TRINITY XV/Michaelmas 2003

How many Angels can fit on the head of a pin? Eternally unanswerable question? Well the Institute for Microstructural Sciences at the National Research Council here in Ottawa doesn't seem to think so. They used a new focused ion beam to engrave 1,711 angels on the point of a pin. Now, before you run off and complain to your MP about this waste of taxpayer money, this was done back in 1990; and, much of the research done at the NRC is actually funded by private industry (or at least it used to be). Of course they weren't real Angels, just images, and rather small ones at that: 3 microns high (a micron is a millionth of a metre), with a 6 micron high archangel right in the middle of the point. Nothing to indicate if the archangel was Michael or Gabriel. Alas, these aren't real Angels, just wishful images, so the question remains unanswered, as it should - angels primarily existing in the non-corporeal realm, thus probably not even interested in the head of a pin.

Tomorrow is the feast day of St. Michael and All Angels. Angels are mentioned over 230 times in Holy Scripture. And, by the way, while preparing for this sermon, I thought that I might just see how much information has been posted on the Internet about angels, so I typed in the word, hit the Google search button and got - over 11,000,000 "hits." Granted, not all of them were about the kind of angels we read of in Holy Scripture. There were many hits for the Anaheim Angels baseball team, and so on. (And, by the way, contrary to the belief of some of our American brethren, God is not interested in who wins the World Series.) Now, as regards the 230 "hits" in the Bible, each one of us, ask ourselves the question, "Do I believe in Angels?" - the Angels as presented in Holy Scripture. Sadly, for all too many people, and not just the unchurched, the answer is somewhat like, "Well, Angels are like Santa Claus, I believed when I was a young child, but now...." What a pity that the innocence, the humility, the trust, the faith of the young child seems doomed to pass away just like belief in the tooth fairy.

Last Sunday, as we were celebrating the Feast of St. Matthew, we didn't hear the Gospel for Trinity 14, which relates the story of Jesus' healing of the ten lepers. Next week the Gospel passage for Trinity 16 reads in part, "And He (Jesus) said, 'Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.' And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak." How many people today, including Church people, truly believe that both of these episodes actually happened? With it being all the rage among "fashionable" Christian circles today to deny Jesus' own Resurrection from the dead it hardly seems likely that Jesus' raising someone else from the dead would be believed either. With non-believers scoffing at apparent miracles of healing, have they succeeded in perhaps even "deceiving the elect" to the point that some Christians would question the truth of Jesus' miracles of healing? Similarly, many today question the Virgin Birth - which likely suggests that they also don't believe that an angel appeared to Mary to tell her that, miraculously, she was to conceive. Do we believe? Do we believe as a young child unquestionably would? Again, is our childlike acceptance of miracles doomed, like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, to be banished with our toys, as it were, to a box in the attic?

Tomorrow, on the feast of St. Michael and All Angels (page 294 in the Prayer Book), the choice of Gospel reading is rather interesting. In it, Jesus' disciples ask Him, "'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and said, 'Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.'"

Isn't it interesting that Jesus would have said to His own disciples, "Except ye be converted", or as other translations state, "Unless you turn"? Jesus was telling His own followers that their question to Him, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?", showed that they were headed in the wrong direction, away from the kingdom of heaven and not toward it. In Jewish society of the time, there was a good deal of speculation about position and status in the coming kingdom. At Qumran, the community that gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls, they even went so far as to arrange the communal meals according to rank within the group. The meals were supposed to mirror that which would happen when God's kingdom comes. Their writings show us just how prominent the idea of rank was, "that every Israelite may know his place in the community of God according to everlasting design. No man shall move down from his place or up from his allotted position." Within this context, the disciples' question would have been a perfectly natural one to ask.

We can probably safely surmise that they were caught off guard more than just a little when Jesus suggested to them that they were headed in the opposite direction to the kingdom of heaven. The message is the same for us today, where we, by the very fact that we are gathered here in His Name, claim to be followers of Jesus, just as His disciples were. They, genuinely devoted as they were, asked Him, face to face, apparently an innocent question, albeit a question influenced by their society. We too, devoted as we are, can be diverted just as easily by the influences that surround us. Our current society is not concerned so much with the Jews somewhat fatalistic concept of pre-established rank, where one should not seek either a higher or lower position, but rather today's feeling is that, in life, it is all a question of what a person is aiming towards. Jesus tells us that, if we are aiming at the fulfilment of personal ambition, the acquisition of personal power, the enjoyment of personal prestige, the exaltation of self (all of those "me" things); we then quite possibly are aiming at the opposite of the kingdom of heaven. To be a citizen of the kingdom means the forgetting of self, even the obliteration of self, the spending of self in a life which aims rather at service than at power. So long as we consider our own selves as the most important thing in the world, we could very well be facing in the wrong direction. We must turn.

Jesus took a little child, as one in whom we see the characteristics of the people of the kingdom of heaven. Most, granted not all, very young children show remarkably "unpolluted" characteristics: the power to wonder, before our society forces them to become essentially dead to wonder; the power to forgive and forget, even when adults treat them unjustly, as they so often do; the innocence, which, as has been stated, that a child has only to learn - not to unlearn, only to do - not to undo. We might assume that Jesus was thinking of these things; but, wonderful as they are, they are very likely not the main things on His mind. Most very young children, especially those who have not already begun to be conditioned to the unpleasant self-absorbed characteristics of so many in our time, have three great qualities which make them the symbol of those who are citizens of the kingdom of heaven. These qualities are quite different from the disciples' feelings towards legal right or claim to the kingdom. They are humility, dependence and trust.

Consider just how shy many young children are; they shrink in humility from the limelight. Consider just how trusting and dependent children are - for their food, their clothing, the roof over their heads - which trust and dependence Jesus exhorts His disciples to seek in today's Gospel passage for Trinity 15, "Be not anxious about your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink…"

Just think of how many other of Jesus' parables and lessons to his disciples and followers emphasized these three qualities as becoming of those who will inherit the kingdom of heaven. In some measure, they are, separately or together, part of the three cardinal virtues of faith, hope and charity. Humility, dependence and trust. A child's humility must be the pattern of the Christian's behaviour to our fellow people. A child's dependence and trust must be the pattern of the Christian's attitude towards God, the Father of us all.

Humility, trust, dependence. Miracles, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, angels.

I believe.

THE ANNUNCIATION OTTAWA 2003 CLRK