I departed from the script in the morning at Little Saling, as it was a bit gung ho on first reading, and ad libbed a bit on the Lord of the Rings (as it was on TV last night).
Readings 2 Kings 6, 8-17, John 1 47 - the end
Have you ever heard someone exclaim to a friend, “Oh, what are you like?” This is usually an expression of exasperation and amusement, when its intended target has clearly shown what they are like by acting stupid!
Michael, whose feast, along with all angels we celebrate today, means, “Who is like God” in Hebrew. Some have concluded that the name refers to “one who is like God”, which may be at the origin of various sub-Christian and New Age ideas about Michael being in some strange sense divine.
But actually it’s a question, “Who is like God?”
In the Bible, when God intervenes supernaturally, as he does for Elisha in 2 Kings 6, he does so frequently by a means we might describe as angelic. “The angel of the Lord” has a key role in the annunciation to Mary - but was that God, or an angel? Was that God, or an angel that wrestled with Jacob? Was that God or three angels who visited Abraham? The line is sometimes very blurred, so Michael’s name gives us a clue as to how to think properly of angels – “who is like God?” – Angels show us a little of what he is like but our new testament reading fills out the answer with specific reference to how angels worship the Son of Man.
“Who is like God?” – Jesus, ands the angels give him honour and glory – the glory bit fits with the idea of showing who God really is.
Yet there is something that distinguishes this calendar feast from most others, because the person we remember and celebrate is not a human being, but a heavenly one. Michael may be famous for various supernatural appearances on earth but he never lived an earthly life. I enjoy the saint’s days in the calendar, but that is usually because I take heart and encouragement from the way God uses ordinary men and women in extraordinary ways. You can’t do that at Michaelmas, because Michaelmas is the season for looking to heavens for inspiration, and to build up our common faith. This is what Elisha did, and this is also what Jesus told Nathaniel he would one day do too.
But you know, the language of Scripture is coming to us with a radically different cosmology, compared to the scientific advances of the modern era. Many people of all ages struggle with the idea that heaven is “up there”, and so reject out of hand the Bible stories of angels and clouds and the like. Yet the angelic host that came to Elisha’s aid wasn’t like that; the army of the Lord simply appeared to those who were able to see them. This reading I guess is included in the lectionary for today because of Michael’s reputation as a warrior – in Paradise Lost it is Michael who takes on Satan in armed combat and wounds him. Famous images of Michael such as the statue at the end of Boulevard St Michel in Paris often depict him as a helmeted warrior, or fighting a dragon, as he is described doing in Revelation 12. Angels sometimes seem to get the job of God’s hit men, carrying out emergency work at a moments notice- actually scrub that, it make s them sound like plumbers!
So how is this festival relevant for us today? It has long been a tradition to ordain people at Michaelmas; indeed I went to such a service yesterday. I want to suggest that there are two simple ways we can draw inspiration from St Michael and all angels.
Firstly, remember the meaning of his name “Who is like God?” It is the task of the church today to live work and speak in ways that point to God. We need to remember that Christian means “Christ-like”, our evangelism should be founded on the church’s self definition as the body of Christ, a people seeking to be Christ-like, in our reverence for God and for Creation, in our care for the poor and the outcast, and in sacrificial living.
And secondly, and following on from that, there is a sense that we can be inspired by the angelic hosts – not to acts of physical violence against our perceived enemies, as might have been the case hundreds of years ago, but to a spiritual battle. When we despair at the state of the nation, with every report of knife crime or infanticide, when we weep at the injustices of Zimbabwe or South Ossetia or Gaza, we can be inspired also to pray, to invoke the power of God in these situations, to prevail upon him to send his angels, and to stand with the Lord of hosts against the power of evil.
In conclusion it is worth remembering that the purpose of any Christian festival is to glorify God, to point to Christ. That is perhaps the most powerful image from the New Testament reading. The angels are ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
While casting from our minds all thoughts of angels on escalators, let us consider what it was that angels – cherubim and seraphim - hovered over in the Old Testament – that’s rights, the Ark of the Covenant.
Jesus saw Nathaniel as a true Israelite, someone for whom the concept of the ark, the Law of Moses, the holy of holies, the presence of God in the Temple, would have been of the utmost importance, yet Jesus says it will one day be the Son of Man over whom the angels ascend and descend. In other words, Jesus Christ was to replace the things central of Jewish worship, with himself.
Who is Like God?
Jesus Christ.
