Ye Holy Angels Bright - Sermon for 9.00 Michaelmas Sunday at Southwark

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 2^nd 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”