St. Michael and all angels sermon

September 29, 2019

St. Michael and all Angels

Daniel 10:10-14; 12:1-3

Psalm 103:1-5, 20-22

Revelation 12:7-12

Luke 10:17-20

Please pray with me,

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and suitable in your sight, O God, our rock, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen. 

Well, here are, celebrating St. Michael and All Angels, and BOOM, a reading from Revelation. 

I have to say, as I looked into the texts today and sat at pericope (our weekly pastors’ bible study) my colleague and friend, Pastor Mark Rigg said, you should preach on Revelation…and I said…okay. 

Eep. 

Revelation, a text when even just mentioned brings fear or worry or confusion to many. 

It is unique to the New testament, as an apocalyptic text, yet even at the beginning of the book, we are enlightened to what message it has to proclaim. 

It begins with “The revelation of Jesus Christ,” so in essence we are told at the very beginning of this book that ‘revelation’ expresses the idea that God, through Jesus Christ, and through this text will share secrets about heaven and earth, past, present and future.  Yet, isn’t that in essence what the entire Bible does for us? 

As we read the word of God, we listen to and look for how God’s love and salvation is extended to all of God’s people time after time after time. 

Throughout the Old Testament it was the sweeping saga of salvation.  God creates humanity, humanity messes up, God swoops in to save them, they praise God, then inevitably humanity messes up again, God swoops to save them again, they praise God, then they mess up…you get the gist. 

As the New Testament begins, we hear the stories of Jesus’ life, teaching, healing, saving, dying, his resurrection and how the church is called to go on in Christ’s absence.  And as the New Testament wraps up, we have the Revelation to John.  What an ending, right? 

A book filled with imagery, wars, angels, dragons, Satan and all sorts of other interesting characters. 

Even today’s passage has Michael and his angels fighting against a dragon in a war in heaven.   

But the reality, for us, even as we hear a text containing warring angels and dragons, it’s a passage that speaks to us today.  We hear a story of the battle of good vs. evil.  That’s not a new story. 

From the beginning of creation, all that God made was good, yet evil entered in and with it sin and a fall from grace and with it our continual need of God’s presence, God’s love and God’s grace in our lives. 

I used to think that evil just lurked in dark places, that I could just stay in well lit places and avoid evil all together.  Not the case, right?  A friend mine in high school gave be a pin that said, ‘lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself.’  Funny to think back on that now. 

In the movie the Usual Suspects, one of the characters says, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.” 

The devil, evil is here.  And so, the fact that God’s angels battled evil, too, provides some comfort.  Yet the way they battled was one with a message of peace and hope and love.  Picture a fight like that. 

When the host of angels appeared to announce the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, they were an army, but they were an army gathered to bring about peace on earth. 

That’s a fight that we are still part of this day. 

When we sense evil, when we see the devil at work, we are called to respond with acts of love, grace and peace.  It’s not always easy, but 99.9 percent of the time, we know the right thing to do, yet we struggle to speak words of love to words of hate. 

We struggle to take actions that will lead to justice and peace when they go against the norms of society. 

We struggle to have civil conversations with one another when it is far easier to put up a wall, to block someone on Facebook or just ignore those who have different opinions than we do. 

The war is here and now. 

The earth and all its inhabitants are not at peace, which is why this text speaks to us today. 

This good vs. evil is ongoing, until we all gather together at the great heavenly banquet. 

So, how do we take part? 

We do so armed with love, with words of forgiveness and grace, with arms open, and with a readiness to change the world. 

Little do we know how ready we actually are, but we’ve been ready for a while.  We’ve been ready since we were washed in the waters of baptism. 

Welcomed into God’s family, we are siblings in Christ, loved by God and gifted with words and actions to proclaim God’s redeeming love to all the world. 

You may not have been ready on your baptism day to proclaim God’s love, you may have been in the mood to cry and nap…even if you were baptized as an adult, but that day we were ready.  And since then we have lived and learned and grown in the grace of God to love and serve our neighbors and to bring God’s peace here and now. 

Creation is crying out for peace.

Our world is crying out for peace.

Our nation is crying out for peace. 

It’s time. 

The hip hop group Arrested Development, that has been together since the late 90s seems to respond to the cries for peace that are surrounding us today. 

In their song, “Each Generation” the chorus goes like this…

'Each Generation must have their own revolution

You can’t create one for me and I can’t create one for you

And we gotta move onward at the pace of love

let truth be your fighters, let peace be your guns.

we gotta move onward at the pace of love

let truth be your fighters, let peace be your guns

we all have our own race to run'

Let God’s truth be our fight,

Let God’s peace be our guns,

We gotta move onward at the pace of love.

Let God’s truth, peace and love reign in this place, in our communities, nation and world through our words and actions. 

And may the peace, which surpasses all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus and let all God’s people say, amen.