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Weekly sermons from the traditional and contemporary worship services at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas. Rooted in Scripture and the Anglican tradition, these messages explore how the gospel speaks to our faith, our everyday lives and the world around us.
We are weak and angels are wild. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Amen. Well, please forgive my slightly irreverent
opening line, but today we are observing the feast of
St. Michael and all angels.
And I don't know about you, but I don't typically spend a lot of time thinking
about angels. It's kind of a very strange, weird concept for me.
And in preparing this sermon, and as occasionally I think about the other spiritual
realms and realities, I realize there are really two
errors, and for every mile of road, there's two miles of ditch.
I am kind of a naturally skeptical person.
If you tell me that you heard from and saw an angel, I would have a really hard
time believing you, and that doesn't reflect well on me, I know.
But what we hear today in the scriptures, and what Christian tradition gives us,
is that we are forced to admit that the Christian faith describes a world that is
larger than the one we can imagine.
Two ditches. The first is like myself, where we forget the
unseen.
John Henry Newman, one of the great figureheads of the Oxford movement, would say,
"The sin of ours is that is what is called the sin of an educated age, such as
our own, to account slightly of them, spiritual beings, or not at
all. The danger, that is, of resting in things seen and forgetting unseen things
and our ignorance about them." We trust what can be seen, studied,
quantified, and tested, and if something cannot be put under a microscope, we
quietly demote it to a metaphor, to our great detriment.
The second ditch is maybe of those who are fascinated with things unseen,
spiritual things, but detach it from the person of Christ.
We are seeing in our generation a renewed hunger for spirituality.
You may have heard about the quiet revival going on, which is not so much a
revival, but definitely a renewed interest in spiritual matters
of the younger generations. But this often takes the shape of tarot cards,
crystals, manifesting, witchcraft, vague language about angels and energies.
One of the great ad agencies of the world, Wunderman Thompson, that actually coined
the term marketing in the 1960s, recently published a report called "The Age of
Re-enchantment." It highlighted that while the younger generation has lost the
language of faith, they retain a strong intuition that there is
something more. "If there is a spirit of the age," the report says, "it would look
a lot like fear. As younger generations come of age in an uncertain world, they are
seeking meaning and control in practices like tarot, crystals, and manifesting." In
fact, among Gen Z, 51% report an interest in non-traditional
spirituality. Compare that to the 34% of the total population.
We're definitely seeing something taking place that is piquing our interest
again in unseen things. But one ditch says only the material world is
real. The other says the spiritual world is real, and perhaps it can be managed,
harnessed, or used. Our faith says something even harder and stranger.
The unseen world is real, it is not ours to control, and it
belongs to God.
We are not as strong as we imagine, and we are not as alone as
we fear. Creation is larger than we can see.
I don't know about you, but I'm a very outdoorsy kind of person.
I come from a family of hunters, and I've spent a-- Doing hiking, climbing all over
different places. And there have been a few times being out in the wilderness that
I've experienced the presence of a creature that is more superior to myself.
My father's been hunting a few times in Africa, and hearing him describe the
sensation of when an apex predator turns and looks at you as an afternoon
snack. When you suddenly realize that you're not at the top of the food
chain. We are really just fleshy meat sacks, weak beings.
And that feeling of being confronted with absolute superiority can be terrifying.
Maybe you've experienced it on the trail, where you hear the rumble of a bear or a
mountain lion and realize there is real danger out there.
But our weakness is not only physical.
We have an astonishing susceptibility to being deceived.
Revelation 12, which we heard in our epistle this morning, "The dragon is that
ancient serpent, the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world and the
accuser of the brethren." There are forces at work that are larger than an
individual human will. Evil, we know, is not merely bad
choices. Scripture describes a conflict that exceeds us, that is
beyond us, that is outside of the realm that we can easily see and measure.
And this feast of St. Michael and all angels becomes good news in that
reality. God has not left us to our own capabilities.
The collect today, if you would look at it, and if you remember, "O everlasting
God, who hast ordained and constituted the service of angels and men in a wonderful
order." The collect tells us two things, beautifully.
Two things about the basic work of angels.
One, they serve God in Heaven, and two, at God's command, they help and
defend us on Earth. Their first work is that of the worship of God.
Isaiah 6 says, "In the year King Uzziah died," you may remember this, and he's
caught up in this wonderful vision of the heavenly realms, and he sees the seraphim
as they veil their faces before the throne of God, crying, "Holy, holy, holy is the
Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory." And then again, in Revelation
4, "Day and night without ceasing, the angels say: Holy, holy, holy, the
Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come." And in
Luke 2, the multitude of heavenly hosts at the announcing of the coming of Jesus,
"Glory to God in the highest." Do you recognize these words? I hope so.
We do this every week at the table. Therefore, with angels and
archangels, and with all the company of Heaven.
When we say that, here this is a description of reality which is already
underway. The church does not begin our worship of God on Sunday morning.
We enter a worship that is going on from the foundations of the Earth and
already underway. The Sanctus is the song of Heaven,
given to the church on Earth. And just as we pray on Earth as it is in Heaven,
at that moment, we join with the angels in coming before the throne of God.
How is it that we reclaim awe and worship?
I don't know any other way than to be cognizant of the reality that is just
slightly outside our field of view, and we participate in that worship in
a very real way every time we come before this table, and we
participate in the reception of Christ's body and blood.
We must reclaim awe and worship, not because the church ought to feel impressive,
but because the one before whom even the seraphim veil their faces is
who we come before every week. John Henry Newman, again, would say, "The very
seraphim hide their faces before His glory while they praise Him.
And how shamefaced then should we sinners be when we come into His presence."
Number two, the second work of the angels is their work on behalf of God's people.
Hebrews 1:14 says, "Are not all angels spirits in the divine service,
sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?" And again,
in our collect, "By your appointment, they may help and defend us here
on earth." What we see in scripture, a few angels that are named specifically.
Michael serves by fighting, as we heard in our epistle, Gabriel by announcing, the
angels at Bethlehem by praising, at the tomb they serve by witnessing, at the
ascension they serve by redirecting the apostles and the disciples to where they
will find Jesus. The glory of the angels is their obedience,
not their power. It's their proximity to Jesus and their obedience to him.
That is the glory of angels.
Revelation 12 shows that angels also are in
the midst of a very real conflict with evil.
"Our struggle," Ephesians says, "is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but
against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."
But Christian warfare is this:
worship, prayer, truth, holiness, repentance, resistance to
deception, and witness,
not fascination with spiritual powers.
Because the angels point beyond themselves.
The angels point beyond themselves in all their work to the person of Christ.
And just as we can feel that sense of smallness in front of a great apex predator,
when a great being points you to something bigger than itself,
pay attention.
There's something almost comical in the Bible about interactions of angels with
humans.
I think of it sometimes, they're like big brothers.
Do you have kids or were you a big sibling?
And you get a little annoyed with the little sibling occasionally, right?
Sometimes the angels sound very annoyed at our inability to see what's around us.
Luke 1, he says to Zechariah, "I'm Gabriel," he says, a little frustrated at
Zechariah, "And I have been sent to speak to you and bring you this good news.
But now, because you didn't believe my words," hear big brother or big sister here
getting a little frustrated, "you will become mute."
And in Matthew 28, the angel said to the women, "See? I told you.
He's risen." Off to something a little bit more interesting.
Luke 24, "Why
do you look for the living among the dead?" Well, a guy just died and now he rose
again. Of course, why are we going to be confused?
And the angels are just like, "Whatever. Why can't you figure this out?
Why can't you see this?" Acts 1, they said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand
looking up towards heaven?" A guy just ascended into the heavens.
Of course, I'm going to be a little curious about what's going on.
Again and again, the angels say, "Don't look at us.
Look where we're pointing. Look what we're telling you to do.
Look who we're telling you to pay attention to.
Look who we're telling you to listen to."
Jacob saw a ladder reaching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and
descending, and he woke and said, "Surely this is the gate of heaven,
and I wasn't aware of it." And then in our gospel, Jesus takes this image and
centers it on himself. "You will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending
and descending upon the Son of Man," serving him, proclaiming him.
Jesus is the gate of heaven. He is the meeting place of heaven and earth where
God and humanity meet, right at this table.
Every time we come to it, we're stepping into that reality.
Do we realize this? Have we forgotten this?
Do we choose to limit the perception that we are open
to and listen for? 1 Peter 1:2 says that the things announced in the
gospel are things into which angels long to look.
The prophets long for it, the access that we have now to the person of Christ, to
God the Father. The angels long to look into it, and we have been given
participation. Participation. We participate in the life of Christ.
The accuser's weapon, however, is accusation.
Christ's answer is not that there is nothing to accuse us of.
His answer is himself and his blood, by which the saints conquer
by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.
We are weak, we are unbelievably vulnerable to deception,
and we're surrounded by realities we cannot see, all of which remain under the
sovereignty of God.
We're not as strong as we imagine, but we're not as
alone as we fear. God's creation is more crowded with glory than we can
see, and the life of the church is caught up in it.
So this morning, let us consciously join the angels in their worship and their
warfare. Resist the deceit of the flesh, the world, and the devil.
Repent, pray, pursue holiness, and look only to Christ
to complete this work in us and for us. Amen.