Solemnity of S. Michael and 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 Spirit. Amen.

IN MOST PLACES, in most times, Christians have felt alienated by the culture in which they live. While we live in the world, reach out to the world, even love the world, we are also very much at odds with the world. We are not of the world. Christians know the liberation and joy of having purpose, of not being limited to the world's frivolity, its indulgence, its narrowness, its anxiety. God orients us to what has meaning, to what's eternal, to what's glorious, to what's noble. But the world juices up our fears and greed and malice and triviality. The world seems to care about where Paris Hilton vacations, who Brad Pitt romances, how Anna Nicole Smith gold-digs. The world stokes us with chaotic desires and seduces us with empty fantasies. At times it seems even as if the world has slipped beyond 'immoral,' simply becoming 'amoral,' without a sense even of what's up and down, without a thought that right and wrong are possibilities.

"And there was war in heaven." The Revelation of S. John describes spiritual warfare - the battle between good and evil. It is apocalyptic literature, a type of writing which among other things claims to reveal hidden, divine secrets and relies heavily upon symbolic imagery, such as in today's reading in which a dragon represents Satan and angels represent human beings. The interest of apocalyptic literature is not so much what has happened in the past or what will happen in the future, but what is happening now. Apocalyptic literature assumes that what's happening on earth is deeply (though perhaps invisibly) connected to heavenly affairs.

John's Revelation describes people in the first century who were either opposing the Church or fighting alongside S. Michael, God's chief warrior, to defend the Church. It's holy propaganda meant to strengthen and to re-assure his contemporaries, his fellow Christians, that ultimately God in Jesus is victorious over sin, the world, and the devil. With vivid, often bizarre imagery, John leads us to see ourselves a part of a cosmic struggle between good and evil, that we have a vital role to play.

S. Paul in his letters to his mission churches used more straightforward language to assure Christians that being part of the Church protects us from evil. He tells the Romans, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." (Romans 16:20) He refers to one opponent of the Church as "a messenger from Satan." (2 Cor 12:7) The Church and her members fully engage in this cosmic battle between good and evil.

Yet, we should also recognize that the clash between good and evil does not only exist in the tensions between the Church and the world. Most would also recognize that good and evil clash within the Church herself, and indeed within every human institution. And more profoundly still, we should recognize that a war between good and evil rages in the soul of every human being. Do we succumb to the ways of Satan: anger, jealousy, enmity, party spirit, idolatry, fornication, envy, selfishness, drunkenness? Or do we struggle to align ourselves with God's angels, his messengers, his powers which help to bring forth the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, trust, gentleness, self-control? (Gal 5:19-23) Do we constrict God's love and mercy, or do we spread God's love and mercy? This is the true spiritual battle.

In Ephesians the spiritual battle metaphor is especially strong. (Eph 6:10-20) The author explains that God gives us heavenly assistance to repel and to prevail against the onslaught of evil. We are soldiers clothed by God: our loins girded with truth, a breastplate of righteousness, a shield of faith, a helmet of salvation, a sword of God's word, shoes of the gospel of peace. But he says our greatest assistance is the Spirit who inspires prayer. We stand against the powers and principalities of our present darkness through constant prayer, praying at all times, in all places. Prayer is the essential weapon of a soldier in the heavenly army.

Ephesians tells us that "making supplication for all the saints," that is intercessory prayer, saying prayers for other people, is especially important. We usually don't think of praying for one another as spiritual battle, but that thought might benefit us. What is the good we are fighting for? It's God's love, and we don't love when we are stuck inside ourselves, when our primary concern is ourselves.

Intercessory prayer is about expanding our hearts, finding room for other people, reconciling with people. It's praying for family and friends and strangers as well as praying for people we disapprove of, people we don't like, people who annoy us, people who have treated us poorly. Praying for such 'enemies' makes us more Christ-like. Suffering on the cross, Jesus prayed for his persecutors, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34) Intercessory prayer is the greatest act of love. It's overcoming evil in ourselves - the most important orthodoxy. It's spiritual warfare.

More than anything, prayer transforms us, makes us new. Nothing so strengthens our character. Anyone who has given a serious, concerted effort at prayer learns this for himself. And it's also almost measurable from the outside. Wilfrid Noyce studied people who had survived extremely demanding ordeals. In his book They Survived: A Study of the Will to Live, he concluded:

that in desperate situations, where people are confronted with extremes of thirst and hunger, "often the apparently strong do not come off best in the end." What seems to count most is an inner psychological strength, which is nurtured by purpose, hope, and spiritual beliefs. . . . a humble act that Noyce found was practiced by nearly all survivors [was] prayer. . . .

Prayer, Noyce found, can provide people in desperate situations with remarkable resilience. He discovered that this was true even for people who were not religious prior to their ordeal. In addition to fostering hope, prayer gives people a palpable sense that they are not alone and, perhaps more important, helps them escape their physical suffering. ⁽¹⁾

Prayer takes us beyond ourselves, gets us over ourselves. That's where true power and strength begins.

How do we pray for one another? How do we join in the spiritual battle and fight with S. Michael against evil? We don't have to worry about using the right words. Prayer isn't a formula or an incantation. At its most basic intercessory prayer is simply thinking about someone, someone being in the presence of God, thinking of someone being with Jesus; it is holding someone - their name, their image - in our hearts, and asking God to pour out his love or his light into this person. We don't have to attach requests to our prayer; we don't have to tell God what he needs to do. In the Prayer Book, we have a lovely prayer acknowledging that God is "doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for." We don't have to have an agenda - just an open heart. Think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed to his Father, "Not my will, but yours be done."

We want our prayers to align with God's will. Of course, we can not presume to know God's will in all things, and we are fools to consider our desires or our beliefs to be God's will. But we know that God wants to heal and to reconcile and to make peace and to provide the essentials for life. We know that it's God's will for the care and healing of those suffering with illness, for the reconciliation of alienated friends, for the peace of warring nations, for the provision of food to the hungry.

One of the benefits of intercessory prayer is that it nurtures and matures our relationship with Jesus. We begin to treat God less like a genie. We find that when prayers aren't answered the way we want them, God is still with us. Indeed, often when things don't go the way we planned or desired, things are better. We can't limit God to our vision or our agenda. We'd never learn or grow or change. Rather, we have to open ourselves to God, to his ways, to trying to see the way he sees, to understand that he wills the happiness and well-being of each person. We don't see the whole picture.

We find God in the silence, in the emptiness, away from distraction and activity that so enthralls our lives. Is God acting in the tsunami, in the AIDS epidemic, in 9/11, in Katrina? Surely, but God is communicating not only in the dramatic. When Elijah sought to discern God's will, he didn't find it in the strong winds, or in the earthquake, or in the fire. He found it in the still, small voice. (1 Kings 19) It is in sitting quietly, waiting upon God, being patient, letting him surprise us.

We may spend years praying for some one, and the situation only deteriorates. Is God hearing our prayer? Yes. Absolutely. But are we hearing him? That's the struggle. God does not want people to suffer, and he does not will anyone to suffer. But despite our prayers, the suffering sometimes gets worse. Then our prayer really is a spiritual battle. We continue to pray, to trust God, instead of being defeated by evil.

Just as at the mass when we ask God to enter his creation and to transform the bread and wine, our intercessory prayers call God into the world, and involve him in the world, in our battle against evil. That's the great irony. The world is opposed to God, or indifferent to God. But our prayers are to hold God in the world. God belongs in the world - united to it, thereby renewing it, transforming it, re-creating it. Ultimately, fighting with S. Michael, intercessory prayer is about making love, not war.

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

1. Robert Whitaker, The Mapmaker's Wife, Basic Books (2004).