Once,
when I was a child – I've forgotten how young – I found my bed
made, and I was sure I hadn't done it myself: it was too neat, crisp
and smooth, with hospital corners. I thanked my mother for doing it,
and she denied having been anywhere near my bed that morning. Since
no-one else in the house was a likely candidate, I decided that my
guardian angel must have done it. I don't know where I got the idea,
since we weren't a church-going family, and I'd never been exposed to
Sunday-school, but apparently it made sense to me that an emanation
of the presence of God would have come and sorted out this little
domestic chore for me. I never worked out what had actually happened,
but it must be said that it never happened again.
I
was reminded of this rather embarrassing childhood episode
occasionally when I was working at the Anglican Book Centre, and we
would get in popular books about angels. We’d hope that there might
be something about angels in scripture and history, but almost
everything in that line was about getting the most out of angels –
harnessing their power, if you like – for fun and profit,
especially your own personal guardian angel.
Now
it's true that the tradition of guardian angels – one assigned to
every human being – can be said to have roots in scripture, and I
think we may all have had moments of feeling inexplicably watched
over, or cared for, and whether you ascribe that protection to a
personal angelic guardian or directly to God probably depends on your
own cultural conditioning and temperament. But really, to
“domesticate” angels is to miss several important points. In
Hebrew, the word for angel is malakh,
“something or someone sent”; the Greek is aggelos,
a herald, or messenger. An angel, then, is a messenger of God, or, in
some interpretations, an emanation of the divine Will. The angels
whom Jacob sees ascending and descending the ladder, in our first
reading, are passing, in a very literal way, between heaven and
earth, signifying communication between God and humanity, a point of
contact between the visible and invisible, the known and the
mysterious. That’s what we, like Jacob, desire from God (or think
we do): knowing the limitations of our understanding, the gulf which
seems to lie between us and perfection, is one of the great
frustrations of being human, and the angelic visitations of scripture
are a sign that the barrier is not completely impassable – at least
in one direction.
The
promise Jesus makes to Nathaniel echoes this earlier story, but now
it locates the medium of communication precisely in his own person –
he has become the ladder by which God descends to be with us, and
upon which we are summoned to ascend to God. He joins himself to our
human life, so that we can be drawn into the divine life. In both of
these stories, there is a promise made to an individual, but its
ramifications are far greater than that individual's own comfort or
instruction. The promise is made to generations yet to come, and the
individual is drawn into the fulfilment of that promise as part of a
greater community – Nathaniel's promised vision is not for himself
alone, any more than Jacob's was. Think of other great angelic
visions in scripture – Ezekiel and the wheel, for example, or
Gabriel's visits to Zechariah, to Mary, and to Joseph – in each
case, an individual is commissioned to be something more than him- or
herself, and to manifest God's power and God's love for others.
In
some ways, the whole book of Revelation – bizarre as it is –
presents us with a highly complex and elaborated version of that same
sort of vision. What John describes is a huge metaphor for the
Incarnation of God as a human being, with promises of God's ultimate
triumph over evil, and John’s own commissioning to reveal this good
news to others. One of the centrepieces of the vision is the battle
between Michael and Satan, which we heard in our second reading.
Probably because of the way he experienced conflict in his own life,
John presents this cosmic struggle in terms of a human war – an
instrusion of human violence into the kingdom of heaven. If you read
carefully, though, you'll see that most of the detailed imagery we
have associated with the conflict in art – weapons, armour, and
details of the combat – is supplied from our own imaginations, and
from a lifetime of seeing images of Michael with a spear or a sword,
casting down the serpent; Milton’s account of celestial warfare
coloured by his own experience of Civil War... Elsewhere in the Book
of Revelation, John praises the non-violent resistance of the
martyrs, and this re-echoing of Christ’s self-offering is of far
greater consequence in the triumph of love over evil than any feats
of arms, however cosmically irresistible they might appear. It is
possible to imagine other, less crudely obvious, forms which the
triumph of the angels of God might take, and it's up to our own
prayerful imaginations to find them and make them known in the
world's search for peace.
Prayerful
imagination is also what we are called to use in our own lives, as
individuals and as communities. And as we strive to discern, to
discover the will of God for us, it's worth remembering something
about encounters with angels, the messengers of God. First, we need
to be open to hearing the voice of God, in ways less literal, more
subtle, more discreet, more intimate, and also more prosaic, than the
sudden appearance of a radiant being with a twelve-foot wingspan
(although not, perhaps, as prosaic as I imagined as a child). Second,
we have to remember that we don’t seek divine guidance just as
individuals: like Jacob, we are part of a living inheritance; like
Nathanael, we are part of a community, part of the Body of Christ.
Finally, we already have an experience of God coming to meet us, week
by week, in Word, and prayer, and sacrament – God comes to us,
speaks to us, and feeds us, providing the angelic ladder on which we
may also ascend into his risen and glorious life. Therefore with
angels and with archangels, and with all the whole company of heaven,
we laud and magnify God’s holy name, looking with joy and hope to
the kingdom which lies before us, in whose building we are called to
share. Amen.
The
current Humphrys Chaplain to the University of Trinity College and
the Saint George campus of the
University of Toronto is the Rev'd
Andrea Budgey.
 |
| The Reverend Andrea Budgey |
Ms.
Budgey completed both an M Mus (performance: oboe) and an MA
(medieval studies: Celtic languages and literature, music) at the
University of Toronto, and in 2006 obtained her M Div from Trinity
College. She was ordained priest in January of 2008, and was
Assistant Curate at Saint Simon-the-Apostle in Toronto until the end
of that year, continuing to serve as honorary assistant, and later as
interim priest-in-charge; she is currently an honorary assistant at
the parish of Saint Stephen-in-the-Fields, close to campus. She has
been involved in community outreach and advocacy for a number of
years, and retains a strong interest in ecumenical and interfaith
work; she welcomes constructive engagement with both seekers and
skeptics. She is also advisory board chair of the University of
Toronto unit of the Student
Christian Movement.
As a member and co-founder of the SINE
NOMINE Ensemble for Medieval Music,
she sings and plays harp, fiddle, recorder, and percussion, and has
directed a number of medieval liturgical reconstructions. She has
been an instructor (in Celtic Studies, music, and English) for Saint
Michael's College, the School of Continuing Studies, the Faculty of
Music, and the Scarborough campus of the University of Toronto, a
freelance writer and researcher, bookseller, and calligrapher, and
has also worked in radio music production and concert management.
