Archangelic Accessorizing

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world
making fun of the pretty bow you wear in your hair. Amen.

(Click the picture for a larger view.)

Donkeys and Serpents

The other night one of the brothers came into the recreation room and tried to test us with a "Final Jeopardy" question he had seen. There are two animals who speak in the Old Testament, went the setup. Between the two of them, how many legs did they have?

The answer that was alleged to be correct was four: Balaam's donkey in Numbers 22 had four legs,* and the serpent from Genesis 3 had none. So they had four between the two of them.

Of course I objected immediately, as it is my contention that the question is unanswerable. Consider the curse God imposes on the serpent: "Because you did this, more cursed shall you be than all cattle and all the wild beasts: On your belly you shall crawl and dirt you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; they shall strike at your head, and you shall strike at their heel." (Genesis 3: 14-15, JPS)

Now we are accustomed to moving immediately to the Marian and christological senses of the curse, but we should also notice that the crawling, dirt-eating, and heel-striking are parts of it. Therefore it is my contention that the serpent had legs before being cursed, and God took them away as part of the punishment. If he was crawling about on the ground like a snake before, why should that have been part of the curse?

Therefore, we don't know how many legs there were on the two speaking animals in the Old Testament, because the serpent could have had two, four, six, or a hundred. We just don't know.


*Balaam's poor she-ass raises another curious question; that of the possibility of animals being able to see angels. But that's another topic.

Guardian Angels

I was surprised to notice this morning that the feast of the Guardian Angels--at least as a universal observance--is recent in origin. In 1670 it was assigned to the first free day after Michaelmas (now the feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.)

If you want to believe Pseudo-Dionysius, the guardian angels come from the plain old "angels," as distinguished from the higher orders of Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, and finally Seraphim (who are closest to God's throne.)

In my experience much of the talk or preaching we do about angels is pretty confused, and rarely takes seriously their entirely spiritual nature. Nevertheless, this feast day affirms what we say straight away about God in the creed, that he is the Creator of both a seen and an unseen world. This feast reminds us that, contrary to what we might believe if we took all of our religious instruction from the movies, the unseen world is on our side.

Coffee

You just never know where Wisdom is going to show up.

This morning, as I'm sitting here reading C.K. Barrett's commentary on the Gospel of John, I look up and see this quote on my Starbuck's coffee cup:

Life is a school for angels. Love is the Teacher, so do your homework without fear. Death is merely graduation.

Isn't that great? Now we know that we aren't going to become angels; but we do aspire to the life of the angels in the sense that we hope to share with them the life of heaven.

The first letter of John teaches us that God is love. If we are very bold, we may even turn it around to say that Love is God! And we believe that love is our Teacher because Love Itself became one of us in the human life of Jesus of Nazareth.

So let's love, do our homework, and have our coffee without fear, and look forward to our graduation.

Thanks Starbuck's!

Jacob's Ladder

In his sleep at Bethel, Jacob had a vision:

There was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. (Genesis 28:12-13b)

In today's Gospel for the feast of the Archangels, Jesus identifies himself with the Ladder:

And he said to Nathanael, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." (John 1:50-51)

Such a simple expression of fundamental Christianity! What connects the utterly other, completely transcendent and unknowable God to our world of time and history and mundane matter? The human life of Jesus of Nazareth is the ladder that connects heaven and earth, on which ascend and descend the messengers and messages of God that we call the angels.

Christianity is nothing more than the grateful response to God's bridging of the gap between the transcendent realm of heaven and our world of time and matter in Jesus Christ. It's why we sing in the Easter Exsultet,

"Night truly blest, when Heaven is wedded to earth, and man is reconciled with God."