Feast of St. Michael and All Angels; and Harvest Festival
Preacher, Fr David Williams, 29th September Michaelmas at Salfords
Christ the King Salfords: 10am Parish Mass
Readings: Genesis 28.10-17; Revelation 12.7-12; John 1.47-51
Today we celebrate a double feast, because it is not only the Feast of Dedication to St. Michael and All Angels, but also our Harvest Festival. But it is also a day of particular personal significance for Father Jim and myself as we were both ordained to the priesthood on the Feast of Michaelmas. Some of you were indeed present at my ordination as deacon in Croydon Minster sixteen years ago,and as priest in Southwark Cathedral one year later - because this was the church in which my vocation was nourished and encouraged by Father Stephen and the church community. and it was also the church in which I served for a time as churchwarden alongside Mary Newstead.
Today I’d like us to reflect on the place of angels in the Bible and in the life of the church. Angels have always fascinated me. I was blessed in my theological training to have as my tutor the Reverend Dr. Andy Angel, who also wrote a book on angels, if you’d like to explore the subject further.
Our gospel passage from John provides a key to explaining the way in which angels have ministered, and continue to minister in God’s world, in heaven and on earth, even today. The context of our gospel passage is Jesus’ encounter with Nathaniel, who acknowledges Jesus as the Son of God and the King of Israel, and who Jesus acknowledges as a person of truth. Jesus says to Nathaniel: “You will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Nathaniel’s confession of Jesus marks him out as the first person in John’s Gospel explicitly to profess his faith in Christ’s divinity, and to see Jesus connecting heaven and earth.
The picture of angels ascending and descending in our Gospel passage is an allusion to the vision of Jacob in the Book of Genesis, in which Jacob sees the the angels of God ascending and descending a ladder which stretches from earth to heaven, whereupon God speaks to Jacob and promises him and his descendants the land of Israel – to which Jacob replies: “this is the house of God and the gate of heaven.”
In both passages (in John’s Gospel and Genesis), the key message is that of communication between heaven and earth. In both passages, the angels ascend first, thus signifying their presence on earth already. But in the passage from John’s Gospel, the place of the ladder is taken by Jesus himself, because Jesus has become the bridge between heaven and earth. He is the means by which the realities of heaven are brought down to earth, and Nathaniel with the eye of faith sees this for himself. Jesus is the Son of Man, the revelation of God, and he is the means by which the heavens are opened, and God’s power and love are shown in the world through the Incarnation and the Resurrection. And we recall from Luke’s Gospel in particular that angels are present at both these events: in the annunciation of the Incarnation by the angel Gabriel to Mary, by an angel to Joseph, and by an angel to the shepherds, and in the annunciation of the Resurrection by angels in dazzling clothes to the women at the empty tomb.
Angels have a variety of different roles in the Bible, and in history: as guardian, healer, mediator, interpreter, and messenger. Indeed the name angel comes from the Greek word angeloi, which means messenger. Angels communicate between God and humankind, between the visible and the invisible world, between the here-and-now and the world beyond.
One of the archangels is St. Michael, who appears in the Book of Daniel as “one of the chief princes” of the heavenly host and as the special guardian and protector of Israel (Daniel 10,13; 12,1). In the book of Revelation, Michael is the principal fighter in the celestial battle against the devil (pictured as the dragon: Revelation 12.7-9).
In the Epistle of Jude (v.9) we find him disputing with the devil about the position of Moses. Michael became known as one whose prayers were particularly powerful; in mediaeval art he is shown slaying the dragon and weighing up souls at the Last Judgement. Interestingly, St. Michael has come to be the patron saint of the police. In the 19 th century, there was a revival of the belief in guardian angels. Children in particular were portrayed in the company of their guardian angel, for example when saying their prayers at night; and the soul of the deceased was seen as being accompanied into the hereafter by an angel. One of the most famous, well reported appearances of angels was during the First World War during the Battle of Mons, when a host of angels was said to have appeared to the soldiers on the battlefield.
As for myself the presence of the company of saints and angels is a living part of my own spirituality, helping me to appreciate the continuum of the past, the present and the future, and the intersection of heaven and earth.
In the Book of Revelation, we read of angels helping with God’s harvest. It’s a picture of things to come when the good and the bad get separated out, just as the wheat and the invasive darnel weed (known today as black grass), are separated out at the annual harvest in the farming year. And in Matthew’s Gospel, we read of angels being the reapers of God’s harvest in the last of Matthew’s three parables about sowing and reaping. When I was a parish priest in Oxfordshire, we combined the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels and the Harvest Festival at the church of St. Michael and All Angels in the Thames-side village of Eaton Hastings – one of my four parishes. One of my parishioners, Suzanne, now churchwarden, suggested that the way of describing the connection between the two festivals was to say that it’s all to do with turning the earth – which all goes to show that ministers often get their best lines from members of their congregation.
And so we find that we are all called to be good stewards of God’s creation; and using the model of our farmers: to plough well, to sow wisely; to nurture effectively, and to reap for the greater good. And so our work will be joined with that of the angels, as they help to prepare for the harvest of the kingdom of God, and as they and we turn the earth.