John Waddington-Feather – “St Michael and All Angels Sermon”
The Feast of St Michael and All Angels (Michaelmas) is a good day to celebrate my 25th year of ordination; a day to give thanks to God for all the richness and fulfilment of my priesthood; a day to thank my guardian angel for looking after me. For this day is all about angels and the part they play in our lives.
Let me begin with that dramatic story from “Revelation”, of St Michael and his band of good angels driving out Satan and his evil angels from Heaven down to earth. That story has inspired English writers right from John Milton in the 17th century, who based his “Paradise Lost” on it, through to C. S. Lewis in the 20th century, who was inspired by it to write “Out of the Silent Planet”, the first Christian science-fiction novel.
When St John the Divine wrote his story, he was still a prisoner of the Romans at a slave labour camp on the island of Patmos in the Mediterranean, imprisoned for his faith at a time when the Emperor Nero was persecuting Christians.
He had to codify his letter to the mainland Christians, otherwise the Roman secret police would have accused him and them of circulating subversive literature against the Roman Empire. So John uses Jewish mythology and symbols to warn his fellow Christians against conforming to Roman Emperor worship and at the same time attacking the Emperor Nero, likening him to a beast.
Angels come into John’s letter again and again as the agents of God, sent by God to oversee his people. In art we represent them as supernatural beings with wings and halos, but in the bible they seem to be ordinary human beings – in form at any rate – so we never know when we’re meeting them. They appear in the flesh or they appear in dreams. They visit Abraham and Sarah as strangers walking out of the desert, and it’s in the desert they minister to our Lord during his temptation. The humanness of angels is mention by St Paul, who in one of his letters urges Christians always to practise hospitality, for thereby some have entertained angels unknowingly. And a whole book in the Apocrypha called “Tobias and the Angel” is devoted to an angel and his relationship with a Jew, Tobias.
Now what are we to make of all this in an age where people don’t believe in angels and many don’t believe in God? We live in an age where people don’t believe, unless they can prove something either by science or logic – and most folk aren’t very good at either of those two disciplines, so rely on the media to think for them. And we all know how accurate the media is.
John wasn’t writing about what his hearers could prove, he was writing for their spiritual welfare, what they experienced daily, the good and evil of life. You can only understand his letter if your spirit is in tune with what he is trying to say. Much in the bible is meaningless to the world if the spirit does not interpret it. People who want everything reducing to fact will never be able to understand the imagery of the bible – nor, indeed, in literature as a whole. Their bibles are sociology or psychology books; the works of writers like Freud and Karl Marx, or any politico-sociological tract currently fashionable. Others gather all their information – and morals – from the popular press.
But the bible goes well beyond that sort of teaching and demands a spiritual input if its readers are going to understand its message, especially the teaching of Christ. And if we are to understand what angels are all about we can do that only on a spiritual level. I believe angels are sent to help us understand God, to oversee our lives and nudge us in the right direction when we go wrong. Rather like more mature students who were our shadows when we entered a new school or college. If we don’t respond in the spirit, we will never see an angel.
Let me tell you a true story. It happened almost twenty years ago, when I was teaching at Khartoum University in Sudan. It was a time of great political upheaval, when Islamic fundamentalists were persecuting Christians and devout Muslims alike. Shar’ia Law had been imposed, that is strict adherence to the laws laid down in the Qu’ran. It shouldn’t have applied to Christians, but nevertheless they suffered as did moderate Muslims, who disagreed with it.
A group of these was centred on the university and called themselves the Republican Brothers and Sisters. They were intellectuals, peace-loving and tolerant. They opposed strongly Sha’ria Law and had to go into hiding to avoid arrest. Their leader Mahmood Taha, a professor and expert in Islamic Law, was eventually hanged and I witnessed his execution, one of several public executions in Kober Prison just across the road from the Arab house where I lived.
Several of my colleagues were foreign professors, who’d opted to serve in the Third World for a while, and a great friend of mine was a Canadian professor of law, Fred Carrothers, Dean of the Law Faculty at Ottawa University. He came regularly to the Anglican Cathedral in Khartoum, where I officiated at the ex-patriate services in English. Unknown to the authorities, Fred had been mandated by the United Nations to log all executions and human rights abuses in Sudan, so he took a special interest in the persecution of the Republican Brothers and Sisters, many of whom were our colleagues at the university.
We were still in contact with them when they’d gone into hiding to avoid arrest, and one night went to join them at a prayer meeting in a remote desert village. As well as praying with them, we also answered their questions about Jesus Christ and our own religion. I believe they gained great comfort and strength from our presence with them during this period of persecution.
The village was some miles north of Omdurman and to reach it we had to cycle at night alongside the railway track out of the city to Egypt. The village was one of several we could see, lit by oil-lamp, and set well back from the railway. We had to go by night to avoid the secret police of General Nimieri who were everywhere, and hunting down the sect. A bit like living in Iraq or Palestine today, I suppose.
It was a beautiful night. The sky was cloudless and like silk. You could see for miles across the moonlit desert, but we couldn’t leave the railway in case we got lost, for they’d given only the vaguest of directions – like all Arabs! We were considering turning back, when suddenly out of the night a tall figure in the white flowing robes of the Sudanese came striding across the desert towards us.
To say we were impressed by the man’s appearance would be an understatement. He was tall, jet-black, handsome and very dignified. He greeted us first in Arabic then in English, which he spoke fluently, like many Sudanese. He said he knew whom we were looking for and told us to follow him. We must have looked an odd trio, he striding majestically in front and us two following behind wheeling our bikes.
When we reached the outskirts of one of the villages, he pointed to a large Arab house surrounded by a high wall and said the Republican Brothers and Sisters were inside. Then he strode off and we never saw him again.
We knocked on the heavy wooden door and a servant let us in and took us to where the Brothers and Sisters were praying and singing beautiful psalms. They welcomed us warmly and after we’d finished praying with them, a meal was served Arab style, sat on the ground and eating with our fingers. In the course of conversation, we thanked them for sending a guide to lead us to the house, as we’d no idea where it was.
Now comes the amazing bit. They said they’d sent no one. They daren’t for fear of the police, but they’d prayed to God to send us an angel to lead us in.
Fred was a hard-nosed lawyer used to dealing with hard-nosed facts. He was dumbfounded and tried to argue otherwise. There was no logical reason, but he, like me, had felt we were in the presence of some extraordinary person as we’d walked through the desert, and he grudgingly accepted that we’d been in the presence of an angel – and him a Methodist!
On this Feast of St Michael and All Angels, I leave that with you as my anniversary sermon. The psychologists and all the other ologists will doubtless have their explanations, but I stick to what I believe was true. I wonder what your reaction will be one day if you suddenly sense that you’re in the company of an angel? My guess is that like myself you won’t realise it till he’s gone.
In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
John Waddington-Feather ©
http://www.waddysweb.freeuk.com
