The God of Autumn

 

Pastor’s Epistle—September 2020

September always makes me think of angels.

This is largely due, of course, to Michaelmas: the Feast of St Michael and All Angels, which we celebrate at the end of the month—and which, I confess, I rather indulgently prefer to spell “Mikkelmas,” following convention from the Orkney Islands.

But it’s also because this is our entry into the most spiritual months of the year, to so-called “ber” months of September, October, November, December. As summer wanes and nights grow long, we think of things we cannot see: ghosts and goblins, angels and demons. The veil betwixt life and death, this world and the next, seems stretched diaphanously thin—until it ruptures altogether at Christmas, and God bursts into our world as Jesus Christ.

All of autumn is a riot of colors and decorations, light and dark, costumes of varying kinds, from fearsome little trick-or-treaters to the cozy holiday sweaters of our winter gatherings and festivities. It is indeed the most magical and most miraculous time of the year. And with due respect to Easter, I think it also the holiest—or at least the time when we as Americans most let down our cynical guard and open ourselves to joy and wonder and promise and hope.

I know there are those who dread the shortening of the days. In a place with such powerful seasons as ours, holiday blues are a real concern. But speaking for myself, and for many like me, September is when the real fun begins. And who better to herald such an auspicious time of year than the very angels themselves? Indeed, with the sparseness of our Sunday gatherings and concurrent focus on ministry online during this Covid crisis, it seems we need angels now more than ever.

Angels fill the sanctuary at every Eucharist. Angels minister to the people of God when we find ourselves exiled and alone. Angels cannot die, and therefore stand beside us on either side of the grave.

Remember the battle-cry of St Michael, the call that became his name: “Who is like God? Who can ever be like God?” Michael defeats Satan not because he relies on his own inherent strength—indeed, Lucifer is held to have been the far more powerful angel—but because Michael, for all his angelic might, relies on the promise and the mercies and the glories of our shared God: the God of all creatures, all spirits, all men and women and birds and beasts, all galaxies, all particles, and all possible realities.

Faced with such infinite, white-hot grace, Satan never had a prayer.

This is the same unassailable God who holds us now; who walks with us through this valley of the shadow of death; who promises wholeness and healing and life everlasting; who gathers us in and sends us out and declares to us one and all, “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Let us welcome, then, the God of autumn. Welcome the God of St Michael. Welcome the God of new wonders, new adventures, new worlds to come and yet to be. Welcome Christ in every home, so all may know that just as He is Risen, we too shall arise.

In Jesus. Amen.

 

Michaelmas: A Sonnet for St Michael the Archangel

by Malcolm Guite

 

Michaelmas gales assail the waning year,

And Michael’s scale is true, his blade is bright.

He strips dead leaves; and leaves the living clear

To flourish in the touch and reach of light.

Archangel bring your balance, help me turn

Upon this turning world with you and dance

In the Great Dance. Draw near, help me discern,

And trace the hidden grace in change and chance.

Angel of fire, Love’s fierce radiance,

Drive through the deep until the steep waves part,

Undo the dragon’s sinuous influence

And pierce the clotted darkness in my heart.

Unchain the child you find there, break the spell

And overthrow the tyrannies of Hell.