St Michael's Victory

Today, we’re taking a break from our working through the Gospel of Matthew to reflect for a few moments on angels in general and one angel in particular—the angel who is named in our scripture lesson this morning, Michael. We’re doing so because today is the day the Church celebrates the ministry of angels. It is the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels.

And immediately I run into a problem: there’s both too much and too little talk about angels around. This is not a new observation, by the way, C.S. Lewis made it in the introduction to his Screwtape Letters when he wrote these words: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”

Lewis, of course, is talking about devils, but certainly the same observation can be made about those spiritual intelligences that serve, rather than oppose, God. On the one hand, going to any Hallmark store or perusing the “religion” shelf of any Chapters easily convinces us that there are lots of things to say about angels. Much of it is silly. And that silliness, furthermore, leads others to the very opposite conclusion: that angels are an imaginary figment. Cutesy. In the same class as the tooth-fairy and the Easter Bunny. Second-rate fictions who haven’t yet reached the level of Santa Claus or God. It strikes me that Lewis’s conclusion about believing too much or too little in devils is also true about believing too much or too little in angels: “Devils are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”

Let’s start, then with Lewis in mind: it is unwise to believe either too much or too little in angels. The Scriptures agree. Angels in the Scriptures are neither ignored nor elaborated. They play a small but pivotal role. They are, first, God’s messengers—that’s what the word angelos (Greek) means. Think of Gabriel bringing a message of “insight and understanding” to the prophet Daniel (Daniel 9:21), or the announcement to Zechariah that he would be the father of John the Baptist, or the announcement to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she would be the Mother of Jesus. Gabriel, uniquely, functions as a messenger.

Not only are angels God’s messengers, but they also are presented as God’s choir leaders. Think of the prophet’s vision of the heavenly throne room in Isaiah 6, which speaks of the six-winged seraphs forever singing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth are full of your glory!” Or again, of the choir that sang “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace and goodwill to all,” to terrified shepherds on the first Christmas night.

And finally, they are God’s soldiers. Rarely in the Scriptures, we are given a glimpse “behind the scenes,” the spiritual veil is lifted and what we see is, to quote my Uncle Hugh, “a dandy scrap.” Think, for example of Elisha’s servant in 2 Kings 6, terrified for his life and that of his master because they are surrounded by the Syrian army. The prophet prays simply, “O LORD, open his eyes that he may see.” And he immediately sees that between the prophet and the Syrian army stood a multitude of horses and chariots of fire. (This story, by the way, has a wonderful modern parallel—I’ll come back to that in a moment). Think again of the prophet Daniel, who was told by the angel Gabriel that his prayer went unanswered not because God did not hear, but because Gabriel had been held up by another angelic being, the Prince of Persia, who would not allow the answer to be delivered. It was only when Michael intervened that Gabriel was free to complete his task.

And then, finally, there is the passage that we read today. The story of Michael leading the armies of heaven against the dragon and the casting of the dragon out of heaven. Let’s take a closer look at it.

It comes at the climax of this most perplexing of biblical books. And that means, first, a quick detour to let you know how I read Revelation. I do not read it as a blueprint for the future, whether immediate or far off. I do read it as I believe the author and the first audiences intended it—a commentary on their present written the language of symbols, what scholarship calls “apocalyptic.” The book appears to be an exhortation written to a collection of churches in the Roman province of Asia (Turkey today), who are or soon will be undergoing persecution so severe that it could lead to death. And the exhortation to the suffering brothers and sisters is this: Remain faithful. The Lamb has already triumphed. The beastly powers—and they are terrifyingly powerful—are already defeated. The Lion is coming soon. The technique the author uses to encourage and exhort the brothers is to flip between earth and heaven, to flip between what the brothers experience and how it looks from a divine perspective.

Now we come to Revelation 12. The first part, which we didn’t read this morning, has been helpfully titled “Christmas in Cosmic Perspective,” by one commentator. A woman, who symbolically expresses all God’s people, Eve, and Mary, gives birth to the King. The King is opposed by the dragon. But he’s delivered from his jaws and taken to heaven while the woman hides from the dragon in the wilderness. This, if you will, is the divine perspective on the life and ministry of Jesus. And while it is a sign in the heavens, it’s clear that the author is narrating a heavenly perspective on earthly events. The brothers are undergoing persecution in the wilderness because they are God’s faithful people. They are the woman in the wilderness. And even in the midst of persecution, they will not merely survive, but they will thrive under divine protection.

The scene then switches to heaven. Here’s the heavenly perspective on the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. It is the conclusion of the battle between Michael—remember, the angelic prince of God’s people in the book of Daniel—and the dragon—the accuser of the brothers, the deceiver, the ancient serpent and so on. The dragon is tossed out of heaven. He no longer can accuse the brethren. He no longer has access to the throne-room of God. Why? Because the Lamb has triumphed through his Cross. The war is over. In this victory, all those who did not cling to life in the face of death, are vindicated not by military power, but by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. The martyrs whom the brothers mourn have not lost, but have won for they have imitated their Lord, followed him into death, and therefore already share in his victory.

Then we have this curious conclusion: ¹² Rejoice then, you heavens and those who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath, because he knows that his time is short! The scene is switched again to earth, to the present, to the persecution that the brothers now experience. John does not minimize it. He does not say, “Christ has won therefore your suffering is an illusion.” He does not say, “Christ has won therefore you’re suffering proves a lack faith.” He does not say, “Christ has won, therefore if you’re suffering, you’re  loser.” On the contrary, for John, the victory of Jesus has in some ways made life worse for the faithful. For the persecution they now encounter is to be understood as nothing less than the full fury of the devil poured out on God’s faithful because of his heavenly defeat. His message seems to be, “Christ has won! That’s why you’re suffering.” Can you imagine a preacher growing a church with that as its mission statement? And yet, that’s at least part of the central theme of our Scripture lesson, and the book from which it comes.

Well, let’s summarize quickly: The good news? Christ has secured the heavenly peace. The bad news? What is already a reality in heaven is still future on earth. The exhortation? Remain faithful in the midst of satanic opposition in this life because Christ has already triumphed. The accuser cannot accuse you any longer. Michael has tossed him out of heaven. However powerful he may seem to be—may in fact really be, he is even now defeated. The Lamb has triumphed. To those who endure to the end, the Lord Jesus will give the crown of life.

The great biblical scholar of the first half of the twentieth century, Oscar Cullmann, invited his readers to think of the matter in this way:  "We live between God's D-Day and God's V-Day." Here’s what he meant: when the Allies landed in Normandy on June 6 1944 and began the liberation of Europe, the outcome of the war was decided. Hitler’s “eternal Reich” had an end date. It had reached it. D-Day. But it was not until May 8, 1945, V-Day that the war really ended in Europe. That was the day the Allies accepted Nazi Germany’s formal, unconditional surrender. During the 11 months in between some of the heaviest fighting took place, but the outcome was inevitable. Good Friday is the Universe’s D-Day for on that day, what appeared to be a defeat was in fact the victory of God, and of God’s man, over God’s enemy. The appearing of Christ is the Universe’s V-Day, when Christ himself will accept the unconditional surrender of that unholy trinity, Sin, Death, and the Devil, and claim what is his. And we now live in between. Heavy fighting may lie ahead BUT the outcome is decided.

Now, two questions yet remain: what does this strange story have to do with angels?, and what does this have to do with us?

Let’s take the first one: What does the story of St. Michael have to do with angels? How does it help us understand them? Here’s how.

The glory of angels is that they come and go in God’s service. In the Scriptures, they are marginal figures. Who is the great Subject of the drama of salvation? God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Who, the object? Humanity dead in sin in Adam, and made alive to God in Christ. In whom do Subject and Object come together? Jesus of Nazareth, who is in his flesh both God’s search for humanity, and man’s discovery of God. Jesus the Messiah, crucified, risen, ascended, and soon to appear. The glory of God is to be the one who loves in freedom. The glory of humanity is to be the object of that love. The glory of Jesus Christ is the accomplished saving power of that love.

What then is the glory of the angels? To serve God. To be God’s messengers. Gabriel doesn’t come to Daniel with his own word, but with God’s. He doesn’t come to Zechariah or Mary with his own words, but with God’s. To be God’s choir. The six-winged seraphs sing God’s praise, they direct the prophet’s attention not to themselves, but to God’s throne. To be God’s soldiers. Elisha’s servant was protected not because he was brilliant or because Elisha was holy, but because they both belonged to God. More clearly, Michael’s victory over the dragon is not his victory, but Christ’s. When we speak of angels, we speak in a peculiar way of the glory of God in his saving turn toward humanity. That is their real, subordinate, glory.

And now the second: What does the story of St. Michael have to do with us?

Well, first, it disciplines our language about angels. To those who believe too little, the Scriptures acknowledge angelic reality and they tell us that the blindness of Elisha’s servant is not something to brag about or emulate.  To those who believe too much, the Scriptures remind us that angelic glory is always derived from God’s glory, a reflection of God’s glory, and leads us back to God’s glory. They have no being, no purpose, no message of their own. It is for this reason that Paul says bluntly, “if an angel of heaven brings another Gospel, let him be accursed!” to the Galatians. If an “angel” whether human or spiritual, however beautiful, directs you away from the simple Gospel, in other words, he or she is not an angel.

Second, it “lifts the veil” on our reality in a peculiarly powerful way. It is a great and graphic reminder of these words from St. Paul: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” The story of St. Michael, in other words, helps us to see what really is the case. And what really is the case is that the dragon has been thrown earth. He is full of wrath for he knows his time is short. And he is venting that wrath on God’s faithful ones. Now let me be clear: we have not faced that wrath, we are not now facing that wrath. But our experience is not the experience of the vast majority of those who confess the Lordship of Jesus with their lips and sometimes with their lives. Sometimes the wrath of the dragon looks like an orange jumpsuit on a beach in Libya.

But listen, when we hear the terrible stories of our brothers and sisters in baptism enduring to the end, what are we to do? Grieve certainly! Plead with the powers to intervene in some way to end either suffering, yes. And remember: the Lamb has triumphed. The dragon’s defeated and his days are numbered. And sometimes, maybe sometimes for God’s glory and God’s glory alone, angels can and do intervene.

In his book, Angels: God’s Secret Agents, Billy Graham tells this story from the life of John G. Paton, a Scottish missionary to the New Hebrides islands, near New Zealand in the late 19^th century.

“Hostile natives surrounded his mission headquarters one night, intent on burning the Patons out and killing them. John Paton and his wife prayed all during that terror-filled night that God would deliver them. When daylight came they were amazed to see that, unaccountably, the attackers had left. They thanked God for delivering them.

“A year later, the chief of the tribe was converted to Jesus Christ, and Mr. Paton, remembering what had happened, asked the chief what had kept him and his men from burning down the house and killing them. The chief replied in surprise, "Who were all those men you had with you there?" The missionary answered, "There were no men there; just my wife and I." The chief argued that they had seen many men standing guard - hundreds of big men in shining garments with drawn swords in their hands. They seemed to circle the mission station so that the natives were afraid to attack.”

But, friends, far greater than this story, greater even than the story of St Michael’s victory over the dragon, is story which we are about to remember and in which are about to participate. For we will share in a reality to which the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven faithfully testify, but in which they will never, ever, share. For we are about to come to that place where the veil between time and eternity is thinnest, where we will in the grace and power of God, be so united to the life of Christ as to participate in the Life of God.

Here is where we find the strength to endure when the dragon rages: not in stories of miraculous and angelic deliverance, but in the One to whom they point. The Lamb has triumphed. The peace is secured. Come to his table and feed on him in your heart, by faith and with thanksgiving.

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