Here We Heal Hell
A Reading from the Book of Tobit:
“I will now declare the whole truth to you and will conceal nothing from you. Already I have declared it to you when I said, ‘It is good to conceal the secret of a king, but to reveal with due honor the works of God.’ So now when you and Sarah prayed, it was I who brought and read the record of your prayer before the glory of the Lord, and likewise whenever you would bury the dead. And that time when you did not hesitate to get up and leave your dinner to go and bury the dead, I was sent to you to test you. And at the same time God sent me to heal you and Sarah your daughter-in-law. I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord.”
The two of them were shaken; they fell face down, for they were afraid. But he said to them, “Do not be afraid; peace be with you. Bless God forevermore. As for me, when I was with you, I was not acting on my own will, but by the will of God. Bless him each and every day; sing his praises. Although you were watching me, I really did not eat or drink anything—but what you saw was a vision. So now get up from the ground, and acknowledge God. See, I am ascending to him who sent me. Write down all these things that have happened to you.”
And he ascended. Then they stood up, and could see him no more. They kept blessing God and singing his praises, and they acknowledged God for these marvelous deeds of his, when an angel of God had appeared to them.
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.
So far this Lent we’ve talked about Michael, and we’ve talked about Gabriel. These are the only two angels named in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Tonight we’re going to talk about their brother-in-arms, St Raphael, who appears in both the book of Enoch and the book of Tobit.
Enoch we mentioned last week. We even read it in worship, which might be a first. It’s not found in any Bible outside of Ethiopia, but it was very influential in the centuries just before Christ. Early Christians would’ve been familiar with it. And Enoch names four angels—four being a number of celestial significance, representing the length and breadth of the heavens—who intercede for humanity in the presence of God. They pray for us, on our behalf.
And Raphael is one of them, along with Sts Michael and Gabriel. Whereas Michael means “Who is like God?” and Gabriel translates to “Strength of God,” Raphael means simply that “God heals.” According to Enoch, he is “set over all disease and every wound of the children of the people,” and he binds the fallen angels to cast them into hell. Raphael then is the Archangel of Healing, sent for the health of both our bodies and our souls.
He has a starring role in the book of Tobit, which was written around the same time as Enoch, but which made it into a lot more Bibles. Tobit is part of the Apocrypha, the Greek books of the Old Testament found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles—as well as in Luther’s Bible, mind you. Luther loved the book of Tobit. He thought it was great fun. It wasn’t to be taken literally, he said. Tobit’s not a history. But we should enjoy it as a play, as a drama, understanding that—in the words of Neil Gaiman—“fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over” again.
Even if it were “all made up,” Luther wrote, “then it is indeed a very beautiful, wholesome and useful fiction … by a gifted poet,” and is “good for us Christians to read.” So what then is the plot?
In the book of Tobit, a man of that name, known for doing good deeds without compensation, even at the risk of his life, is blinded in a freak accident. Meanwhile, Tobit’s relative Sarah has troubles of her own. She is haunted by a demon named Asmodeus, who kills any man who tries to wed her, seven so far. God hears the prayers of Tobit and Sarah and sends the angel Raphael to deliver them.
He does this by appearing in the guise of a man, and traveling with Tobit’s son Tobias to collect a sum of much-needed money from a relative. They also bring along Tobit’s dog, because every good road trip needs an angel, a man, and a canine companion. Wacky hijinks ensue, including an interlude wherein they catch a magic fish, but at the end of the day the demon is defeated, Tobit’s sight is restored, and Tobias marries Sarah as befits any good comedy.
Raphael’s true identity is at long last revealed, and of course they all praise God for His mercies. It’s a good story. If nothing else, it’s a good play. And Raphael comes across as the most human angel we’ve yet to meet.
Now, I used to work in a hospital—trauma chaplaincy—and I have seen true wonders worked by medical personnel and modern science. To me, the things that they can do today, the lives that we can heal and save, are no less miraculous than the healings Raphael works in the book of Tobit. But I’m also a pastor, and I’ve seen weird things over the years, wondrous things. Miracles like those in the Bible still seem to happen. Our world remains wild and strange.
I know a colleague who appears to have the gift of healing. Many of his parishioners have experienced recoveries that defy medical expectation or even explanation. And this isn’t something that he broadcasts; he plays it close to the vest. No-one can accuse him of getting up on stage like Benny Hinn, or trying to “blow away” Covid like Kenneth Copeland off his meds. No, he simply visits the sick, humbly prays, and sometimes they recover in bizarre and astonishing ways.
How is one to take this? How does one square with medical miracles? If God indeed can send His angel of healing, then why not send him to everyone? Come, St Raphael, every other Tuesday to top me off. Come clear out my cholesterol. My father died of cancer. Our son was born with a heart condition which took extensive surgeries to repair. And we are grateful for his health; it truly is an answer to our prayers. But there was no presto-changeo instant healing, no magical fish.
If God can send his angel of healing sometimes, then why not all the time? Perhaps He does. Perhaps we have been saved from more dooms than we could possibly imagine. It is a fallen world, after all, and we cannot blame God for it. He Himself suffers with us. Everything we experience, He takes upon Himself. God suffers it all, up there on that Cross—and thereby leads us through.
Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before His Crucifixion, prayed that if it be His Father’s will, “let this cup pass from Me,” the cup of sacrifice and suffering. And at first glance it might seem as though that prayer did not go answered. He did indeed drink the final Passover cup from the Cross. But it did pass from Him, didn’t it? It passed through Him: through suffering to glory, through death to life, through victimhood to victory. It’s not that He wouldn’t suffer, but that suffering would not have the final word; not that He wouldn’t die, but that death would not be His end; not for Him, and not for any of us.
God’s miracles, remember, are signs: signs of His love for us, of His plan for us. If sometimes we cannot explain the healings that others receive, let us simply be grateful for them, for that blessing, ever remembering that we too shall be healed. We too one day shall arise. Yes, we all suffer. Yes, we all die, even the miraculously healed. Lazarus got but a stay of execution. Yet this cup too shall pass.
We will arise from our graves, every last one of us. And then shall every wound be healed, and every tear dried, and every wrong in all of history impossibly set right in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. That is the healing for which we all pray. That is the healing to encompass the cosmos. And that is the healing promised to us all by the Blood and the Spirit of Christ.
So come, St Raphael. Heal us body and soul. Do so by granting us faith in the life that outlives even death, that outlives even hell.
In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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