Seen and Unseen | The Rt. Rev. Greg Brewer

For the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels.

It was over two generations ago, April 12th,

1961, that the Soviet Union sent the first human into

space, orbiting the Earth once and returning to Earth.

Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union, claimed to quote the cosmonaut

who had made the flight, Yuri Gagarin, saying that he went up to space and, ha-ha,

did not see God, proof that God does not exist.

The quote itself actually was false.

Yuri was a practicing Christian in the Russian Orthodox Church, who had his

daughter baptized just before the space mission.

But Khrushchev's misquote that he did not see God, therefore there is no

God, made headlines across the planet. C.S.

Lewis was alive at the time and wrote an essay in response called "The Seeing Eye"

as a counter to Khrushchev's false logic.

He wrote this, quote, "To some, God is discoverable

everywhere. To others, nowhere. Those who do not

find him on Earth are not likely to find him in space.

But send a saint up in that same spaceship, he'll find God in that space

as he found God on Earth. Much depends on the seeing

eye." Indeed. The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

challenges us to see our lives and our world

differently than we might normally see them.

We see the physical world around us and assume that that is all that there is, or

at least all that actually matters. A kind of visual agnosticism.

The vision in Revelation, however, challenges that limited and inaccurate

vision as well as humbles us. To read the Book of Revelation with an open mind and

heart is not unlike what happens to a child who assumes that the sky

above is actually a dome over the Earth, when what that sky

actually is, is a window. A very small window in

a deep and vast universe. And as Revelation would tell us, a universe

packed with spiritual beings and spiritual activity that we may have never

seen before.

This book in the New Testament challenges our limited and material capacity

to see the world and pulls back the curtain to show us a world where God is alive

and active, and invites us to ask God to give us eyes to see

this world, His world, both material and spiritual as they are,

not how we think we've seen it or how we have imagined it to be. C.S.

Lewis also writes in another book that particularly around the question of the

activity of demons, he says, "You know, there really are two heresies.

One is to say there are no demons at all, and the other is to say that they are

everywhere all the time. Both are wrong." And therefore, to

pray for God to help us see His world, both spiritual and material

accurately, as God sees them, is actually the call of this book.

Revelation was written in part to help us Christians see the activity in

God's world from God's perspective.

Revelation intentionally shocks and expands our vision to see a world full of

supernatural creatures, all wondrous, some terrifying, most mercifully

fighting on our behalf in the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.

This in no way limits or somehow divides the power of the resurrection, just the

opposite. If you read the book, Revelation is very clear that what

empowers these angelic hosts to fight and win over Satan

and his demons is the power that was won through the resurrection of Jesus Christ

from the dead. As a result, it lays out the battleground for the ultimate defeat of

all that is evil and unveils a new heaven and a new Earth that is dazzling

to behold. It presents to a suffering church, for that's those to whom it was

written, powerful words of encouragement, that Satan is being defeated and that God

will make all things right. The battle is fierce. People suffer.

But in the end, the glorious shout of victory will be sung from one end of heaven

to another. All that is cursed will be set free, and what we know will be

joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Old things, tiring, wearying old things, dirty, corrupted

old things will pass away. Even our aging and sometimes

disease-ridden bodies will pass away, and we will, for the first

time in our lives, feel fully alive and quite at home in our

resurrected bodies, enjoying an extraordinary banquet of food and wine that will

never end, the marriage supper of the Lamb. Foodies, rejoice.

Integral to the Revelation story of the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus

Christ is the reality of both angels and demons, each playing an

active role in both the cosmic and often political human events, as well as our

own deep and personal struggles. Note, evil is both

structural in this world and personal.

The Book of Revelation reveals that to us that blessings come with

the aid of God's angels, and they assist us on every side,

even in this tumultuous world. It is a humbling reminder that all that is good that

we receive comes as a gift from God, and not merely our own best

efforts. The world is packed with angels and archangels

and all the company of heaven, as we say.

Note that when the celebrant who will stand before the altar even this morning and

call us therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, what

he's not doing is defining a small circle of angels around the altar.

What he's actually declaring is a geographic cosmic reality that

is always with us. We are never without the presence of angels.

Even if you're sitting at a restaurant over lunch, even if you're having a fight

with your spouse in the privacy of your own home, even if you're feeling utterly

alone as if there is no one else to turn, in each of those places,

God's angels are present. We are never fully

alone.

No matter where you are, there are angels surrounding you, and it is more than

right to invoke their assistance as we do.

Recently, at a house blessing that I did for a couple in this parish, I prayed as a

part of the liturgy, "God, send your angels from heaven to guard, visit, and

defend this place and all who dwell there." And I meant that

prayer literally.

The dark struggles of fear, lust, resentment, and malice, the selfish desires for

more money, more power, the temptation to hoard rather than generously give

all come with the seductive encouragement of the forces of darkness.

They lure us to yield to our worst impulses, keeping us stuck in the

lying illusion of the need, only the need, for increased

self-sufficiency. If I could only do this on my own, I would be just fine.

And the human need that accompanies it, to accumulate more money and more power to

help make that happen. But when that happens, what it does is that money

and that power is extracted from the poor who need it more than we do.

Notice, it is the goodness of God that opens our hearts to receive His

mercies and to share those mercies with generosity.

It is the wickedness of the evil one that works to sear our hearts

shut to everything but our own insistent desires,

making my need to get my needs met, whatever they may be, the

most important factor in our lives.

You see, when God is at work, what happens is it expands us.

It allows us to see people in a different way.

It allows us to think about our income in a different way.

It causes us to see the world as a world that God loves and cares for deeply and

profoundly. And to shut out that world, even though we can't stand the noise

sometimes, actually is to withdraw into ourselves, where the enemy is only

waiting to nurture our self-pity, to help us

lick our wounds and close the door and hope that no one

disturbs us.

That is wickedness

disguised as self-pity.

Friends,

ask God to help you see the spiritual world in which we live.

Yield to God's direction to give and to serve.

For at the center of that world, that world of generosity, that center of joy, that

central world where all is made right and where provision is provided, is the place

where we are called to live. Jesus stands in the middle of that world with arms

wide open, inviting us to come and take our place in His

world. Jesus is not so much interested in you helping

Jesus to find a place in your world as He is inviting you into a

place in His world, because that's where life truly

matters. Call on the power of angels to assist you.

Rebuke the power of evil if need be.

But above all, you're invited into the arms of Jesus and to rejoice in His

eternal victory. And that is in fact what matters most, which is

the victory of God in Jesus Christ.

Amen.