Broken Angel

Michaelmas Vespers

The Feast of St Michael and All Angels

A Reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”? And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.” Of the angels he says, “He makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire.”

But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” And, “In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like clothing; like a cloak you will roll them up, and like clothing they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will never end.”

But to which of the angels has he ever said, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”? Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

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

In the time of Christ, the entire Mediterranean world—Jewish, Christian, pagan, what have you—shared a cosmology, an understanding of the universe. And their understanding was that this world is a prison.

Imagine, if you will, all of Creation as a series of concentric spheres, like a Russian nesting doll. Up there, beyond the air, beyond the atmosphere, were a succession of unimaginably vast crystalline shells, turning, ever turning, in a silent dance we used to call the Music of the Spheres. Each planet had its own invisible sphere in which it was affixed, including the Sun and the Moon. Then out beyond the planets turned the firmament, the sphere of the fixed stars, and beyond that, the Primum Mobile, the final and outermost sphere, representing the edge of the universe and the end of space and time.

And beyond that was the Empyrean, the Highest Heaven, God in His infinity and eternity. Now, many people would consider all this talk of spheres to be an outdated and disproven map of the universe. But not really. It could still work, as a picture of reality. Indeed, we often speak this way without even realizing that we still are. It’s what C.S. Lewis called the Discarded Image, a classical way to talk about the universe that, alas, has fallen out of fashion.

But what’s important for us is that, by the time of Christ, this is the cosmology of the Bible. This is how people saw the world 2000 years ago, and continued to do so right up through the Middle Ages.

The major division, in this universe of spheres, lay between the Sun and the Moon. From the Sun on up, as far as we could tell, everything was perfect and unchanging: the stars in their courses, the planets in their unique yet predictable paths. But from the Moon on down everything is always in flux. The Moon waxes and wanes; the winds shift and blow; the seasons come and go. And everything down here, down in the mud and the blood, everything down here dies.

We live in a world of decay, separated from the spheres of perfection, cut off from the Empyrean beyond space, beyond time. Even the faeries down here, the nymphs and the daemons, the nature spirits, even they eventually die. Not even elves are immune to change and decay—no more than mountains or rivers. So how do we get out? How do we get through? How do we rise from death to life?

Those celestial heavens, by the way, the spaces between the stars, those were not empty. Rather they teemed with life, life as we could barely imagine it here below. Not physical life, not organic life, but spiritual life, undying, immortal, celestial life.

The denizens of the heavens the Greeks called gods, but others called them angels. Angels were not like us; they did not eat or sleep or breed or die. They were creatures of pure mind, pure spirit, like living ideas, or living ideals. Yet they were not God with a capital G: He’s something else entirely; infinite, eternal, without beginning or end, in whom we all live and move and have our being.

But angels can be scary, in the way that whales can be scary: vast, intelligent, alien, so far beyond us that it’s impossible to imagine what they’re like, how they think. There were angels who came down to earth to guide the lives of men. There were angels tasked with upholding reality, holding the universe together, enforcing the laws of the mind of God. And then there were the highest choirs of angels—Ophanim, Cherubim, Seraphim—who managed to pierce the Empyrean, to stand directly in the presence of God as the biblical Council of Heaven.

These were minds so vast and ancient that their dreams could drive men mad. These were angels so far above and beyond any gods that we could imagine, that all we could do when getting a glimpse, is to cower before them in awe and in fear. And yet—and yet!—no matter how big or old or wise or powerful these spirits of the universe might grow, they were never any closer to being the true God. For no matter how brobdingnagian they be, they are never any closer to infinity.

And the peoples of the Bible largely did not trust these angels. There’s the old canard about how every time an angel shows up in the Scriptures, the first thing he says is, “Be not afraid!” and the very next verse is, “And they were terrified.” Of course, there were also fallen angels, evil gods, which we would come in time to call demons. Those you don’t want to mess with one way or the other. But even the good ones—even the holy angels—can rather give us the willies. We respond to encounters with them as one might expect when confronted with the apex predators of the spiritual world.

Even Paul strongly implies in his letter to the Galatians that the Law of Moses—the Torah of the Hebrew Bible—came not directly from God but was mediated first through an angel, then through a man; and so it cannot be entirely trusted. For even a holy angel of God has her limitations. And should any angel show up preaching a Gospel other than Christ and Him Crucified—well, says St Paul, you can throw that angel right back out the window.

The powers of the heavens are broken, he says. The spheres do not turn as God intended. Even the good angels are part of a fallen Creation, part of a broken world, and they cut us off from the Empyrean. They filter out the Light of God and leave us all in darkness, in death, in this prison here below.

Until, of course, God Himself comes down to save us from this body of death. The Light shines in the darkness—and the darkness has not overcome it! In Jesus Christ, God has descended, God has incarnated, here in this fallen, broken, passing world, this earth of change and decay. He has pierced through the crystalline spheres, which cut us off from God, cut us off from life.

And He has gone down even further, into the spheres below us, into hell—and there He has conquered! There He has scattered Satan and shattered the grave. There His death has broken death’s back. Christ is the King of hell, as well as earth and heaven! And this truly is Good News. For when Jesus Christ descended into hell and ascended into heaven, He conquered the spheres above and below, He defeated the archons who held us in thrall.

No longer will powers and principalities hold sway over God’s universe and God’s people. In Jesus Christ, a new Kingdom has begun, the Kingdom of God’s direct rule over everything and everyone that He has ever made. It all begins in Jesus, who continues His work now through us. We are to be Jesus’ Kingdom, we are to be little Christs, we are to be a foretaste for all the world of the feast to come at the End of the Age, when God at the last will be All in All.

It’s a prison break! We are liberated from death and decay, sickness and suffering, loss and despair and oblivion. It started in Christ, continues in us, and shall one day encompass the cosmos! Indeed, from the perspective of Heaven—from the Empyrean beyond the heavens—this has always already been accomplished.

And this is so important because we often hear today that God is in control, that everything happens according to His plan, that when a baby dies or a loved one gets cancer, this is all part of God’s mysterious will, His almighty sovereignty. And that’s hogwash. That’s nonsense. Did you ever see Jesus look at someone sick and suffering and dying and say, “Yep, that’s just how I planned it.” Blasphemy! That’s blasphemy. Death and disease and dying are enemies of God, period. They are conquered in Jesus Christ and the only thing we should be praying is, “Hurry up, Lord! Do it now, Lord! Let your Kingdom come and let it come through me!”

Michael is the good angel, the defender of God’s people, the leader of the heavenly host; as are Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel; loving spirits, godly spirits, sent to aid and guard and guide us. But what makes angels great is not their power and their might. Satan, legend tells us, exceeded all of them in that. What makes the angels good and holy, strong and true, is that they submit to Jesus’ rule. They bow to the King of Kings. And so they reflect a glory greater than any they could kindle on their own.

Just like us, the angels live in a fallen, broken world. And just like us, they all rejoice at the coming rule of God in Jesus Christ. No more death, no more hell, just Jesus saving all. And if He can save the angels—if Christ can save the gods!—then you know how great His love must be, for He shall save us all.

St Michael, Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast 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.