Ezekiel 1:4-12 Psalm 138 Revelation 12:7-12a John 1:45-51
In the office here at St Michael’s, there is a small glass plaque. It says: From St Michael’s of Coventry. I did not notice it until I had been here for a fortnight. It was given to this church many years ago by a clergyperson who had visited Coventry—long before any of you knew me, long before I knew you, long before anyone imagined that this Cov Kid, born and brought up beneath the spire of Coventry’s Cathedral Church of St Michael, would one day become the priest of St Michael and All Angels, North Beach. It feels as though a message arrived here long before the messenger knew she was coming. And perhaps that is a good place to begin on our patronal festival, because angels are messengers. So, what is their message? I think our readings give us three answers.
First, their message is direct from God.
Michael’s name literally means: Who is like God? And the answer is: no one.
No ruler. No nation. No army. No church. No ideology. No power that promises to save us by teaching us whom to fear and whom to hate. Who is like God? No one. Not even an enormous archangel. Angels do not carry their own message. They bring words from God.
Second, repeatedly, angels say: Do not be afraid.
They speak it to Hagar in the wilderness, to Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, to the women at the dawn tomb and to Paul in a sea storm. Do not be afraid. Not because there is nothing frightening. There is plenty that is frightening. The angel’s message is that fear does not have the last word.
And third, the angels announce the incredible Truth that God’s love will destroy everything that makes us enemies.
That is where Michael’s battle with the dragon matters. It would be easy to imagine that Michael is simply stronger; that God’s violence defeats somebody else’s violence.
But Revelation tells us that the victory is not won through force, but through the blood of the Lamb. The Lamb doesn’t defeat the dragon by becoming a bigger dragon.
Christ enters the violence of the world, bears its wounds, and answers it with a life that death cannot destroy.
And this victory is not simply the defeat of one enemy by another. God’s purpose is not an everlasting battle between good and evil, with God and Satan locked for ever in opposite corners of creation. If evil survives eternally as God’s undefeated opposite, then the dragon has kept some permanent territory. Some part of creation remains for ever beyond God’s healing. But the Christian hope is greater than that, far more audacious than that! It is the redemption of all creation. Every lie will be exposed. Every cruelty will be undone. Every desire to dominate will be healed. Nothing evil will survive—not because God destroys the creatures God has made, but because God destroys everything that has distorted and disfigured them.
Michael’s victory is not the promise that heaven will remain at war for ever. It is the promise that one day the fighting will end. God’s victory is not complete when an enemy has been destroyed. God’s victory is complete when enmity is destroyed. When there are no enemies left.
I learned something of that at another St Michael’s: Coventry Cathedral. After the medieval cathedral was destroyed in the Coventry Blitz, two charred roof timbers were found lying in the shape of a cross. They were placed on the altar of rubble, and on the Sanctuary wall the priest inscribed two words: FATHER FORGIVE. Not “Father, forgive them.” Father, forgive.
No attempt to divide the world into innocent people in here and wicked people out there. He knew the seeds of fear, cruelty and violence are not found only in other people. They grow in any human heart. Coventry’s answer to destruction was not revenge, but reconciliation. Not because the bombing did not matter. Not because justice did not matter. But because if hatred is allowed to determine the future, the bombing continues long after the flames have died.
So the example of one church bearing the name of St Michael’s brings us back to our name. What does it mean for us to be St Michael and All Angels?
If angels are messengers, what is our message?
Well, it still comes from God, not from us. And it is still the same.
Who is like God? No one.
Do not be afraid. Fear will not have the last word.
And God’s love destroys everything that makes us enemies.
So, when the world teaches people to fear one another, we refuse to feed that fear.
When somebody has been made to feel unwanted or beyond the reach of grace, we make the door wider, and the table longer. We refuse to believe that anybody is beyond the reach of God. That doesn’t mean pretending harm does not matter. Reconciliation is not the absence of justice. It is the fulfilment of justice: what has been broken is healed, and the power to continue harming is taken away.
God does not abandon the person who has been wounded, but neither does God abandon the one who did the wounding. God will not allow evil to keep anyone forever.
In a few moments, our Eucharistic prayer will gather us together “with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.” Then we will hold out empty hands and receive one bread. Not a weapon to use against our enemies. Bread through which Christ makes us one body.
Perhaps that little plaque did not travel all the way from St Michael’s, Coventry, simply to hang unnoticed in an office. Perhaps it came carrying a message for us from God. A message for a frightened and divided world. A message we bear in our name:
There is no one like our God.
Do not be afraid.
Hatred will not have the last word.
God’s love will destroy everything that makes us enemies.
We are St Michael and All Angels. And we have a message to carry. Amen.
