"Something special happened...the firm hand of God touched our life."
A British express train raced through the night, its powerful head lamp spearing the black darkness ahead. The train was carrying Queen Victoria.
Suddenly the engineer saw a startling sight. Revealed in the beam of the engine's headlights was a strange figure in a black cloak standing in the middle of the tracks and waving its arms. The engineer grabbed for the brakes and brought the train to a grinding halt.
He and his fellow trainmen climbed out to see what had stopped them, but they could find no trace of the strange figure. On a hunch, they walked a few yards further up the tracks. Suddenly, they stopped and stared into the fog in horror. The bridge had been washed out in the middle and had toppled into a swollen stream. If they had not heeded the ghostly figure, the train would have plunged into the abyss.
While the train was being prepared for its return, the crew made a more intensive search for the strange flagman. But it was not until they got to London that they solved the mystery. At the base of the engine's head lamp, the engineer discovered a huge dead moth. He looked at it a moment, then on impulse wet its wings and pasted it to the glass of the lamp. Climbing back into his cab, he switched on the lamp and saw the "flagman" in the beam. Now he knew the answer: the moth had flown into the beam seconds before the train was due to reach the washed-out bridge. In the fog, it appeared to be a phantom figure, waving its arms, and that saved their lives.
When Queen Victoria was told of this strange happening, she immediately responded: "That was no strange happening. God sent an angel to protect us from certain death."
This Sunday we will take some time out from our regular Pentecost routine to celebrate Michaelmas--the feast day of Michael and All Angels (September 29). And so I think it appropriate to say a few words about angels.
First, know that angels are part and parcel of our Holy Scriptures from the very beginning to the final end. When God ushered Adam and Eve from Paradise, He placed His angelic Cherubim at the Gates of Eden to guard that holy place. And as the story of Revelation tells us, Michael and all his angels will be the principal actors in that great drama of the end of the world and final salvation, doing battle against evil and Satan himself.
I think it is helpful to distinguish the two distinct ways in which our Bible describes angels. One, which most captures our imagination, depicts angels as celestial beings who surround the heavenly throne singing and praising God. Listen to the prophet Isaiah as he describes his visionary peek into heaven:
In the year of King Uzzi'ah I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and His train filled the temple. Above Him stood the angelic seraphim; each had six wings: with two He covered his face, and with two He covered his feet, and with two He flew. And one called to another and all sang: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory."
The second and far more common Biblical image presents angels as messengers which is what both the Hebrew and Greek word for angel means. Messengers of God who announce special events, carry out God's mandates or, as in our opening story, protect His faithful people from potential disasters. Some classic examples from the Bible: An angel stopped Abraham, just in the nick of time, from sacrificing his son Isaac atop Mt. Moriah. It was an angel who appeared to Moses in the midst of the burning bush to bring God's charge to him to save the Hebrews. And the Book of Exodus tells us angels escorted the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness in search of the promised land.
An angel fed Elijah in the desert. Lying exhausted and near death, this angel brought him a flask of water and a piece of bread to give him strength to carry on in his journey to Mt. Sinai. And of course angels ministered to Jesus while he spent his forty days in the wilderness.
A brave angel struggled with Jacob one dark night of the soul near the river Jabbok until Jacob found his faith and his God in the midst of that struggle.
These heavenly messengers often appear in dreams as they did with Joseph during Herod's slaughter of the innocents--telling him to arise and flee to Egypt with Mary and the baby Jesus.
Indeed, one theologian with a wry sense of humor says that what angels always say to people is--get up and get moving!
--An angel comes to Peter in jail and says, "Rise up quickly!"
--An angel sent to Gideon says, "Arise, get up and go help your people!"
--An angel says to Elijah, "Rise up and eat!"
--An angel says to Philip in the Book of Acts: "Arise and go!"
--and to Joseph, "Get up, hurry and flee to Egypt!"
Angels also announce special events. They announced the birth of Ishmael to Abraham and Sarah. They announced the birth of Samson, that Great Old Testament warrior, and surely the most well-known birth announcement of all time occurred when the archangel Gabriel announced the birth of our Lord Jesus in the little village of Nazareth.
"Hail Mary, O favored one
The Lord is with you....
Behold you will conceive a Son
and you shall call His name Jesus."
Throughout our Scriptures angels encounter the lives of men and women in the commonest of places and ordinary times. As one writer says:
"If we have predetermined or fixed ideas of these heavenly visitors as winged fantasies they will be hard to recognize. But if we hold open the possibility that a message from God may come in unexpected ways and in ordinary times, then who knows."
Angels symbolize the fact that we are not alone on this earth and that we are indeed visited by God. Angels come and go in our lives, but they are never really here or there. They are, as another theologian puts it, "like shooting stars across the night sky. They come unexpectedly, linger for but a moment--then disappear without a trace."
As I think about it, I suspect that angels (as messengers of God) exist for us only in their encounter with us, when the Word of God meets us in the everyday events of our lives. And unfortunately we seldom recognize them in that encounter. It is only after their departure, when we say, as good Queen Victoria said, "Something special happened and we know that the firm hand of God has touched our life through a messenger.
"Angels are powerful spirits that God sends into the world to wish and do us well." If we don't expect to encounter them, well, maybe we won't, but if we do hold out the possibility--well, who knows what might happen or what we might "see."
Finally, I would remind us that in the end, it is not the messenger, but the message, which really matters. For one way or another, it will come through. Amen.
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