SAINT MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS

Sunday, September 29, 2024

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Genesis 28:10-17

Psalm 103:19-22

Revelation 12:7-12

John 1:47-51

 

“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.” The first article of the Nicene Creed calls our attention to God as Creator, and hence to God’s creation as well.

 

Contemplating the beauty of creation leads us to praise the Creator. We discover God’s wisdom, goodness, and beauty reflected in the things that he has made—from the farthest galaxies seen through the Hubble telescope to the tiniest organisms visible through an electron microscope.

 

Yet the Nicene Creed affirms that God is the creator not only of the world we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell—the physical world of time and space—but also of an unseen spiritual world. God is the creator of “all that is, seen and unseen.” (Or, as Rite I puts it: “of all things visible and invisible.”) The feast of Saint Michael and All Angels directs our attention to this invisible dimension of God’s creation, the unseen realm of the spiritual beings known as angels.

The first point to get clear—and I hope this will not come as a surprise or disappointment—is that, no, we do not become angels after we die and go to heaven! Our Christian hope is in the resurrection of the body, whereas the angels are purely spiritual beings, without bodies. For this reason, the Eastern Orthodox tradition calls them the “holy heavenly bodiless powers.”

 

The second point to get clear is that the angels are not what many modern thinkers have tried to make them: impersonal cosmic forces or abstract spiritual principles. Instead, they’re personal beings, created with intelligence and free will. They have individual names—such as Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel—and also ranks—Archangels, Seraphim, Cherubim, Principalities, Thrones, Dominions, and Powers.

 

And in Scripture it becomes clear that the angels have three principal offices, functions, or roles: first, they worship and serve God in heaven; second, they carry messages from God to human beings; third, they protect and defend God’s people on earth. So, let’s look at these three offices or roles.

The first role of the angels is worship. In a wonderful passage from Isaiah—not included in today’s readings—the prophet is in the Temple in Jerusalem and suddenly finds himself transported into the heavenly courts. He sees the Lord seated on his heavenly throne surrounded by seraphim flying back and forth crying out “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” Likewise, at certain moments in our worship today, we may be granted a similar vision. The veil between heaven and earth grows thin. In the corner of our eye we catch a fleeting glimpse of bright wings, or hear the faint echo of an otherworldly song. So, the angels continuously worship God in heaven.

 

The second role of the angels is to serve as God’s messengers. The word angel itself comes from the Greek angelos, messenger.  In today’s reading from the Book of Genesis, the patriarch Jacob receives in a dream the vision of a ladder between heaven and earth on which the the angels of God are ascending and descending. Our Lord takes up this image in today’s Gospel when he tells Nathanael, “You will see heaven opened, and the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” (Notice that in this way, Jesus identifies himself as the ladder, the meeting place of heaven and earth.) And in both readings the angels function as heaven’s diplomatic corps, going out on and returning from their missions as God’s envoys and messengers in the world.

 

The third role or office of the angels is to protect and defend God’s people on earth. For the invisible dimension of God’s creation comprises not only the good angels, who worship and serve God, but also the fallen angels, the spiritual forces of wickedness who’ve rebelled against God and who tempt and assault us, desiring to lead us astray and deflect us from our heavenly goal.

 

And so, today’s reading from the Revelation to Saint John gives us that wonderful vision of Saint Michael, the supreme commander of God’s armies, defeating the dragon—that is, the ancient serpent who once deceived Adam and Eve—and casting him out of the heavens. In a similar way, the angels serve as our allies, protectors, and defenders in our struggles against temptation, sin, and evil. When we find ourselves assaulted by the spiritual forces of wickedness, we can do no better than to call upon Saint Michael and his legions to come to our aid.

 

God is the creator, then, not only of the visible creation that we inhabit, but also of the invisible world of spiritual beings that we call angels. This invisible world is not far away or walled off from us. Rather, it mysteriously surrounds us and interpenetrates our world, if only we had eyes to see.

In one of his sermons, the nineteenth-century theologian John Henry Newman describes its nearness: “… there is another world, quite as far-spreading, quite as close to us, and more wonderful; another world all around us, though we see it not, and more wonderful than the world we see, for this reason if for no other, that we do not see it. All around us are numberless objects, coming and going, watching, working or waiting, which we see not …”

 

In another sermon, Newman writes of the visible Church in its earthly struggles as but a small outpost of the vast invisible army of the angels and saints in heaven: “When we are called to battle for the Lord, what are we who are seen, but mere outposts, the advanced guard of a mighty host, ourselves few in number and despicable, but bold beyond our numbers, because supported by chariots of fire and horses of fire round about the Mountain of the Lord of Hosts under which we stand?”

 

So, the angels worship God in heaven, they serve as God’s messengers to us on earth, and they protect and defend us from all the assaults and snares of the enemy. Today’s feast heightens our sensitivity to the reality of this invisible creation. In the Bible, when angels appear to human beings, the first words they often speak are “Be not afraid.” That detail suggests that their initial appearance can be very frightening, so their first word needs to be one of reassurance. If we ever meet an angel, we may well be awed, we may even be terrified—but we needn’t be surprised!

PROPER 19, YEAR B

September 15, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Mark 8:27-38

 

Beliefs have costs. A wise mentor once offered me those words as a bit of advice, and perhaps also as a warning. Beliefs have costs.

 

Wrong beliefs can certainly cost us dearly. If I entertain the belief that that San Francisco is only 500 miles from Rhode Island, it’s going to cost me if I attempt to drive there in one day. We make mistakes and get into trouble when we base our decisions on inaccurate information.

 

But even when we’re right—when our information is accurate, and our beliefs are true—we’re apt to find that their very truth makes costly claims upon us. If I believe that I owe the IRS a thousand dollars, and that belief is true, then that’s the cost right there, including whatever work I need to do to gather up the sum I owe. Indeed, the most profound truths in life consist not of abstract and theoretical propositions, but of deep realities that engage us personally and existentially. The truest beliefs are often the ones that have the steepest costs.

 

Today’s Gospel gives us a case in point of an individual expressing a true belief but then being unwilling or unable to accept its consequences. In response to the Lord’s question, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answers, “You are the Messiah”—in other words, the Christ, God’s Anointed One, long foretold in Israel’s sacred scriptures. That is indeed the right answer—in contrast to some of the other answers that people have been giving to the same question: John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets. What Peter believes is the truth. But then Peter protests when Jesus starts spelling out that truth’s consequences.

 

“Then [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.” While Peter has given the right answer to the question, he nonetheless rejects that answer’s consequences, the cost to Jesus of being the Messiah. Recognizing in Peter’s rebuke a demonic attempt to deflect him from his mission, Jesus responds harshly: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

 

But there’s more. The consequences of Jesus being the Messiah extend beyond Jesus himself to his disciples. Turning to the crowd, Jesus declares: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

 

The point is that there’s a deep inner connection between what we profess with our lips, and what we’re called to do, and how we’re called to live. Acknowledging Jesus as Lord inescapably entails the commitment to take up our cross and follow him.

 

This passage in Saint Mark’s Gospel serves as a warning against Christian triumphalism. Among relatively new and spiritually immature Christians a frequent temptation is to view the faith as a kind of insurance policy against suffering and hardship. For example, the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” purveys false assurances that if we only pray hard enough, and in the right way, God will send us all kinds of blessings of earthly riches and worldly success. But Jesus knows better; and he warns his disciples that just as he will be rejected, suffer, be killed, and after three days rise again, so his followers can expect their share of rejection, persecution, and suffering in this world.

 

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The question then is: How do we do that? What does it mean to take up our cross? Where do we find this cross that we’re supposed to take up?

 

Having reflected on this question over the years, I’ve concluded that most of the time we don’t need to look for our crosses; they find us! Deep down, I think, we all know this to be true. Life in this world brings all of us our share of frustrations, hardships, burdens, and pain—whether in the form of illness, injury, bereavement, broken relationships, or other setbacks and disappointments. In some cases, these sufferings are the consequences of our own bad choices. But in many cases, we have no choice at all, and we’re the innocent victims of unfortunate circumstances, random bad luck, or worse, the ill will and wrongdoing of others.

 

So, we don’t have to go looking for our crosses, for they generally come and find us. Still, while we don’t have a choice about which crosses are laid upon us, we always do have a choice about whether to accept them and take them up as our way of following Jesus. And here, right belief has good consequences. In following Jesus, we serve him; in serving him, we know him; in knowing him, we become like him – which is another way of saying that we become more and more the people that God created us to be.

 

The good news here, I think, is twofold. First, in taking up our cross and following Jesus, we find fellowship with him, and with our brothers and sisters in Christ; and there’s no greater joy in this life.

 

Second, the point that’s easy to overlook in the Gospels is that when Jesus foretells his sufferings, he always concludes by foretelling his Resurrection as well: “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. Peter’s problem is that he seems not to hear that last crucial clause: “and after three days rise again.”

 

In other words, while the cross is real, it never has the last word. If we willingly take up our cross in this life, Jesus lightens our load by sharing our burdens with us. And then we have his promise that we shall also share in his glory in the life of the world to come.

 

Several years ago, the funeral of Aretha Franklin was broadcast live on television. While I didn’t necessarily agree with everything that all of the preachers said at that funeral, one of the stories I liked best went like this: A daughter said to her mother, “When I get to heaven, there’ll be so many people there, how will I ever find you?” The mother answered, “Meet me at the exchange counter.” “The exchange counter?” the daughter said, “What’s that?” Her mother answered: “Why, that’s the place where you exchange your cross for a crown!”

PROPER 18, YEAR B

Sunday 8 September 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Mark 7:24-37

 

A question that comes up repeatedly in just about every parish these days is: What we can do to grow our attendance and membership? Many of us here at Saint Mark’s are clearly hoping that the next rector will facilitate parish growth: by preaching, by worship, and by working with the lay leadership to implement programs attractive to visitors and newcomers, especially young families.

 

I’m reminded of a conversation I had several years ago with our bishop. As you may remember, he was elected partly because he was one of those priests with a solid track record of doubling or even tripling the attendance of every parish he’d ever led. When I asked him for his insights on this, he said that the first thing to do, before anything else, is to pray. Ask God every day to show you what your parish needs to be doing to fulfill its mission; and then ask God to send you the new people you need to help you do it.

 

In the days and weeks that followed, I gave serious thought to his recommendation. In addition to my own personal prayers, I decided at length to add to the intercessions at the parish where I was rector a prayer intention for growth in attendance and membership. To my surprise—even though I shouldn’t have been surprised—within six months seven new people were attending the parish, including one family with three kids, and we had an adult confirmation class under way.

 

What impressed me about the bishop’s recommendation was the underlying conviction concerning the power and efficacy of intercessory prayer. He had many ideas for practical initiatives to publicize parish life and attract newcomers. But no matter what elements a strategy for church growth might comprise, the essential foundation would always be prayer.

 

The point of intercessory prayer is not that God needs to be told anything that he doesn’t already know. God doesn’t need to have his mind changed about what he does or doesn’t intend to do. But, to use a tried-and-true metaphor, God is like a gentleman, and in many circumstances, gentlemen—and, for that matter, ladies—wait to be asked. Our prayer needs always to be that that God’s will be done. Yet the wonder of intercessory prayer is that God gives us the incomparable privilege of envisioning for ourselves what that might look like, and then bringing him those petitions and requests that are nearest and dearest to our hearts.

 

The Judeo-Christian tradition is unanimous that God is pleased when we’re honest enough to tell him what’s really on our mind—whatever it is that we want more than anything else. And while it’s entirely legitimate to ask for ourselves, it’s especially pleasing to God when we reach out beyond ourselves and pray for others.

 

Today’s Gospel is a case study in intercessory prayer. A Syro-Phoenician woman begs Jesus to cast out a demon from her daughter; and a little further down the road an unspecified group of people bring a deaf man with a speech impediment and beg Jesus to lay his hand upon him. Both incidents occur in Gentile territory and involve Gentiles—and that point does have theological significance for how we read the text.

 

But the point I want to dwell on today is that while many of the Gospel stories do feature individuals asking Jesus for healing for themselves, here we have people approaching Jesus on behalf of others – the very model of intercessory prayer. Indeed, both the demon-possessed girl and the deaf man are incapable approaching Jesus themselves and must rely on others to do so for them.

 

Commentators offer different interpretations of the encounter between our Lord and the Syro-Phoenician woman—which many readers today find troubling and even disturbing. What does Jesus mean by not giving the children’s bread to the dogs? That is seemingly an insult to both the woman and her daughter by calling them dogs along with the rest of us Gentiles.

Different commentators offer different explanations. Some suggest that he’s tired, grumpy, and having a bad day. Others suggest that he really means what he says but the woman’s quick-witted response teaches him a lesson, so that he learns to be more open-minded and inclusive. Others suggest that he’s playing a rabbinical game of verbal repartee, knowing all along what he intends to do, but first testing her to see whether she has the faith not to give up and go away when he initially rebuffs her. Still others suggest that he’s being ironic, not at all meaning what he says, but rather making fun of those who might really say and mean such a thing.

 

The answer to this question is above my pay grade. But whatever the historically accurate interpretation may be, the crucial point to my mind is her perseverance. She doesn’t give up in asking for what she wants. Just as she perseveres in her prayer, so we need to persevere in our prayers as well.

 

Another key point in both encounters is the setting. The Syro-Phoenician woman comes to the house where Jesus is staying. Even though he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s there, we can be sure that he’s not alone but rather in the company of both his hosts and an entourage of his disciples. The encounter takes place not in private but in the presence of those gathered around Jesus. Likewise, we know that the request to heal the deaf man is made in the presence of a multitude gathered around Jesus, because Jesus then takes him aside from the crowd to perform the actual healing in private.

 

The implication is that while we can indeed pray in any place at any time, it’s nonetheless particularly powerful and effective to bring our prayers to Church and offer them up in the context of the Eucharist. Just as the Syro-Phoenician woman went to the house where Jesus was staying, so we come to this house set apart for worship and prayer. Just as the deaf man’s friends brought him to the place where the multitudes had gathered around Jesus, so we bring in our hearts those for whom we pray to this Eucharistic gathering of God’s people.

So, here's a good reason for coming regularly to church. We’re here not just for what we get out of it ourselves but also for those who need our prayers the most. Intercessory prayer is a vital part of the work that we’re called to do as Christians. When someone we love is seriously ill, or is in dire straits, or has died, then no matter how helpless we might feel to do anything else, the one thing we can always do is pray. And there’s no more effective way to do so than by coming to Church and offering up our participation in the Eucharist on their behalf.

 

PROPER 17, YEAR B

September 1, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

 

Today’s readings raise an important and interesting theological question: namely, the relationship between divine commandments and human traditions.

 

Three years ago, when I went on my first and only pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I encountered a tradition of the sort described in today’s Gospel. One of the stops on our itinerary was the Western Wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Our guide explained to us that before we entered the plaza leading to the Wall itself, we would need to wash our hands at one of several stone fountains at the plaza’s entrance. This handwashing would symbolize our desire to purify our hearts before we entered this holy place. I personally had no problem fulfilling this request, nor, I think, did any of the other pilgrims in our group. Having thus washed my hands, I unexpectedly found placing my hand on the Wall to pray one of the most spiritually moving experiences of that entire pilgrimage.

 

As a priest, every time I celebrate the Eucharist, I engage in a similar ceremonial handwashing, called the lavabo, before I presume to handle the sacred gifts on the altar. And the prayer that I say quietly as the server pours water over my fingertips is, “Wash me from my iniquities, O Lord, and cleanse me from my sins.”

 

So Saint Mark says in today’s Gospel: “For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders.”

 

Yet, in today’s Gospel, Our Lord seems to condemn such practices: “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

 

The first point to note is that the relationship between God’s law and the tradition of the elders was already a topic of debate within Judaism before Jesus came along. In our Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people: “Give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am commanding you to observe … You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take anything away from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God …”

 

By New Testament times, some groups within Judaism, notably the Pharisees, believed that the tradition of the elders—that is, a body of customary practices not found in the Law itself but developed and handed down through the centuries—constituted a kind of fence or guardrail around the Law.  That is, if you succeeded in keeping these little rules and customs of human origin, you were more likely to succeed in keeping the big and really important commandments of God as delivered by Moses on Mount Sinai.

 

Other groups, such as the Sadducees, based in the Temple at Jerusalem, frowned on this accumulation of traditions, and emphasized instead keeping the Law itself, the whole Law, and nothing but the Law. So, in today’s Gospel, Jesus appears to be taking sides in this ongoing Jewish debate.

 

Another key point to note is that Jesus is not in away way condemning or setting aside the Jewish Law itself. His disciples may have been eating with unwashed hands, but we may be certain that they were not eating pork! The debate here is about the right way of keeping the Jewish Law, and not about whether that Law is still in force. The question had not yet occurred to anyone whether Gentile converts to the Christian Church would be required to become Jews, undergo circumcision, and keep all the dietary and other precepts of the Jewish Law. That would become an issue only years later.

 

And I don’t believe that Jesus was necessarily condemning the tradition of the elders either. In several places in the Gospels, we encounter Jesus faithfully observing traditional Jewish customs and practices not found in the Law itself—not least, breaking bread and blessing the cup at a ritual fellowship meal with his disciples on the eve of his death.

 

So, what’s the problem? What provokes Our Lord’s wrath against the scribes and the Pharisees in today’s Gospel? I suspect that the real problem arises when the keeping of human traditions becomes more important than, and then gets in the way of, fulfilling the Law’s commandments in their deepest meaning.

 

Jesus says something along these lines in Chapter 23 of Saint Matthew’s Gospel: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith!”

 

Or, as Saint James says in today’s Epistle: “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves … If any think they are religious, and not do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.” James goes on to describe what it means to keep God’s commandments: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

 

Most of all, I suspect that what really provokes Jesus in today’s Gospel is the challenge: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” It’s a hostile question, probably asked with the intent of gathering evidence to use against Jesus. Apart from any sanitary purposes, the tradition of washing hands before meals is meant to signify holiness and purity of life, but by weaponizing it, the scribes and Pharisees are subverting and undermining its very meaning and purpose.

 

For example, it’s all well and good for me to have my hands washed at the lavabo before consecrating the bread and wine at the Eucharist. That ritual expresses my desire to approach the sacred mysteries with a pure heart and clean hands. But the minute I give in to the temptation to criticize the priest in the next parish down the road for not doing so, then I defeat the ritual’s whole purpose by making it an occasion of division and disunity.

 

Another example is making the sign of the cross. Some of us find it spiritually helpful; others don’t. But once we start criticizing one another for either doing or not doing it, we violate its deepest meaning, which is our baptismal unity with God the Holy Trinity.

 

In sum, we rejoice in keeping God’s commandments, which are given for our eternal good. And we rejoice in the traditions that have been handed down to us in the Church, which, when rightly used, help us grow in the knowledge and love of God. But we need always to beware of allowing those traditions to become a source of division and contention among us, for then we defeat their very purpose of building up our fellowship in the Body of Christ.