Sermons

Sunday 29th September 2013, St Michael & All Angels, morning

Revelation 12:7-12

by Revd Chris Palmer

The Feast of St Michael and All Angels – or Michaelmas – is one of the more glorious feast of the church’s year. St Michael, isn’t really a saint at all in the normal sense, he’s an angel, indeed an archangel, indeed traditionally the leader and most important of all the angels.

Let’s fill in what the bible tells us about him. Michael crops up three times in quick succession in the book of Daniel, where he’s called the ‘great prince’ who protects Israel at the times of its deepest desperation under persecution. Then he crops up in the book of Revelation, in the passage we’ve just heard: ‘Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, and were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.’ Finally there’s a really strange reference to Michael in the letter of Jude, just about the most obscure part of the New Testament: ‘When the Archangel Michael contended with the devil and disputed about the body of Moses...’ – well such a story is attested nowhere else in the bible or other contemporary writings, though there is a reference to a Michael disputing about Moses’ soul in later rabbinic Jewish texts – so maybe there was some not very well documented tradition to this effect.

The fact that Michael appears in the books of Daniel, Jude, and Revelation – all written within 250 years of each other and all inspired by an apocalyptic - visionary - outlook shows that Michael was a figure that occupied the imagination of some strands of apocalyptically minded late second-temple Judaism.

But he also went on to occupy the minds of Christians; these few obscure texts became the basis of a devotion to St Michael that has been important pretty much through most of the church’s history. And iconography of St Michael is dominated by the image of St Michael standing in triumph over the defeated Satan. I was ordained in Coventry Cathedral, which is dedicated to St Michael, and on the outside of the cathedral is a just enormous statue by Sir Jacob Epstein of St Michael, wings spread, spear in hand, hovering victorious over a horned and chained devil laying at his feet. That image is very similar to images sometimes found of St George and the dragon – but with St Michael it’s much more ancient

St Michael in the Christian imagination stands as the leader of the spiritual forces of good, waging spiritual warfare against all that is evil in the universe. In the cosmic struggle between all that is true and righteous and all that is deceitful and polluted, Michael is the leader of God’s angelic forces – and the stories of him remind us that the battle is fundamentally won and that by God’s grace sin and the devil are nothing to be frightened of. And if you’re worried by the somewhat military imagery around St Michael, well bear in mind that a great hymn to St Michael – that I wanted us to sing today but thought no one would know – talks about him as ‘peacemaker blessed’. If there is any justification ever for resort to military action, it is to make peace. I know that begs lots questions that there’s no time to discuss now. In the meantime, I want to mention another danger.

I don’t want you to get the impression I’m advocating some dualism in which we imagine a cosmic battle between good and evil going on elsewhere, which just has some rub-off effect on us at a distance. Those references to Michael in the book of Daniel, where the writer is writing in a situation of just horrible tyranny and vengeance against his people, show that this apocalyptic language, this language of angels and spiritual battles, is really a way of giving perspective on the earthly situation we are in. If your situation is so dire that you might lose sight of God’s goodness, then talk of angels gives you a way of capturing again a vision of God. Spiritual warfare is not some almighty battle different from the struggles we experience; it is a perspective on the very earthly struggles against poverty, the violence, the injustice, and discrimination, and abuse, and corruption, and persecution that fill up our news stories today.

And in a sense today’s baptism service says this clearly. In a few moments we will say to Eira, ‘Fight valiantly as a disciple of Christ, against sin, the world, and the devil, and remain faithful to Christ to the end of your life. May almighty God deliver you from the powers of darkness...’ It’s not that Eire will be press ganged to go fight in Michael’s army on some distant spiritual shore; it is that as a baptised person she and the rest of us are already engaged in that battle in every temptation we face, in every opportunity to show God’s love, in every decision that makes a difference to our lives and that of others.

And the ultimate spiritual battle of all time was fought on the cross, when Jesus resisted the temptation to shows his power and defeat his persecutors – ‘do you not think,’ he said, ‘that I cannot appeal to my Father and he would send twelve legions of angels’. Instead he stayed true to his vocation, mindful of the call of his Father in his heart even when the loud earthly voices were mocking and jeering him and tempting him to prove himself.

The daring claim of Christian faith, the daring claim of the Eucharist we celebrate is that what appears to be an earthy defeat is in reality the moment of God’s greatest triumph over sin and all that keeps us from fellowship with God. If the apocalyptic imagination asked the suffering Israelites to recognising God fighting for them at their moment of persecution, that same imagination asks us to see the greatest of all triumphs at the moment of most abject defeat on the cross. The resurrection simply makes clear the victory that Jesus has already won. And, if there is ever a sign that we shouldn’t split reality into separate spiritual and physical dimensions, it is the resurrection. We can talk about it as belonging to the world – an empty tomb, Jesus could be touched and eat – and we can talk about it as belonging to heaven - where Jesus is raised to the right hand of God above every spiritual power – but we’re talking about the same reality in both cases.

This reality of Jesus death and resurrection is one that Eira embraces today in baptism. We mark her with the sign of the cross. Through the waters of baptism she enters Christ’s tomb with him, dying to all that is evil and corrupt in the world, and rises to resurrection, to eternal life. Through baptism she receives the Holy Spirit, the presence of God within, promising that as she’s attracted and pulled to and fro by the different spirits we encounter daily, she can always turn to God who will be nearer and more faithful than any other.

For Eira and all of us:
May St Michael and all the angels fight for us,
May the cross of Christ be for us a sign of hope and victory,
And may the Holy Spirit be our comfort and guide in every moment of life. Amen.