Real Good

Scripture: Michaelmas

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Evil is not real.

Talk about a bold teaching of the Church. In a world suffering the genocidal terrorism of ISIS, the mass disenfranchisement of the current migrant crisis, tensions and violence breaking out along the borders of resurgent nations and old imperial powers—in a world where little children suffer cancer and hunger and abuse—how preposterous it must seem to assert that evil is not real. Yet that is exactly what our Christian faith assures us.

What do we mean when we say that evil isn’t real? Do we mean that bad things don’t happen to good people? That suffering is all in our heads? That this really is the best of all possible worlds? Of course not. Christians cannot afford to be naïve. The very symbol of our faith is the Cross, an instrument of humiliation and torture and death. Bad things happen to good people all the time.

But God never created evil, or sin, or death. He did not intend for them. Those were our choices, our free will, introducing dissonance into the harmony of Creation. Evil is like the cold: it has no substance in itself. Even at 30 below, cold isn’t a thing. You can’t isolate cold, or hold it, or photograph it. Cold merely is a lack of warmth, a lack of heat—just as darkness is the lack of light, and evil the lack of good, and sin the lack of God.

We must remember this when we read about the devil in Holy Scripture, or when we feel the temptation of the diabolical in our own lives. The devil is not evil incarnate. He’s not the embodiment of darkness or an anti-god, though he’d certainly like for us to think so. He’s just a broken angel: a sick, sad, selfish spirit whom God made the highest and most beautiful of all his kind, fallen now out of pride and cruelty.

For indeed, the angels are real. God made them first of all. Bodiless spirits, pure minds, unfathomably vast intelligences soaring throughout the cosmos, unencumbered by our physical and mental limitations. God filled them with light and life and being, but also gifted them with free will—for true love necessitates freedom and reciprocity. Thus some angels chose the darkness. Some chose the Fall. They didn’t make hell. Not really. They just tore a hole in what was good, and called that nothing their something. It may seem crazy, but then, we made the same choice, didn’t we? Adam and Eve chose death over life, emptiness over reality, just as Lucifer and his angels did before us.

So now we live in a world addicted to darkness and wickedness and sin—addicted to unreality, to things without substance. Yet God has never abandoned us. He aids us and sustains us and strengthens us in countless ways, through the glories of Creation, the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the Word and Sacraments of the Risen Christ. And He has sent his angels to have charge over us—the good angels, the true angels, who loved God more than they loved themselves, even in their glory.

And the prince of them all, the captain of the hosts of Heaven, is a spirit we know simply as Michael, a nameless name that means simply: “Who is like God? Who can ever be like unto God?” It is Michael who cast out Satan from Heaven, Michael who protects God’s people Israel, Michael who leads faithfully departed souls into the eternal presence of Almighty God. He is honored not as the mightiest of angels in and of himself, for indeed he is held to have been created a lesser spirit, an angel far lower down the totem pole than the powerhouse strength of Lucifer. Rather, Michael rose to bear Heaven’s banner due to his unwavering faith, his trust that Satan faced not simply angels but the very truth of God, his trust that in the final accounting evil simply is not real.

On this Michaelmas, as the nights grow longer, colder and darker, let us remember that the powers of evil in this world have no true substance behind them. Our real enemy, our real temptation, is the lie itself—the lie that there are things in this world greater than God, more important than God, more real than God. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Take heart, that into these shadows God has sent to us innumerable armies of unseen warriors, spirits of truth and beauty bathed in the light of God’s own love. They are our helpers, our defenders, and our guardians. They are wiser, more ancient, and more powerful than we could ever comprehend. Yet just like us, they are servants of the Lord, fellow soldiers of Christ the King.

All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle. And all the legions of hell cannot prevail against even one holy angel who puts his trust in God. Pity our poor enemies. They actually think it’s us they’re fighting.

St. Michael, Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. For who is like unto God?

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.