Solemnity of S. Michael & All Angels

Genesis 28:10-17
Revelation 12:7-12
John 1:47-51

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

We often refer to people as angels, people who are innocent or loving or gentle, who have exemplary characters, who we recognize as guardians of nobility, beauty, goodness. There are many angels in our congregation. All of us have had angels in our lives. Most of us know what it's like to be in a serious bind, be it heartache, or a financial problem, a crisis of confidence, a serious illness, and someone has been there to catch us. They've stepped up to help us. We receive this kindness from family and friends and mentors, those ordinary angels, but sometimes it is acquaintances and strangers who recognize our need and save us, and even with some sacrifice of themselves. Life is full of struggles and sadness, and we need help. One of the ways God cares for us is to send people to us, and these people become angels to us. We don't deserve God's kindness, but we receive his help anyway.

There are several people who have entered my life and have been enormously, incredibly good to me, and there's no way for me to re-pay them. I am indebted to them and have been somewhat ill at ease for not being able to return the favor. We all have this experience. While we are grateful for this kindness to us, it also makes us uncomfortable. We don't welcome being in someone's debt. But we are wrong to feel that way and to think that way. We must not regard human relationships as a matter of barter. Good deeds are not commodities to be traded. In heaven, it's not: you rub my back, and I'll rub yours. And that's not the way Christians ought to treat one another; good works are not conditional. For we recognized that it is not only the recipient of a good deed who benefits, but just as much it is the doer. Being generous, being caring, being loving is its own reward; it is the reward of life.

Scripture confirms our experience, and specifically today's Old Testament lesson does. Jacob is one of the more unpleasant characters in the Bible. While Jesus says that Nathanael is an Israelite without guile, Jacob, the first Israelite, is full of guile, a cheat of the first order. In today's lesson, Jacob is running away from his brother Esau, who in a fit of righteous anger wanted to kill Jacob. Jacob had deceived his father Isaac and stolen Esau's birthright, Esau's rightful inheritance. Esau was an honest, tough, hard-working man, perhaps not real bright, but the salt of the earth. The Bible says that Jacob was a 'smooth' man: smooth as in an operator, as in deceptive; and, smooth as in not rugged, as in a mamma's boy, hanging around the house being cared for, instead of out contributing to the well-being of the family. Jacob is not a sympathetic character, and certainly not deserving of God's love.

In today's lesson, Jacob is running away from the Promised Land, the land promised to his grandfather Abraham, and he is heading for Haran, about four hundred miles away, the very place that God had initially appeared to Abraham and promised to give Abraham a new land, to make him a great nation, to exalt his name, to bless all the world through him. Jacob is going in the reverse direction; he seems to be the opposite of faithful Abraham. On his way to Haran, Jacob rests and dreams of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending upon it. The message of the dream is that heaven and earth are not wholly separate realities, but linked together. Jacob perceived God's presence, and he heard God's message: "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, and I am going to give to you, and to your countless offspring, the Promised Land. I am going to bless all the families of the earth through you." Even as Jacob is running away from the Promised Land, God promised not only to save this reprobate and to protect him, but to exalt him among all peoples. The promises God made to Jacob are the same ones he made to holy Abraham. And God promises to each of us: "I will help you. I will be with you as you contend with the challenges and agonies of life as well as when things are going well."

The message of Jesus is that through him God is with us and helps us. And here's the thing that shows us the depth of human dignity, the brilliance of human grandeur: God also wants us to help him. We do not only have to receive his help, but we can return the favor. We can never repay in full - not even close, but we can do something. We do that by serving one another, by being ministering angels to those we know and to strangers. The Epistle to the Hebrews says that the holy angels are "ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation." (Heb 1:14) That's what human beings are supposed to be doing. Our service to God is as important as the service of angels. Indeed, we have to remember that human beings are a potentially higher form of creation than angels. S. Paul asked the Corinthians, "Do you not know that we are to judge angels?" (1 Cor 6:3)

One of my favorite feasts is the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel comes to our Lady and delivers God's request that she bring forth his son. I have a small stack of postcards of fifteenth and sixteenth century Italian paintings of the Annunciation. Each painting, whether it's by Angelico, Lippi, Ghirlandaio, da Vinci, Botticelli, each painting shows the Archangel Gabriel bowing down or kneeling before our Lady; the angel venerates humanity. It's the opposite of what we expect. Aren't we today honoring and venerating the angels, and yet they bow before saints?

In the years following Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species, young Benjamin Disraeli with more zeal than reflection engaged in the controversy and declared at a church convention: "The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence those new fangled theories." ⁽¹⁾ Well, in fact, we are a bit of both, ape and angel, and this need not distress us. Angels are purely spiritual beings, without flesh or physicality. Apes are flesh. Like apes, we have bodies, and our bodies are a great gift, a means for us to be creative, something we can use to glorify God, or we can be brutes with them. That great theologian Norman Mailer pointed out: "There's that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God." ⁽²⁾ Mailer got that right. In Mary's womb, that transit from brute to God was completed. The angels bow down because human flesh became God. Each of us is embarked upon that same transit, and we need the help of God, and of his holy angels, and of one another, to attain our destiny.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

1. Benjamin Disraeli, Speech at Oxford Diocesan Conference, 25 November 1864.

2. Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead, pt. 1, ch. 11, Rinehart (1948).