How Much More – Br. Lain Wilson

Br. Lain Wilson

Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, transferred
Preached at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, Issaquah, Washington

Genesis 28:10-17
Revelation 12:7-12
John 1:47-51

On behalf of my brother Jamie Nelson and the rest of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, I am delighted to be here with you this morning. I am particularly honored to be given the hospitality of your pulpit on this day, the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, your patronal feast day.

When I was very young, maybe four or five years old, a family friend told me about an experience she had had. One of her sons had died as a young man years before. She told me that, while she was grieving her loss one day at home, a young man appeared, offering reassurance that her son was in a good place, was home with God, and that she didn’t need to grieve anymore.

She remains the only person I’ve met in my life who has confided that she had seen and spoken with an angel. Her story has made an enormous impression on my life – but not for the obvious reason. No, her story has made an enormous impression on me because it stands as a constant reminder to me of how often I try to domesticate God, to fit God into the neat and tidy boundaries of my own knowledge and reason. I can read about all the angels sent to and fro in Scripture, but a God who still sends angels is a God who can fundamentally challenge all my expectations. This is a God who reveals to us how much more there is, how much more than we can even begin to imagine.

Our readings this morning all echo this theme: the way God can break through to us and overturn all our expectations by revealing this “how much more.” Jacob, fearful and fleeing revenge after tricking his brother Esau, travels to Haran and stops to sleep for the night. He dreams of a ladder stretching up to heaven, with angels going up and down it. Jacob in this dream glimpses a vision of eternity: “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it! … How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16-17). In this particular place, in this particular patch of God’s creation, God reveals to Jacob how much more there is, the reality behind the reality.

And in the most enigmatic passage, from the Revelation, St. John sees a cosmic battle, with the archangel Michael as general, leading the forces of heaven against the dragon, Satan, “the deceiver of the whole world,” who is defeated and thrown down to the earth (Revelation 12:9). In the hymn that follows, Michael’s victory in heaven is mirrored by the victory on earth of those who “have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death” (Revelation 12:11). In this dual vision of victory, of heavenly angels and earthly saints, God shows how much more is going on, how the daily witness of our faithfully lived lives reflects the eternal victory of Michael’s army.

Angels are all about this “how much more”: the boundlessness of God’s promises, protections, and provision to and for us; the sheer unimaginability of God’s grandeur and majesty; and the overwhelming immediacy of God’s presence. Angels are at work in communicating and mediating this and all the “how much more”-ness of God.

But more than that, angels – whether climbing ladders, fighting dragons, or coming gently to offer us a quiet word of comfort – invite us to encounter this “how much more” for ourselves and to try, as best we can, to live it out.

Jacob recognized Bethel as the house of God and the gate of heaven. We can today recognize how this place – this church, this sanctuary, and this altar – is a house of God and a gate of heaven. How can our eyes be opened further to see how awesome this place is?

But not only this church: all of the creation that surrounds us can break into the ordinariness of our routine and reveal the presence, glory, and majesty of God. God’s voice speaking to us is never silent, but we often need to learn new ways to listen. “In what tongue shall I speak? What words would be clear?” Jeanne Murray Walker writes in her poem “The Voice.” “Why not believe the beauty you see? I pour sun through oaks. What more do I have to do?”¹

How does creation speak to you as an angel today, bearing the voice of God in its wonder? Where are you able to stop and say, “How awesome is this place!”?

John, in his vision of the battle against evil, glimpsed the connection between actions in heaven and on earth, the conjoining of the timeless and the time-bound. Here, today, in this celebration of the Holy Eucharist, we are called to be present to eternity that breaks into our midst. We are called to lift up our hearts and truly join our voices with the choirs of heaven when we sing “Holy, holy, holy.” When we receive the body and the blood of the Lamb, we do so knowing that, here and now, we are taking part in a banquet that God has prepared for us from the very foundation of the world.

How can we go forth from this place so that the “word of our testimony,” the witness of our very lives, might bear in that word and that witness the angelic voice to those we meet? How, simply put, can our daily lives be tinged with eternity?

And, finally, Jesus promised his disciples that they would see greater things than simple signs and miracles (John 1:50). They would see the profound relationship, built on love, between Jesus and his Father, a love that connects heaven and earth and draws others in. “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,” Jesus prays in John 17, “may they also be in us. … The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me” (John 17:21-23).

This may be a hard thing to hear and to keep top of mind when you read the news each morning, or when you get into an argument, or when you boil over in resentment. It can perhaps be so much easier to just be angry, to draw inward, to stick with the safe and the familiar, and to assume the worst. Today, in this place, we are called to hear these words of Jesus anew, and really take him at his word that he dwells in us, in our very hearts, and in the hearts of those around us.

How can we take the giant risk of announcing in our very lives these greater things, this “how much more”-ness of God’s boundless love and mercy – the love and mercy that bind up all wounds, heal all conflicts, and welcome all in?

Indeed, how can we be angels ourselves?

Amen.

1. Jeanne Murray Walker, “The Voice,” in Helping the Dreamer: New and Selected Poems 1980–2000 (Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2004). ↩