Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
The Rev. Matthew Wright, OHC
Saint Michael and All Angels - September 29,.2020
We live with the constant underlying anxiety that perhaps there is no coherence or ultimate meaning to the story in which we live, and we fear that any story we tell that attempts to bring coherence to our lives is really only the imaginings of a desperate and fearful mind.
And angels, whom we celebrate today, certainly seem to be relics, holdovers, from a now discredited or naive worldview. Recurrent characters throughout our Scriptures, named angels with different roles and functions and orders don't begin showing up in the Hebrew imagination until after the Babylonian exile, which the Jewish people entered in the year 586 BCE, and during which they were introduced to the elaborate angelologies of the Zoroastrian tradition. And their imaginations were sparked. We see a burst of spiritual and scriptural creativity that grows out of that exilic period.
And in the Zoroastrian tradition they encountered, Ahura Mazda, the transcendent Lord of Light, though transcendent, maintained contact with the world by means of his seven attributes the Amesha Spentas, who were at one and the same time beings or deities in their own right, but also aspects of Ahura Mazda. And it seems obvious to scholars that these seven Amesha Spentas are the precursors to the seven archangels of Jewish and Christian tradition: Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, etc.
And similarly, these seven, while appearing as separate beings, have been understood in strands of the Jewish mystical tradition as the modes through which the Infinite God interacts with the finite world--and so they essentially become the Names or attributes of God, and we see this in their naming: Raphael literally means "God [El] heals"--and so Raphael is the healing power of God as it meets the world; Gabriel--Gavri-el--means "the strength of God"--and so when the Divine Strength meets the world, it meets it as Gabriel; Uriel means "the Light of God"--and so on.
And so this is why there's some confusion at times in the Scriptures when an angel interacts with a human being--was Jacob wrestling with God or with an angel? Yes. Angels are the means, the modes, the attributes, the Names of the Nameless. They are that which connect the finite with the Infinite--which is exactly how we hear them described in our two passages from Genesis and the Gospel of John--ascending and descending on Jacob's Ladder, ascending and descending on the Son of Man--linking and maintaining a continual exchange between worlds or realms.
In his book The Angelic Way, Rabbi Rami Shapiro points out that the ladder in Jacob's dream is a universal or archetypal symbol showing up across our religious traditions, signifying "the Great Chain of Being" ascending from our dense physical world through the subtle, angelic realms to our Divine Source itself. So we can see this ladder as symbolizing all the gradations of existence--all the realms or worlds that are--but we can also see it as a ladder that is within each of us--the different realms of consciousness, from our most constricted sense of egoic selfhood, concerned only with defense and survival, to the most subtle and spacious awareness of our unity with God and all creation.
And Rabbi Rami points out that classical rabbinic commentators stated that the ladder extended not simply from the earth but from Jacob's body, again emphasizing that this is a ladder emerging from within him, from within us. He writes: "The angels in Jacob's vision both descend and ascend up from the human body, suggesting that angels are not simply the imaginings of the human mind, but rather the human imagination itself. Angels, at least the way the rabbis viewed them, are not symbols for something else, but the source of symbol making itself. Angels are not figments of the imagination, but the capacity for imagination."
Angels are not figments of the imagination, but the capacity for imagination. Now it's important that we understand that imagination in these mystical traditions was understood as an actual faculty of perception. It didn't simply refer to the "imaginary" or "make believe" as we tend to hear it, but to the imaginal. The "imaginal realm" was understood as that intermediate zone connecting, linking, our world of density with the more subtle, spiritual realms. It was the realm of images, symbols, and meaning--the realm accessed in prophecy, dreams, and visions. And it was not diminished as a purely or merely "subjective" but understood as an objective and real inner landscape of meaning that we can access through the faculty of imagination--or, in other words, by way or means of the angels.
Again, Rami tells us that in the Jewish mystical tradition angels can be understood as "not physical entities but imaginative faculties"--that capacity to ascend and descend the Chain of Being and the realms of consciousness. He continues, "What is the ultimate state toward which we are to climb when we dare to climb out of our own heads on our own ladders? Our answer is that we climb from ego-centered mind to world-centered soul to God-centered spirit."
When we climb out of our own heads. And this, I believe, is the great tragedy of the times we live in--our reality has become so atrophied, atomized, and reduced that we've lost contact with the angels, we live only in our own heads and the confines or our egos. From that confined, cramped, claustrophobic perspective, greed, consumption, and selfishness are the order of the day, we shut down the exchange that's meant to go on between the worlds, and creativity, compassion, and expansiveness of spirit die.
This is where we have arrived culturally, at a polarized impass in a system that is eating itself because it no longer knows how to receive food from above. And so we desperately need a return of the angels--of imagination, creativity, and connection. It is absolutely essential in both of these visions of Jacob and Jesus that the angels ascend and descend--that there is a continual exchange between the realms. I'm convinced that those higher--or call them deeper, if you prefer--realms exist, and that the exchange between them is necessary for the maintenance of our hearts and our world. We human beings are the agents of that exchange; it's the role we are given to play in creation. And when we fail to do our part to open to that world of imagination and meaning, our world here begins to break down--and we are reaching a near critical system failure right now.
We need Raphael, the Healing of God; Uriel, the Light of God; Selaphiel, the Prayer and Intercession of God; we need these angels ascending and descending. We need to return to that wider universe of meaning, which is the actual food that our lives and our world need to maintain equilibrium and balance. As the Prophet said, "Without vision--without the angelic, imaginative faculty open and online--the people perish.
But I am also convinced that the need goes in both directions along that Great Chain of Being. When the ladder between worlds is broken, God goes hungry also. Many of you know that over the past several months I spent a good deal of time with the 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich, in preparation for a retreat I led on her revelations this past August. One of the most beloved passages from her writings is her parable of the Lord and Servant, in which a servant is sent out to do the will of his Lord, and in his excitement, running to do the Lord's will, he falls into a "slade," which is a space, a valley, between two banks. And for Julian it symbolizes our movement into, our "fall" into, finitude, into this world. We can imagine the banks of the slade being the banks of time and space, of constriction and density; it's this end of the Chain of Being. But she sees surprisingly that the Lord is not judging the servant for this "fall" down the ladder of being--but rather gazing only with love, and even anticipation, seeing a deeper purpose and potential in this world.
She writes, "there was a treasure in the earth which the lord loved. I marveled and imagined what it could be. And I was answered in my understanding: "It is a food which is lovely and pleasant to the lord." Now at this point, some commentators on Julian get uneasy. For example, Fr. John-Julian, of the Order of Julian of Norwich, who's one of her best interpreters, he says "The food allegory is a challenging and somewhat forced one." Well, why? Because we assume that the Divine is impassable and has no yearnings or appetites whatsoever. What "food" could God possibly want or need?
Well, Lady Julian continues, "For I saw the lord sit as a man, but I saw neither food nor drink wherewith to serve him; that was a wonder." And again, Fr. John-Julian weighs in: "Julian shows naivete in noticing that the lord had no provisions in sight, and no one to serve him food and drink. She is transferring to the vision her own cultural experience of a lord and his servants."
He's saying that Julian is just being naive in saying that there was no food or drink in the Divine Court to be served to the Lord. But there's a very significant point being made here that we miss because of our metaphysical preassumptions: Julian is telling us that the "food" that the Divine desires cannot be produced in the heavenly realms. There is something that can only be brought forth from within the conditions and limitations of finitude. Julian writes of it as "fruits" that grow here and that we are to garden, and we might imagine these as St. Paul's "fruits of the Spirit"--love, gentleness, kindness, patience. But the amazing thing Julian says is that these are the fruits God is longing to eat.
Classically, we've imagined that we need nourishment from up the Chain of Being, but have we been so daring as to imagine that God longs for nourishment from down the Chain of Being? That there's a fulfilment happening in both directions as the angels ascend and descend Jacob's Ladder? That the Names of God, the qualities, the attributes of God, exist as potential within the Ground of Being, but that it's only here that they can take on expression? It's the difference between the rose seed and the fully blossomed rose.
But most of traditional theology jumps off the rails of Julian's train-track about right here, because the need can't go in both directions. But Julian speaks unflinchingly about the yearning, thirsting, and hunger in God. She writes, "For the thirst of God is to have the whole of humankind within Godself. That same thirst has already drawn and drunk many holy souls, who now dwell in endless bliss. God is always gathering his living members, drawing and drinking, and yet still he thirsts and yearns!" A God who wants to devour the ripened fruit of our lives offered back up the Chain of Being. Have you ever said to someone, "I'll eat you up I love you so much!" Julian is saying that that's what God is saying to us!
Well if the angels are none other than the Names of God, we see those Names being sent down the Chain of Being as food for the world; we devour them and they are planted in the soil of our hearts to germinate, grow, and ripen as food offered back up the chain to God. And in this, the whole Ray of Creation stays in harmony and balance, each end finding fulfillment in the other. But I fear that we have stopped holding up our end of the bargain; we have stopped believing in angels; we are no longer receiving the food from that other realm, and so God goes hungry, and our world begins to eat itself.
Our salvation can only be found in climbing out of our heads, from ego-centered mind to world-centered soul to God-centered spirit. We can't solve the problems we face from within a closed and polarized system. We have to learn to open again to that ladder of meaning and imagination. And so may we move out of the tight, constricted world we take to be the limits of reality, cry out to our angels, and set the exchange back in motion.
And so, St. Michael, pray for us. St. Gabriel, pray for us. St. Uriel, pray for us. St. Raphael, pray for us. All the holy angels, pray for us. Amen.
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