Guard & Guide

Night Wings, by Yuumei

Lections: St Michael and All Angels (Michaelmas), AD 2025 C

You may find the accompanying children’s sermon here.

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 1904, in his famous book of Japanese ghost stories entitled Kwaidan, Lafcadio Hearn wrote the following passage about a phenomenon which he termed “The Eternal Haunter.”

Perhaps—for it happens to some of us—you may have seen this haunter, in dreams of the night, even during childhood. Then, of course, you could not know the beautiful shape bending above your rest: possibly you thought her to be an angel … Once that you have seen her she will never cease to visit you. And this haunting,—ineffably sweet, inexplicably sad,—may fill you with rash desire to wander over the world in search of somebody like her. But however long and far you wander, never will you find that somebody.

What is an angel?

I shan’t waste time attempting to convince anyone of spiritual reality. I do believe that every person, deep within, deny it how we might, can’t not know that the most real things in our world are precisely those realities which we cannot see. Ghosts, goblins, devils in the night—everyone has a story of something we cannot quite explain. Whether we embrace it, or rationalize it away, we have all undergone our own experience of the weird. “Everyone is haunted,” as Hearn put it. Or so I am convinced.

An angel is not a ghost, not the spirit of one who has died. An angel dwells not in Faerie, whose denizens, we are told, eat and drink and marry and die, though it may take them an aeon or three. An angel is an altogether different order of being. They have no bodies. They cannot die. They are not bound by space and time in the ways that we find ourselves. Their powers are vast, their knowledge capacious. They are gods in the ancient sense: the highest beings within Creation, apex predators of the spiritual world.

Biblically, they take many forms; appearing often as human, yes, but also in monstrous visions: as fiery serpentine seraphs, or four-faced bronze-skinned cherubs, or as wheels within wheels covered in eyes. Born on the first day, when the Lord said, “Let there be light,” they surround the throne of God. They travel the world in disguise. Sometimes they rescue the needy. Sometimes they lay waste unto armies. “Be not afraid,” they proclaim. And upon that same instant are we terrified. I’m being a bit dramatic, perhaps. But often so are they.

Yet what is it that they’re for? What is the purpose of an angel? The name itself somewhat gives the game away. An ἄγγελος is a messenger, including those divine. Our reading from Genesis this morning recounted the vision of Jacob’s Ladder, with the angels of God ascending unto heaven and descending unto earth, fulfilling the will of the Lord.

The New Testament rather boldly asserts that every theophany of the Old Testament was also an angelophany, God speaking through His messengers. “No-one has ever seen God,” proclaims the Gospel According to John—not until God came down Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. St Paul writes that this is the reason why the New Covenant surpasses the Old: because the Old came down through angels, who passed it then to men, neither of whom are infallible. But the New Covenant is written for us in the Blood of God Himself, the Blood of Jesus Christ. Christ then ascends into heaven in order to put the angels’ celestial house back in order.

Recall the first verse, of the first chapter, of the first book of our Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” Both together, mind you. Heaven and earth here are not to be understood as two separate and independent realms, but as intimately related, even if separated for a time by incompleteness and sin. They will be reunited, made one, at the eschaton, as we read in Revelation, the final book of the Bible, when the heavenly Jerusalem descends to earth so that angels dwell with men.

Thus from the beginning, the relationship between the two, between angels and humanity, heaven and earth, stems from God’s ongoing act of Creation. Think of it like this. When we set out to create something new—to build a house, or write a poem, or embark on some adventure—we first come up with the image, the idea, of what we want it to be. That idea is, in a sense, the spirit of the thing we’re making real.

Our idea shapes what we do, shapes what we make; but it is also shaped by the reality of the thing itself—such that were I to paint a picture, I might imagine, “Okay, I want to depict the sunset over one of Minnesota’s many beautiful lakes.” But then, as I’m painting, I might run out of a certain color of paint. Or inspiration might strike in the midst of doing. Or some mistake might open avenues of opportunity heretofore undreamt. Then, as much as my idea shapes the canvas, so the reality of the canvas shapes my idea. That’s the creative process: it’s an exchange; it’s a dance. The thing that you’re making has a sort of freedom all its own.

And this is analogous to the way in which God creates. He produces an ideal that shapes the reality, but the two are so closely connected that the reality also modifies the original ideal. That’s the relationship between heaven and earth, between angels and humankind. They are God’s idea of the world He intends to create; and we are that ideal given form, given flesh. They are what we are meant to be, and we are them made real. Or perhaps I should say, we are them being made real; for Creation remains a process, working together toward our end.

The Bible seems to indicate that there are angels, living immortal ideas, assigned to most everything that arises here below in space and time. Countries have national angels, which the Prophet Daniel claims may clash whenever their peoples do. Elements have guiding angels: an angel for fire, for water, for wind. Orthodox iconography assigns a preëminent archangel to each of God’s Hypostases: Michael for the Son, Gabriel for the Spirit, and a mysterious nameless angel for God the Father—for the Father cannot be known apart from His self-revelation in His Spirit and His Son.

And here’s the neat bit: you have an angel. Jesus tells us so, as does the book of the Acts of the Apostles. This angel has been predestined as your guardian and your friend from the first moment of Creation. This angel has waited for billions of years for you to be born. Your angel is, in a real sense, your ideal self, the you whom you are meant to become. And you are your angel made real, being made real. You two are in it together, always have been.

Imagine that. Imagine that you have had an unseen friend for your entire life; from long before you were born, unto the ages after you die. And this friend knows you better than you could know yourself; knows you because they are you, angelically, the ideal of you. Chances are you’ve already imagined. Didn’t we all have invisible friends as a child? Didn’t we all possess a stuffed animal or doll or toy that we loved absolutely, unconditionally, and knew that they loved us? I don’t believe that that was all some immature delusion.

I think that we are born knowing that we are known, that we are loved, that we are never truly alone. Obviously God is always with us. I tell you truly, when I sit in silence, close my eyes, I feel Someone there. I cannot remember ever not knowing the presence of God. But He also provides to you a partner, a spiritual guardian and guide, closer to you than anyone, closer to you than your own self. And this angel is a person, with freedom, will, and love. This angel comes to you from God that you together may grow into Christ.

For Christ unites us all within Himself. He is the God who creates; He is the Word, the idea, through whom all things are made; and He is the fulness of the Creation, the first truly human being: Lord of angels, Lord of men, Lord of All in All. And when Creation culminates, we shall all rejoice together.

Everyone aches for friendship. Friends make life worthwhile. On this Feast of St Michael and All Angels—when we acknowledge God as the “Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things, seen and unseen”—let us remember that our greatest friends may be the ones we cannot always see. And because we know the love of God, we shall never be alone.

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

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/

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St Peter’s Lutheran

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Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/

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Nidaros Lutheran

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026