Sunday Sermon - 29 September
Angels are fascinating. The subject of human curiosity from ancient times to the present day, they are an important part of the sacred stories in all of the Abrahamic traditions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam. There are even angel-like beings in the other world religions as well.
The ancient story of angels provides an explanation of the duality of good and evil - angels and demons. They make the complexity of good and evil easier for us to understand but, in our hearts, we know that the difference between good and evil isn't that simple and today’s reading from Revelation, if we really look at it, confirms this fact.
Right from the first clause, the confusion is apparent: “And war broke out in heaven.” What? It’s heaven! How can a war break out in the place that is known to us as the paradise of God, where love and peace abound? Even if this is just a revelation to John - we are already caught in a contradiction.
Michael, God’s warrior Archangel (a warrior?) and his army (an army in heaven?) defeat the dragon - who we know as Satan - and he and his army of defeated angels then fall to earth. Again, we have questions - Why earth? Why not banish Satan straight to hell?
As we read on, there is a proclamation in heaven. Evil has been defeated, God’s power - through St. Michael the Archangel - is victorious. The authority of Christ is affirmed. Heaven can rejoice. Not so on earth. The devil is now in the world and “filled with fury”.
Let’s actually back up a bit, though. Who is this dragon? The dragon we read about in Revelation was actually an angel once, a beautiful angel. An angel named Lucifer, which literally means “bearer of light.” Lucifer was a leader among the angels. He is repeatedly referred to in scripture as “beautiful” and “wise” but his pride and ego eventually got the better of him. He challenged God’s authority in heaven and that was his demise. Michael, under God’s direction, battled and defeated Lucifer (the dragon) and cast him to earth.
Lucifer, who we have come to know as the epitome of evil, was an angel - the epitome of goodness. One coin, two sides. One angel, two sides. Understanding good and evil is not black and white, nor is it simple. In order to at least begin to understand good and evil we also need to understand the concept of free will and choice.
Lucifer was bestowed with beauty, wisdom, and free will. Blinded by his own beauty and prideful in his wisdom, Lucifer chose to challenge God. Within that which was good came evil, an evil fueled by pride.
It mustn’t be lost on us that Lucifer, the fallen angel and now the dragon we know as Satan, fell to earth to be among us and to tempt us. Just like Lucifer, we have free will and, again, just like Lucifer, in most cases we don’t intentionally choose good or evil. Often, evil evolves or, I should say, devolves, from a place of goodness.
Tomorrow, September 30, is the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation. It is the day when we acknowledge the horrors that occurred in residential schools and honour the lives of children taken from their families, never to return. Residential schools were primarily operated by Christian Churches and religious organizations and mostly funded by the federal government. Over 150,000 Indigenous children throughout Canada were taken from their homes and forced to attend these schools.
It’s easy for us, from our current place and time, to judge history in a black and white, good and evil, over-simplified way but as we learn from today’s account of St. Michael’s war in heaven, it’s not that simple and we would be remiss if we tried to make it so.
The Church, that which is called to live God’s presence on earth, was bound to Europe’s colonial mindset. As colonialism sought to establish communities and extract resources from the new world, the Church sought to bring the message of God in Christ to the Indigenous peoples of these new lands - to save them. They believed their intentions were good. After all, the Church was the embodiment of God here on earth and they were called to spread the word of Christ’s salvation.
There are many examples of the Church’s devolution, from its inception in the time of St. Paul to the current day. Moments when the Gospel story becomes manipulated for human prideful gain. Too frequently throughout history, the Church has fallen to the sin of pride (it is run by humans after all!). That’s why there were Holy Wars (the great oxymoron) and the Reformation, for example. That’s how we ended up with denominations. We get in our own way or, more accurately, we lose our way.
The Church, like Lucifer, gets blinded by its own pride and puts itself before God. The Church that created residential schools, that took children from their homes, cut their hair, and forbid them to speak their own language, was not the Church of the God that we know and are called to be. Just like the angel that began as the embodiment of goodness then lost himself to pride and tried to elevate himself above God, The Church lost itself and placed its authority over the authority and commandment of God. Like Lucifer, this moment of residential school history was the Church’s fall from grace. The result was evil and the consequences were horrid.
It is easy from our place in history to retrospectively judge the decisions the Church made. It’s harder to know whether the choices and actions we make in the present are good or evil. Thankfully, blessedly, we have a guidepost. We have a Great Commandment that is our touchstone and, as long as we keep it front of mind, we will not be blinded by our human pride, causing us to fall from grace.
We read that Great Commandment today in our liturgy:
“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy strength. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Love God. Love others as yourself. We can’t just say these words by rote at a Sunday service. We must look deeper into what we are saying, why we are saying it, and what it means for us in thought and action. I love that the commandment adds a qualifier: “Love others - as you love yourself” Jesus doesn’t call us to neglect ourselves but to love ourselves, and this love for self is checked, humbly, by the necessity that we love others equally as much as we love ourselves. In other words, we all matter but none of us matter more than another. We are all equal, and equally loveable, in the eyes of God.
In the era of the residential schools, it is fair to say that the Church was the embodiment of evil, the dragon. By contrast, the Church today, maybe more than ever, must be the embodiment of goodness. The Church today has a reminder of what it means to be the people of God in the story of St. Michael and that reminder is exemplified by the life of Christ. We are called, not just to defeat the dragon of our past, but to always stand up against the evil that exists in our present.
Whether it is in our Church, our communities, or even our own homes, we must not be blinded by pride. Rather, we must find clarity of vision from our commandment to love and be empowered to stand up against evil.
We can do this by yearning to understand those who are different from ourselves, be they Indigenous peoples, people of colour, people of any walk of life that seems different or unknown to you and in need of your love.
Be an advocate for love and justice.
Be an angel.
Amen