Feast of St Michael

1989 (Year C), 29 September /
Michaelmas

St Michael and All Angels Stoke Newington

Be thou a bright flame before me,

Be thou a guiding star above me

Be thou a smooth path below me

And a kindly shepherd behind me.

Today, tonight, and forever.

I am tired and a stranger

Lead thou me to the land of angels,

For me it is time to go home,

To the court of Christ, to the peace of heaven.

Apparently the earliest piece of ground that was dedicated to the name of St Michael in this country was a graveyard, not a very auspicious start you might think for an archangel, but since then things have gone from bad to worse and he has often been chosen as the patron saint of cemeteries.

For that reason I was doubtful whether I wanted to share your patronal festival with you all – who wants to spend a night in a cemetery or celebrating one for that matter, but matters took on a more frightening aspect when I read that to see him is even more dangerous. St Wilfrid did just that and the next minute they were taking him off to the place dedicated to the archangel’s name. I sincerely hope nobody sees him in the next few minutes.

Faced with these difficulties I had no idea what to say tonight until I remembered that my god-daughter brought home last Christmas the very words you needed to hear. She came back from school bearing ‘An important notice’ from the headteacher. It referred to the forthcoming school nativity play. It contained an edict with devastating implications for the heavenly host and for the rest of us. ‘All angels’ it declared, ‘must wear white knickers!’

There in that sentence ‘All angels must wear white knickers’. I thought is the message for St Michael’s on their patronal festival. It contains a profound truth. It shows, with the coming of the angels, at that most holy birth, heaven and earth bound eternally together. Heaven and earth mixed up into one glorious whole, for that was God’s plan from the beginning. Our usual rigid separation, Heaven and Earth breaks down and the two become one to the praise and the glory of God.

It is to that, most powerful vision of unity proclaimed by the angels that I would speak. For I should like to preach so that instead of being many separate listeners we may become one congregation. I should like to speak so that individuals and individualists may be fused into a community in which one person looks at another and acknowledges them and accepts them just as all those angels proclaimed God’s acceptance of creation at that birth in Bethlehem.

In order that that vision, communicated by the angels and proclaimed in the heavens might become real it needs us to do but one thing. It needs us to accept one another, as Christ has accepted us, to the glory of God.

And when we accept one another we cease to be the sum total of people in church or on the electoral role. We come to a new kind of living together. It means that no one is left alone with their own problems, that no one has to conceal their handicaps, that there is no one group who has all the say about what is to be done, and another group who have no say. That neither old people nor young people are isolated. That one person bears with another, even if it is difficult and even when there is disagreement between them. That one person can leave another person in peace, if peace is what they need.

A person who has withdrawn into themselves, and we’ve all met them, has no hope. A closed church or society have no future for they kill the hope of their people and ultimately die. Hope is alive where we come out of our shells and participate in the life of others, in both joy and pain. God has accepted us – that’s the message of St Michael and all angels – and God has hope for us.

But how difficult it is to participate in the life of others – particularly in our society especially in the bit God has entrusted into our keeping. How weak, how few we are and how much we’re up against, in the parish, in our street, even within our own families. We are a mere handful, aren’t we, compared with the masses of indifference and unbelief. It is so easy to become dispirited to turn inward on ourselves and neglect the life of others.

St Michael and all the angels have more to say to us. They proclaim that they who are for us are more, many, many times more, that those who are against us. They encourage us not to give up hope.

The disciples were without hope at the death of their friend; he had gone to his death refusing to be rescued. Yet by that very death Jesus opened the eyes of his disciples to see the angels. The women went to the sepulchre on the third day, and there the angels were, one at the head, one at the feet of the place where Jesus had lain.

It was by dying that Jesus set open for ever a door between earth and heaven; his sepulchre is a piece of heaven, a place of angels.

All angels will wear white knickers, and all heaven is one with us, when we once lift up our hearts up to the lord and praise the everlasting love, to whom be ascribed, as is most justly due, all might, majesty, dominion, and power, henceforth and forever. AMEN