Don Friesen
It's traditional at the end of the year to pause for a moment to consider the events of the past year, and also to anticipate what the year ahead might hold for us. This year, however, my mind went back twenty years, for this past week marked the twentieth anniversary of my cancer surgery. On the last Sunday of 1987, the title of my year-end sermon was "The Guardian Angels of 87". I had already planned the service around that theme before I had to quickly go in to get the malignant melanoma on my arm cut out. Nevertheless, I continued with the theme, and delivered the sermon.
The year was 1987. Ginny L the aunt of Jamie L, who was married to Christina H yesterday came back to Canada from Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) service in Botswana and had surgery earlier that week to remove lumps from her thyroid gland. I announced that we had received a letter from Willy and Ilona D, who were with MCC in Haiti at the time, and that Allan S and Donna S had just completed their language study and moved into their new home in Mbeya, Tanzania. I also encouraged the congregation to give generously to the Advent Fund, specifically to Mennonite Central Committee, the Victim-Offender Reconciliation and Education Program in Ottawa, and the Christmas Exchange of Ottawa-Carleton. And I announced that the Ministerial Committee would meet later that week at Elsa K's home.
On that last Sunday of 1987 Marlene J played the piano. Peter W led worship. Monty W read Scripture the same passages we're using this morning. Trudy S sang a solo, "The Birthday of a King," and we reviewed the year past and shared our prayers for the year ahead. Dorothy read the children's story, Robert Munsch's "I'll Love You Forever," which had most of the adults in tears, especially me! I was still recovering from an allergic reaction to the codeine in the Tylenol 3 I was given after surgery, so I was weak and a bit emotionally unsteady.
I don't know what I was thinking with my choice of angels as the theme. Nowadays the topic of angels is put right alongside numerology, crystals, sacred geometry, colon therapy, and amethyst biomats! I certainly didn't have in mind those little creatures that decorate our Christmas cards those chubby, little celestial people with wings, naked and flying about everywhere delivering messages of good cheer!
Then, as now, my meditation was intended as an invitation for you to recollect the experiences of the past year, and to discern God's leading in your life. Later in the service I invite those who are so willing to share in that regard. In preparing ourselves for sharing, I invite you to think about it in several ways: How has God led you in 2007, or, since 1987? How has God led us, our church family, in 2007, or, since 1987? How has God's presence been evident in the world these past years or decades? I invite you to take this occasion, on the last Sunday of 2007, to give thanks for God's blessing and protection; and to ask for patience with those things about ourselves and our lives and our community that didn't turn out as expected.
The Idea of Guardian' Angels
The idea of "guardian" angels may have originated with Plato, who, four centuries before Christ, said: "God has placed by every (person) a guardian angel, to whom he has committed the care of (that person); a guardian who never sleeps and who is never deceived." The idea of guardian angels may have originated with Plato, but it was also picked up by the Church, especially in medieval times. In the early centuries of the Church there didn't appear to be that much interest in angels, save for the odd scholar, like the fifth-century Dionysius (De Coelesti Hierarchia), who, with lots of time on his hands, sought to establish orders of angels, arranging them in three hierarchies of three choirs each, with all kinds of sub-and sub-sub-groupings.
In the Middle Ages, when it appears that there were even more people with little to do, there was a great deal of speculation and controversy over detailed points of angelology their substantiality, their form, and their nature. I don't know if the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin dates to that period, but if it doesn't the theologians of the period would certainly have welcomed such an absorbing question.
It has never been defined as an article of faith, but ancient theologians (e.g., Honorius of Autun, d.1151) taught that each soul is entrusted by God to the care and vigilance of a guardian angel. Even communities were said to enjoy the protection of guardian angels (Exodus 32:34), and the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar prescribes the celebration of a feast in honour of guardian angels; it's October 2.
Protestants, on the other hand, have been a bit slow to pay attention to angels, but aren't as wary of angels as they may think. Martin Luther (1483-1546) described angels as "aspiritual creatures, created by God to serve all of Christendom and the Church." John Calvin (1509-1564) referred to them as "administrators of divine beneficence," saying, further, that "they regard our safety, undertake our defence and direct our ways." (cited by Billy Graham, Angels: God's Secret Agents) And the golden age of angelology in Protestant England was the seventeenth century, when King James I (1566-1625) had an official Jesuit-educated angelologist (John Salkeld) in his employ!
The belief that God assigns to every individual an angel to guard him in body and soul is not entirely foreign to the Scriptures. There is the promise in Psalm 91 that: "(God) will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways." (Psalm 91:11, RSV) And Jesus, when he welcomed children to his side, told the adults round him: "Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven." (Matthew 18:10)
Angels in the Scriptures
Our Scripture readings this morning certainly feature guardian angels, and much are they needed, for no sooner have we celebrated the peace and joy of Christmas than that peace is shattered and the joy qualified. In Matthew's Christmas story Mary and Joseph are on the run! They need to escape to another country because of a maniacal King who is threatened by any remote possibility that his kingship is in jeopardy.
We read that after the wise men had left Bethlehem, "an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph" and warned the family to escape to Egypt lest Herod find them and kill the child. Later, after Herod had passed on to his own reward, we read that "an angel of the Lord ...appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt" and directed the family to return to Israel.
Angels figure prominently in Luke, where a whole host of them gather over a shepherd's field back of Bethlehem to praise God at the birth of Jesus. In Matthew, however, the angels have little time for praise, too busy protecting the holy family from the terrors that be. Guardian angels do not appear to guarantee protection from harm, even for Jesus. The story of Christmas is in part a story of death babies are killed! And yet, despite this tragedy and despite the danger to Jesus, there pervades a sense that God is watching over things.
The Scriptures refer to angels about three hundred times, generally presented in three ways, firstly as perfect beings, robed in white garments and bathed in radiance, surrounding the throne of God in heaven and chanting His praises. (Isaiah 6; Luke 2:13; Revelation 4:9) The presentation of angels as "perfect beings" suggests that the term is linked to behaviour; we think, for example, of angelic behaviour as perfect behaviour. A little girl, watching her mother dress her brother in an angel costume for the Sunday School Christmas program, remarked: "Boy, talk about mis-casting!"
A second and more common presentation of angels in the Scriptures is as messengers. In fact, the word "angel" comes from Greek and Hebrew words that mean "messenger," and so the heavenly angels are like a celestial courier service, serving not only as messengers of God to humanity, but also of humanity to God.
The third way that the Scriptures present angels is as guardians or protectors. In the story of Joseph and Mary's flight to Egypt, the angel was both a messenger and a guardian. The book of Daniel refers to the guardian angel of Israel (Matthew 10:21) as a guardian of the righteous. (Matthew 11:1; 12:1)
In the New Testament angels intervene in guardian-like ways to give comfort in moments of crisis; they are instrumental, for example, in releasing Peter from prison. (Acts 12:7-10) They are especially active in Jesus' life, ministering to him on the Mount of Olives (Luke 22:43), rolling the stone away from his tomb, and accompanying him at His Second Coming (Matthew 16:27), to mention but a few occasions.
A God Is Watching over me' Attitude
I confess some uneasiness with the idea of angels, especially if they arrive on an amethyst biomat! Angels belong in fairy tales, along with demons and trolls, and it strikes me as a tad superstitious to think that angels will protect us from everything. Life is not like that.
The Scriptures, however, assure us of God's comforting presence. Psalm 139, for example, extols God's intimate knowledge of us and assures us that God's presence stays with us everywhere. We may suffer tragedy and even death, but that does not negate the comfort of God's presence.
We are not unfamiliar with the notion that God, in some form or other, stands by us, and while talk of angels may seem like an archaic way of talking about God's presence and protection, the notion is not to be discounted altogether. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote: "Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries." ("Aurora Leigh", Book VII) We may be but blackberry pluckers all, but it is timely, now and then, to take a closer look at the bush from which we pluck, and to recognize it to be as holy and God-sent as the bush that caught fire in front of Moses.
Our guardian angels may not come to us in the form of those mythical, little, chubby, naked ones. Often God sends His angels in much the same disguise as he sent Jesus in the flesh! I can certainly think of some friends whose ministry to me has been angelic, whose timely word, encouragement, direction or counsel gave me the sense that God sent them for that very reason.
Each Christmas we are promised the birth of Immanuel, meaning "God-is-with-us". It gives us courage to think that God is very present to us and with us all evidence to the contrary. 1987 brought to this congregation many difficult experiences: several individuals had surgery; others were ill; some of our children suffered serious disease; a number of individuals had a brush with cancer; one of our sisters died from cancer; a number of us lost parents during that year. 2007 was not much different: some of us lost parents; some of us lost a husband, a father, a friend. Cancer continues to touch us all. In 1987 that heads-of-state Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Raegan met for an arms-reduction summit. In 2007 the war continued in Iraq and as the year comes to an end Pakistan is unravelling.
Has there been any progress in the last twenty years? I don't know. Many things continue to be difficult in our world, in our country, in our community of faith, in our families, and perhaps for us personally. Difficult as they are, however, we are people of faith, who go about our work and carry out our commitments, trusting that God is with us and that ultimately God's purposes will prevail. I am certainly thankful for an additional twenty years that I dare not have taken for granted.
How has God moved in your life this past year? In the past decade? In the past two decades or more? Where were you in 1987, and how has God led you since then? How do you perceive God's movement in our faith community? How have you discerned God's movement in the world? I invite you to reflect upon that, and after the next Christmas carol, to offer your reflections and thanksgiving for our own reflection and encouragement.
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.