaro writes about the “necessity and wisdom of imagination,” particularly when it comes to seeing angels.[1]  Are angels real? Maybe not, but I believe they are true.

Our ancestor Jacob fell asleep in what he thought was a God-forsaken place. Jacob had been on the run. He’d taken advantage of his brother Esau’s empty stomach to outwit Esau into giving away his birthright as the firstborn. Then Jacob tricked his dying father Isaac into giving him the blessing intended for Esau. When Esau found out about the deception, he was mad enough to kill Jacob and he planned to do just that. Their mother Rebekah warned Jacob to run for his life from his twin brother who was known for his skill as a hunter.

Jacob went as far as he could when he stopped for the night because the sun had gone down. He was by himself – no tent, no servants, and no place to stay in the city where he stopped. He found a stone to use for a pillow; here we have a poster picture of “uncomfortable.” And Jacob dreamed about God. He dreamed about God’s angels going up to and down from heaven and of hearing God’s promise of protection and companionship and the abundance of children. When he awoke in awe and wonder, he named the spot “Bethel” which means “House of God.” It had been called “Luz”, which means devious or crooked or tricky, and who was more devious or crooked or tricky than Jacob himself? In Jacob’s sleeping imagination, angels were all around – redeeming him, even in the last place on earth that Jacob would have expected an encounter with the Holy One. The place that Jacob had imagined to be god-forsaken, was revealed to be the very entrance to the habitation of the Divine.

So it’s not a stretch for me to imagine this beautiful sanctuary, this House of God, is also a gate to heaven. It’s not a stretch to imagine encounters with angels ascending and descending in the myriad services and meetings that Emmanuel shelters each week, year in and year out, no matter what. You will hear some angels playing and singing in our cantata this morning. It’s out there that it’s harder to imagine angels – in offices and in schools, on Storrow Drive or 128, in the midst of personal and community and societal devastations caused by illness, caused by poverty, caused by addiction, caused by indifference or fear, caused by greed, caused by hatred, caused by war. Our better angels might be harder to see – but they’re there, calling us to turn toward Love. There’s the old rabbinic saying that every single blade of grass has an angel bending over it saying, “Grow, grow!” Grow in love. Grow in joy.

On the eve of the solemn feast of St. Michael and All Angels, just before the eve of Rosh Hashanah, I hear an invitation to us all to be uncomfortable, challenged, and changed by the messages and the ministrations of angels who are hovering over each one of us and whispering. Grow! Let us dream of God being in the last place on earth (or the last place in our own hearts) that we would expect an encounter with the divine. Call on all the angels. Listen and look for angels. Be an angel – deliver the messages and the ministrations of God. Notice that the gates of heaven are wide open whenever we seek to join the Company of Heaven.

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