As you may know, for some 9 years I served as the Canon Pastor, Precentor and Sub-Dean at the Cathedral Church or St Michael, Coventry…9 years of celebrating a Michaelmas Patronal and listening with all my power to rumours of angels, near and far. When I stood behind the altar there I viewed the world outside through the etched glass of the great West Screen, which makes, in effect, the fourth wall of Basil Spence’s cathedra…so as I celebrated Eucharist, the madly dancing company of John Hutton angels were always part of the equation. Here they are rather more dignified, though in all their gilded splendour they are certainly never understated as they take their places around our altars.
Angels are beings of poetry and wonder…they
point to something far greater than we can comprehend…keep us learning the
lesson that Jacob learned, that “Surely the Lord is in this place”
Angels remind us of the overwhelming mystery
at the heart of God.though we often try to domesticate them, just as we try to
domesticate God.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
Bless the bed that I lie on
Four corners to my bed
Four angels there be spread
One to watch and one to pray
And two to bear my soul away
In the bedtime prayers of my childhood there seemed little difference
between the evangelists – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and the shining
guardian angels whom I was certain were my overnight companions....
I loved those angels, believed in them implicitly – and still at this
Michaelmas season, I find myself dreaming happily of wondrous golden beings
whose presence reassures me that all is well with the world.
In that I guess I'm in good company. Angels are hugely popular today.
Gift shops can rely on selling any number of angel trinkets...books of angel
stories walk off the shelves at a time when public interest in more mainstream
expressions of faith seems at a very low ebb. People LIKE the idea of heavenly
beings charged with taking care of us....a reassurance that we are not on our
own in a hostile universe.
But, you know, the Biblical experience of angels is very very different.
Often their arrival seems to be anything but reassuring – and perhaps
that's why every angelic appearance in the New Testament opens with the words
“Don't be afraid”
Annunciation, Resurrection, Ascension...
Heaven in all its dazzling splendour breaks into our world. Time is
interrupted by eternity
It's alarming stuff right enough – even before we've discovered quite what it is that the angel has to say.
Just think of the most famous angelic appearance of all.....Gabriel's mission to Mary.
Imagine yourself as that teenage girl, minding her own business in an
obscure corner of the Roman Empire.
Hear those words spoken to you.
“Do not be afraid Mary – for you have found favour with God. You will
bear a son”
BEAR A SON!
Me?!?!
No wonder Gabriel feels the need to begin the conversation by speaking
reassurance.
“Do not be afraid...”
Words that suggest that he knows he has already lost that particular
battle!
And só often that's how it seems.
Angels break into our world as messengers of heaven – and their tidings turn the world upside down. Like a stone dropped into a pond, their messages ripple outwards, touching and changing many lives in ways we could never imagine.
Well, at least that’s what they did in Bible times.
But what of that persistent belief that God STILL sends messengers into this world, to remind us of God’s continuing commitment to humanity. I’ve never seen a shining being clothed in white, with maybe the hint of wings in the brightness around them – but I have had two experiences of angels. Or at least, I think I have.
One was on Low Sunday in a little Cotswold church, part of the benefice where we lived when my children were small, the place that fostered my vocation to ordained ministry. It was a happy church, a church that understood community – but it was also a very elderly church. I and my children were generally the only ones present who were not well into retirement – and the last thing that would EVER happen there was dance…
Except, on this one day, the
recessional hymn was, wonderfully, Lord of the dance…and still more wonderfully
as we reached the chorus at the end of the first verse, 2 strangers stepped out
of the pew behind us, took my older children by the hand and pulled them into a
wonderful, joyous circle dance in which, somehow, we were all caught up without
knowing how or why…so that when we reached the final verse “they cut me down
but I leapt up high, I am the life that will never never die I’ll live in you
if you’ll live in me, I am the Lord of the dance said he”…there was not a
vestige of doubt anywhere in that church.
It was, as I say, the
Cotswolds…We were used to people appearing at the parish Eucharist while they
were staying in the village – except that afterwards, these particular people
seemed to have disappeared. Did they just slip out before the final Blessing.
Probably…but…I’ll always wonder, because they rekindled the resurrection hope
so very powerfully that day.
Surely, the Lord is in this
place…
Ten years later I was in my
2nd year of curacy, loving so much of parish ministry but sometimes
frustrated at the way the Church seemed to get in the way of simply introducing
people to God’s love. My title parish was at the friendly catholic end of the
spectrum – liturgy mattered, the Eucharist was absolutely central, and if was
very important that we prayed the Daily Office no matter what…But Morning
Prayer was always an insiders service – not something to which I could ever imagine inviting one of
the young mums from Toddler Church…I enjoyed praying the office with my
training incumbent but really struggled with it when I had to pray alone…That
morning my TI was away so I went up to church somewhat reluctantly, rang the
bell as custom dictated, and then wandered into the Lady Chapel for the Office.
To my surprise there was a young man there. We chatted for a bit, and he asked
if it would be alright if he stayed for Morning Prayer. "Alright?" I was
delighted…We prayed together, and I offered many and repeated apologies for the
need to dart back and forth, to follow the leadings of the multi coloured
ribbons, to engage with a lectionary that seemed set, that day, to offer
absolutely NOTHING to inspire or comfort at all. To my delight, he stayed to
the end, and afterwards he told me that just a few months before he, an atheist
with no grounding in faith at all, had had such a powerful experience of God
that he had been checking out churches ever since. He told me of his various
visits around the diocese…and my heart sank as I imagined how we might compare
with some of the more dynamic congregations he had encountered.
They are all SO
DIFFERENT he marvelled …itsn’t it
wonderful….and I have met God in every single one of them. EVERY SINGLE ONE
He was absolutely clear
“Surely, the Lord is in this place…and that one…and there too and yes…even
THERE”
If ever a message, a dose of unexpected good news was needed, it was that morning…And the angel departed from me – having sowed seeds of encouragement that I have returned to time and again in the years that followed. Once again, the angel (a very ordinary, if unexpected young man) brought good news…
Perhaps my childhood self wasn't that far out in confusing the saints
and the angels of that poem!
And perhaps that's where we come in. We are not, surely, to be content to be passive recipients of the Good News the angels bring...Like them, we have a calling to point out those surprising places where God is at work in our world só that others too may see and celebrate
Surely the Lord IS in this place
And, for ourselves, having noted God at work we are to join in the
ceaseless chorus of praise that resounds throughout creation
“Therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven we laud and magnify thy holy name
Evermore praising thee and saying “Holy, holy, holy. Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee O Lord most high”