Angels, Help us to Adore Him! (Twenty Third after Pentecost, Synaxis of the Archangels and Heavenly Host)

Hebrews 2:2-10; Luke 8:41-56, 9:1; Daniel 8:16; 9:21-11:1; Joshua 5:13-15, Rev. 12:7-11

Back when I was a graduate student, I assisted the loving but quite liberal professor of New Testament, George Johnston, in a large class given to students at McGill ( Montréal), who wanted to be more acquainted with the Bible, for the purposes of their various disciplines—English literature, music, law, and the like. Prof. Johnston was fond of me, but like to tease, and one time, when he was instructing the class concerning the nativity story, he remarked, “Well, of course, angels don’t visit human beings—that is an ancient superstition!” Then, with a smile, he added, “But, if you want a different opinion, there is our lovely TA, Mrs. Humphrey, at the back of the room over there! She will tell you another story!” I don’t know why Prof. Johnston decided that I would have something to say about angels, because I had never told him of any personal encounters (though I think maybe I have had one). I suppose he assumed that, as an evangelical conservative (which I was at the time), I would believe in their influence in our world, and he did not.

He was, of course, right. One of the things that drew me from my Salvation Army home into the ancient Church—by way of Anglicanism, at the beginning—was the acknowledgment of the grandeur of the cosmos, the awareness of things that we cannot see. It’s not that the Army did not believe in angels: they only mentioned them at Christmas and Easter, however, or perhaps during a sermon on St. Peter’s release from prison. I remember the luminosity of the moment when I first encountered, in an Anglican context, a stanza to “Praise my soul, the King of Heaven!” I had been singing it all my life, and it was in fact our wedding processional, but I had never heard “Angels, help us to adore Him! Ye behold him face-to-face!” I was wide-eyed with wonder. Angels helped us in our worship, and I had never known it consciously before! So, though I did not major in angels, by the time Prof. Johnston got to me, when I was an evangelical Anglican, I was fully convinced of their importance.

This Saturday and Lord’s Day we remember Michael, Gabriel, and all the heavenly host, as they gather in synaxis, leading our worship—though I suppose the true leader is now the Theotokos, more glorious even than they! We see them in our sanctuary icons all around us, and at the doors to left and right of the iconostasis. Our priests remind us of their presence during the anaphora, when we hear of the numerous archangels and angels who serve the Lord. Yet we, too, are called to worship.

Maintaining the proper Christian regard for angels is, it would seem, a tricky business. Jude reminds us that it is impious to blaspheme against these holy ones, and refers to a long-lost story (probably from the Assumption of Moses) concerning an archangel’s courtesy towards even the fallen angel, Lucifer: “But when the archangel Michael was contending with the devil…he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you” (Jude 1:9 RSV). Holy Michael’s reserve is instructive—we should never presume in the presence of the angels, even a fallen one! They have great glory and power.

The OT reading for Great Vespers (Joshua 5:13-15) gives us a similar lesson in a positive mode. There, after circumcising all the Israelites who had been born in the wilderness wandering, and finishing up the manna that the Lord had provided, the Hebrews are planning to go with their leader, Joshua , into the promised land. He is standing near to Jericho, the first stop, and he spies a glorious figure with a drawn sword. Without fear, he marches up to him and asks: “‘Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?’ And he replied: ‘I, who am supreme commander of the Lord’s host, am now come.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and said unto him: ‘Master, what commandest thou thy servant?’ And the supreme commander of the Lord’s hosts said unto Joshua: ‘Loose thy sandal from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy.’ And Joshua did so.” It is not, of course, that the archangel was not for them—he had come to help. But it was the boldness of Joshua that needed correction here. Joshua was so concerned for future success in the conquest, and so struck by the drawn sword that he missed the awe of the moment. So the angel does not answer him—whose side are you on—but announces that he has come, and who he is. Only then does Joshua show respect, and he is told also to take off his shoes. The time for the battle will come, but this place is holy, and worship of the Lord is the response that the angel’s appearance is meant to evoke.

So, then, angels produce human awe, and demand respect. But they are also sent by the Lord as “ministering servants” to us (Hebrews 1:14), as we see also in our passages above. Michael had been sent to fetch the body of Moses when he was blocked by Satan, it seems; He appears to Joshua (though unnamed) in order to strengthen the Hebrews resolve before they enter the land, and also to direct them to trust and worship the Lord. In Revelation 4-5, we hear of the angels as they lead the heavenly courts, and us in worship; in 1 Cor 11, we are reminded by St. Paul that the angels are among us when we gather—presumably to swell our hymns. In the book of Tobit, the angel Raphael accompanies a young man on his arduous travels, protects from the demons, and heals. And in the book of Daniel, as in Revelation, we hear about Michael, the archangel of God’s people, who fights beside the archangel Gabriel, as they subdue the heathen nations for the sake of Israel (Dan. 10:11-11:1). In Daniel, too, Gabriel takes on the role of interpreting visions to Daniel (8: 15; 9:21; 10:14), just as he is the announcing and interpreting angel to both Zechariah, and the Theotokos, with regards to the coming of God the Son among us. These glorious ones, it seems, mirror the humility of their Lord in coming among us as helpers, not simply as princes!

This is, indeed, the burden of the passage we read this Sunday from Hebrews:

For if the message declared by angels was valid and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his own will.
For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, “What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou carest for him? Thou didst make him for a little while lower than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.
But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering. (Heb 2:2-10 RSV)

The formal OT word of God, then, the Torah, was given by the angels to be kept by the people of God: we hear this not only in Hebrews, but also in the Galatians 3:19, and in Stephen’s address to the murdering crowd in Acts 7:53. This exactly matches their role. They come to help us in our response to God, for that was what the Law was—a temporary measure to help the nation of Israel respond to and witness to God, until Christ came! But in Hebrews we are directed to something more awe-inspiring. Even the Torah was holy and had to be respected, as given by angels—but the world to come is to be subjected to Jesus Christ, and, by extension, to those who are in Christ. Everything is under the feet of the Son of Man, who is our representative. The humility of God the Son, going to the depth for us and this world in death, issued in his resurrection, and in the bringing of “many sons” to glory. We see this reflected in our hymn, “The cave is heaven, and Theotokos has become the throne of the cherubim!” Under the old dispensation, the cherubim were God’s throne, glorifying and worshipping him; but now, Holy Mary has taken their place, for she was truly the God-bearer—and so will we be, when we are glorified! The Psalm’s cry, “enthroned on the praises of Israel” became possible when the Virgin said yes, and God the Son was conceived. We shall be brought to glory, and shall be, through Christ, made perfect through suffering.

Even now, in the Divine Liturgy, the angels make room for our priest’s ministrations, and for us, as we mystically represent them in singing the Holy, Holy, Holy! They do not guard their positions jealously where worship is concerned—for our great God is worthy of many praises, and he demonstrated to the angelic hosts the dignity of humankind in his great condescension to take upon himself our flesh, our very nature. At Jesus’ ascension, “angels wonder when they see how changed is our humanity!” I have no doubt that, if an angel were to appear in all glory, we would be tempted to worship, so astonishing would the spectacle be. But we have it on good authority that this would also be the case if we were to see what God intends for us to become, humble earth that we are. The new creation will bring stunning transformations! Yet we do not now see all that God intends to do. It is reasonable and honourable, then, to honour the angels as those who now see the face of God, and cry out the Thrice-Holy Hymn. And even now we see Jesus, both humbled and exalted, and have been given a preview of his coming in glory, when Heaven and Earth shall be joined. There we shall have no need of sun or moon or angel to guide our worship, for he will himself be our Light, and shall be with us in a way we can hardly think or imagine.

Plenty of signs and wonders have been given to us to buttress this hope. As Hebrews puts it, “It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his own will.” God the Son did not leave us without hope, but showed us his intent to rescue us from both sin and death. In our gospel reading from Luke for this week, Luke 8:41-9:1, we hear how He visited the lowliest of human creatures, the woman who was considered unclean because of her issue of blood, the little girl who was mourned by her family. To the woman, who humbly hoped not to be discovered, he publically declared, “”Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” And to the little girl he issued the same call as he did to his friend Lazarus, “Little girl, arise!” And how interesting it is that after issuing the call to resurrection, he had regard for her weakness, and called on her family to give her food. For he knows that we are dust, and has regard for our infirmities. And there is more, too. Our gospel reading finishes (9:1), by assuring us that his Church has been given not only authority to proclaim the gospel, but also to be engaged in the battle against sin and death: “And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases.”

So, as we remember the synaxis and the ministrations of the archangels this weekend, let us do so with respect, but in a way that is ordered, always committing ourselves to Christ our God. There are some who are over-intrigued by both demonology and angelology and forget that their purpose, like ours, is to point to the Alpha and the Omega, the one from whom all things come. Christ is the Victor, and yet we and the angels have a place in his battle. St. John the seer lifts the veil for us, showing us the real meaning of our present life, and how it is bound up with that of the suffering and raised Lamb. There are some of our number, especially in the mid-east today, who are well aware of the battle that actually embroils us all, and of whom He is, paradoxically already the great Victor:

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world — he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.
And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. (Rev 12:7-11 RSV)

We serve, then, alongside Michael and his angels, by the word of our testimony, if we are prepared to give our lives for the Holy One. But it is his blood that conquers, and it is his present power that we celebrate in the Divine Liturgy: “Now the salvation and power and kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come!” He has trampled down death by death and become the firstborn of the dead: “Angels, help us to adore Him!”