St. Michael and All Angels

September 29, 20214

+ Well, a few weeks ago we stepped out of our regular Ordinary green on Sunday morning when we celebrated the feast of the Holy Cross.

Today, we’re doing it again.

As I said then, I repeat now: we’re not really supposed to do this, but I really think it’s important to celebrate some of these feasts that many of you don’t get to celebrate regularly.

But now we’re stepping into the .

And we are doing so to celebrate the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, or as it is commonly known, Michaelmas.

Why? You may ask.

Well, we are because let’s face it: we don’t really give angels a lot of thought.

We just don’t.

And, from what it seems, the angels themselves would be just fine with that.

They don’t seem like they want a lot of attention brought to themselves.

But whether they like it or not, we are going to commemorate them today.

But first, let’s talk about our scripture readings for today.

We have these three very familiar stories featuring angels this morning.

Our first is the really wonderful story of “Jacob’s ladder” (one of my favorites).

The second is the story Michael, leading the “good” angels, who battle and then  beat “the dragon” (we know dragon as “the Devil or Satan”) and his “bad” angels.

Finally, in our Gospel reading, which echoes our reading from the Hebrew scriptures, we find Jesus telling Nathanael that he will see something like Jacob’s ladder,  with angels “ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Lots of angels.

But let’s ask ourselves: what are angels?

I mean honestly.

Angels, as we understand them, based on Scripture and tradition, are spiritual beings who interact with humans—sometimes as servant and sometimes as messengers of God.

The word “angel” comes from the word angelos, which means messenger or envoy.

In Hebrew, angels are referred to mal’ak elohim (“the messenger of God”), or  mal’ak YHWH (“messenger of the Lord”) or  bene elohim (or children of God”).

Stephanie Garcia and I have a shared interest in something biblically correct angels, a trend on social media in which angels are depicted as we encounter them in the Hebrew scriptures.

 These are not sweet, nice, chubby little cherubs, or stoic, blond, white men or women with wings.

 Biblically correct angels are frightening—wheels with wings and eyes and a frightening all-seeing eye at their center, which we find in the prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel.  

 Angels are not humans.

 And we don’t become angels when we die, despite what popular culture says.

 They are different than us.

 They are somewhat divine—somewhat above us and beyond us.

 But the problem for us, good, rational progressive Christians that we are, is that all this sems a bit fantastical, doesn’t it?

It’s like listening to someone talk about the Game of Thrones or Dungeons and Dragons.

It’s seems to mythical. Or mythological.

And most of us have a very hard relating angels to our own lives.

After all, WE’ve never encountered angels, right?

Well, we may have.

Sometimes, the right people come into our lives at just the right time.

And there was one time in my own life when I think I actually did in fact encounter an angel in human form.

Way back in April of 2002, I was recovering from cancer.

It was a dark time in my life.

I was sick.

And weak.

And about as down and out as a person can be, emotionally and spiritually.

Well, one day early in that month, I finally finished my round of radiation for cancer.

I was exhausted, but I was also relieved.

I decided, following that final treatment, to take a drive.

For some reason I don’t remember anymore, I was driving my father’s pickup.

Anyway, I had a fairly nice morning driving around in Minnesota in the cold spring weather.

I was looking forward to healing and getting beyond my cancer.

Well, as I was driving home on a highway between Halstad, Minnesota and Hillsboro, North Dakota, I hit a rock on the road that had been dragged there by some tillers, who were tilling the fields for planting.

It destroyed the tire.

And I pulled over alongside the road in the middle of nowhere.

And I mean nowhere.

Although it was April, it was still bitterly cold.

And to make matters worse, the cellphone I had the time, which was not a very good one, died on me.

I had no one to call.

So, I got out and was going to change to tire.

But I didn’t know where the spare tire was on my father’s pick up.

Besides, I was sick.

And weak.

And I wasn’t certain I would’ve even been able to physically manage it.

I panicked.

There was a farmstead a few miles away.

But I decided to stay put and see if anyone stopped.

And no one did.

No one.

Cars drove by, back and forth, but no one stopped, even when I got out and waved at them.

Finally, after some time, a car did pull over.

In it was a middle-aged woman.

She asked if I needed help.

I told her about the rock and the tire and that I didn’t know where the spare was because it was my dad’s pickup.

She offered to drive me to Hillsboro.

I was grateful and got in, but I did tell her that she should probably be careful giving rides to strangers.

“It’s all right, “ she said. “I have a gun under my seat.”

We made small-talk on the ride and it came out that I was studying to be an Episcopal priest and that she was Jewish.

I then confessed to her that even if I had found that tire I wasn’t certain I was going to be able to change it since I had just had my last radiation treatment that morning for cancer.

She said, “Oh, I have cancer too.”

She then offered me her cellphone and I called my mother to tell her what happened.

We then made it into Hillsboro and she dropped me off a Goodyear Tire store there.

Weirdly, the next time I was in Hillsboro after that, that tire store had closed.

I asked her name so I send her a thank you.

She said, no. that’s all right.

We bid each other farewell. I thanked her again.

And off she went into the snow.

I later found out that she called my mother, since the number was on her phone, to tell my mom that I was all right and that she should be proud of me for some reason.

This nameless Jewish woman, in the middle of nowhere between Halstad and Hillsboro.

What are the chances of that?

For me, this is what angels are.

For me, this is all the proof I need that angels exist.

For me, that’s exactly what angels would do.

I hope we have all experienced angels among us in some way in our lives.

These angels among us remind us that we are not alone, that we are, ultimately, taken care of.

They remind us that God does care for us—that we are important to God.

Even in the middle of nowhere between Halstad and Hillsboro.  

But, it doesn’t end there.

The message for me—and for all of this morning—is that sometimes, we too are called to be angels for others.

We too are, like angels, called to embody God’s goodness, God’s grace, God’s love in our service of others.

We are called to be angels in this world for those who need angels in this world.

So let us do just that.

Let us be those angels.

Let us embody the goodness and love of God in our service of each other.

Let us reach out in mercy and compassion for those around us.

By doing so, we become angels in our midst to those around us.

By doing so, we embody God’s goodness and love.

By doing so, we glimpse God’s reign, present here on earth as tiny glimpses.

By doing so, we truly will see angels ascending and descending among us.

Amen.