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Thought
for the Week Sunday 27 September – S. Michael & All Angels
Jacob,
his ladder, Angels and Baptism. If
I ever have to fill out a form which asks what my forenames are, I always
cross out “fore” and write in “Christian”. In baptism, we are given names by
our parents and godparents before God and his Church, and those are the names
by which God knows us and calls us, as Bishop David pointed out in the
wonderful confirmation service that he did for us here last year, and perhaps
he will do the same thing again when he comes to confirm here in
January. In
that sense of holy name giving, Jacob was baptised, for like his Grandfather
Abram/Abraham, he was given a new name by God. Abram means “father of a people”, but God
chose him to fulfil his promise in creation, and to be the route through
which all people on earth would be blessed, and God gave him the new name
Abraham, which means “Great father of peoples”. Jacob means “Heel-puller” because Jacob
came into the world pulling at the heel of Esau, his twin, who was born just
before him. Later in his life, Jacob
had a second divine encounter, this time, a struggle with God’s holy
angel. They wrestled all night, but
Jacob simply would not let go, and so God gave him the new name Israel, which
means “Struggler with God”. Eleven
of Jacob’s sons, together with two of his grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh,
Joseph’s sons, whom Jacob adopted as his own, became the fathers of the
twelve tribes of Israel, and so Jacob gave his new name, Israel, to the
nation. (Yes, I know eleven plus two
equals thirteen, but Ephraim and Manasseh only counted as halves.) “Struggler with God” is not a bad name for
God’s chosen people. They had
continually to struggle to understand what God’s will is, and their whole
existence was (and remains) a struggle with the surrounding tribes, who did
not accept the children of Israel’s understanding that God is one, and that
God actually minds how we behave. The
surrounding tribes found this very inconvenient, and so do many people today! In
this Old Testament Reading, we find Jacob at Bethel, and it is here that he
has the vision of the ladder between heaven and earth, with the angels coming
and going up and down it, patrolling the earth on behalf of God. Bethel means “house of God”, and it became
the most important holy place for the people of Israel for about seven
hundred years, until king David moved the centre of worship to Jerusalem,
around the year 1,000 BC. Those of the
children of Israel who had settled in the Northern part of the country never
really accepted the move to Jerusalem.
They always regarded Bethel as the gateway to heaven, and themselves
as the true followers of Jacob/Israel.
After
king David’s son, Solomon died in 930 BC, this pressure became intolerable
and there was civil war, which lead the Kingdom of Israel to split in
two. The Northern Kingdom,
confusingly, continued to be called Israel, probably because that half of the
nation still identified so closely with Jacob/Israel. In the time of Jesus, we find the
Northerners referred to as Samaritans.
The southern Kingdom was named after Judah. Judah was the fourth son of Jacob, but the
first three sons had blotted their copybooks in different ways, so it was
Judah who took the role of senior brother among the twelve, and he was the
leader after their father Jacob/Israel died. Apart
from the names, there is another link between the story of Jacob’s ladder and
baptism. The reason that Bethel, the
place where Jacob had his dream, became so important a centre of the Jewish
faith was that everybody understood that here was the entrance into
heaven. In our own baptismal liturgy,
we refer to Baptism as “… the door of faith, through which we enter the
Kingdom of Heaven.” For us, Baptism is
our Bethel. Incidentally,
you might think that trying to follow God and serve Him would give you a
special position, some sort of protection from suffering, persecution, pain
and evil. It doesn’t work like that! Just look at the suffering endured by God’s
Chosen People, the Children of Israel all down their history, of which
perhaps the worst example is the six million Jews who died in the Nazi
holocaust between 1938 and 1945. 1650
- 1300 BC Slavery in Egypt c.
1300 wandering in the
desert 1300
- 1000 more-or less
continual war with surrounding tribes 930-922
bitter civil war and
division of Kingdom 722
Northern Kingdom
(Israel) wiped out by Assyria 587 Southern Kingdom
(Judah) carried off into exile by the Babylonians
312
- 167 Remnant ruled by the
Seleucids (Greeks) 63
BC Judah ruled
exploitatively as a Roman province 70
AD Judah totally
destroyed by the Romans 117 Jews of Cyprus and
Cyrene exterminated by Romans 135 Remaining Jews in
Palestine exterminated by Romans 363 Great Earthquake in
Galilee 629 Jews of Palestine
exterminated by Christians 1095
- 1291 Tens of
thousands of Jews killed in the crusades 1107 Jews expelled from
Morocco 1290 Edward I expels Jews from
England 1306
- 94 Jews expelled from
France (allowed back for a fee!) 1492 200,000 Jews expelled
from Spain 1493 137,000 Jews expelled
from Sicily 1496 Jews expelled from
Portugal 1648 100,000 Polish Jews
massacred by Cossacks 1837 Great Galilee earthquake
(another) 1881
- 1920 Tens of thousands
of Jews killed in Russian Pogroms 1938
- 45 Six million Jews die in
the Nazi Holocaust 1948 Five Arab nations invade
the newborn State of Israel 1967 Egypt attacks Israel 1973 Egypt, Syria and Morocco
attack Israel 1987
- present Suicide bombings of
Israeli people begin) Or
consider what happened to Jesus, God’s own beloved Son, who was tortured to
death for a crime he did not commit. Or
consider what happened to Christians during the first three hundred years of
the Church’s story - martyrdom in the arena at Rome for the entertainment of
the masses. And
it didn’t stop there - the church in North Africa, the cradle of
Christianity, was wiped out during the Muslim expansion from 650 - 725, and
more Christians have died in persecutions in the last hundred years than in
the whole of Christian history before. Of
course we don’t just have to cope with death and bereavement (that has been
the subject of several other homilies), but we also have to cope with all the
little losses and disappointments that punctuate our mortal lives. There are the random annoyances of disease
and accident, which Shakespeare calls “the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune”, and there are the casual harms done to us by other people, or more
often done in ignorance - being cut up on the Rocade, or your savings
disappearing when a bank collapses. Perhaps
Angels are to some extent, God’s way of redressing the balance. Most
religions have Angels. Our word comes
from the Greek “Angelos”, meaning “Messenger”. Angels are messengers of God, sent to give
people messages and warnings from God, or to intervene on God’s behalf in the
affairs of the world. Angels are not
dead people, nor are they people yet to be born. They are beings of a totally different
order from humans, because they do not have free will. They can only do God’s will, so they are by
definition holy, but they cannot make the choices that we can make, and have
to make, all the time. They are, as it
were, extensions of God Himself. So,
why does God bother with Angels? Why
does He not do it all Himself? It is
certainly not because God is too lazy, or too busy, or too small to do it
Himself! It is because He cares for us
so much. We mortals cannot stand too
much reality, and his presence would be simply too much for us. If as we used to learn in the Catechism,
the true purpose of life is to seek God and to enjoy Him, then once we have
encountered God face-to-face, there is no further point in our existence. In the Old Testament it is put more simply,
“No man can see God and live.” Angels,
of course, can see God and live, and they stand in his presence and serve
Him, and we hope to join them there at the end of time. We
are not angels, but we can model ourselves on them, and share in their
work. We can try to do God’s will, as
they do, rather than always behaving as we like. Like they, we too can help to protect
others from harm, care for them on God’s behalf, and bring them support and
help in difficulty and danger. In
baptism, we are called to share in the work of the Angels, and that is why we
are keeping the feast of S. Michael and All Angels today. This
is the last homily that I shall write in this Chaplaincy, and it is rather a
poignant thing to have to do. Our
furniture and possessions left on Tuesday last, and we follow on Wednesday
next. Of course I am sorry to be going
so soon, and I shall miss many of you a very great deal, but I leave happy
that the future of the Chaplaincy is in safe hands. You have four excellent Wardens, who
together with the President of our Association Cultuelle, will be in charge
of the day-to-day running of the Chaplaincy.
You have two outstanding priests, who will be in charge of your
theological and pastoral care, supported by a strong Team of retired and visiting
clergy, and four devout and learned Lay Readers. Of
course, the direction the Chaplaincy will take in the future is in the hands
of the board which will meet to advise the Bishop in appointing my successor,
and in the hands of the Holy Spirit who will move the hearts of suitable
candidates to apply. The one thing
that Our Lord says in the Gospels more than any other is “Do not fear.” In this situation, with all its possibilities
for new beginnings, renewal, and growth, I think we can go further and, again
with Him, say, “Rejoice in all things; again I say, rejoice!” In the meantime, it’s business as usual,
and everything will continue as before - it is a basic principle that nothing
may be changed during an interregnum, and the usual pattern of services and
pastoral work will continue. May
God surround you with his holy Angels.
And, as you seek to share in their ministry to which you were called
in Baptism, and given the name by which God Himself knows you, and may He
bless you now and always. Amen. Father Charles Howard: Anglican
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