Readings: Revelation 21:9b-14; Psalm 145; John 1:45-51
We celebrate today the feast of the Apostle Bartholomew, identified with Nathanael in John's gospel. The two readings we've heard are both wonderful works of theological imagination or at least are readings that appeal to the imagination. The vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb coming down out of heaven, angels, gates, the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, foundation stones, the names of the twelve Apostles.
The gospel reading then refers to a strange story. We don't know what it was that Jesus and Nathanael were talking about when they referred to what happened under the fig tree. But then Jesus ends with this more wonderful thing, that they will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. It evokes the story of Jacob's dream in the book of Genesis where he had a vision in his dream of the angels of God ascending and descending. He awoke to say this truly is the gate of heaven, the house of God.
It evokes also that wonderful prayer in Isaiah chapter 63 and 64, 'oh that you would rend the heavens and come down', a prayer which is answered at the baptism of Jesus when we're told in Matthew's gospel that the heavens opened.
People often long for an imagined enchantment which they think the world has lost. Perhaps we just grow up and lose the ability which we had as children to be amazed and filled with wonder at all that we are encountering. But it is often said now that the world is no longer an enchanted place; that it has been emptied of supernatural and preternatural beings; that it has been reduced to a machine at the disposal of human beings and so therefore of our manipulation and exploitation. It leads people to saying that perhaps there is life elsewhere in the universe, perhaps there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. People talk about angels frequently in the context of New Age spirituality and so on. Fantasy literature is very popular, so too science fiction, and perhaps other more sinister ways of trying to escape from a world that seems too ordinary too banal too one-dimensional through drugs and so on - all of this we can see as a nostalgia for a sense of the infinite beauty of God.
We believe that God is the creator of all things visible and invisible, in other words things that come within the range of our vision as well as things that he has created which are beyond the range of our vision. It means sthe angelic world and perhaps other worlds beyond our imagination are needed to reflect adequately the infinite beauty of God. The angels remind us of this, that God is not simply our size and our shape, not simply 'our' God limited to our perception and understanding and experience but infinitely powerful infinitely wise infinitely holy and creative and imaginative. It means there might yet be things to be revealed as there are many things to be learned about God.
This is the question which people I think are considering when they talk about intelligent life elsewhere or express nostalgia for the angels or give themselves over to fantasy or science fiction. All that we need to know about God's creation has been revealed to us, all that we need to know for our salvation for our coming into union with God through Christ and what we've learned about the angels helps us to know where we fit within this plan of God. Within this creation the angels set boundaries to our nature and to our situation.
They direct us. Raphael, for example, is an archangel who directs people along the right road. The archangel Gabriel gives guidance and teaching. The archangel Michael gives protection. It was a great tradition in mediaeval Christendom to place Michael at the boundaries of Christendom to set him as the protector of the limits and the boundaries. All those wonderful places like Skellig Michael in Ireland or Mont Saint-Michel. Michael was always the one who protected the boundaries of the Christian Commonwealth.
So the angels help us to know where we are they give us direction and guidance and protection they also help us to appreciate that we are not angels. This is a great danger especially in modern times that we think of ourselves as spiritual beings trapped or for the moment residing in bodies and this of course is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the human animal is, the living human animal. Thomas Aquinas talks about the living human animal as the image of God. The angels may be more perfect images of God in what is primarily involved in that - rationality and intelligence and freedom - but he says that human beings are fuller images of God and they are fuller images of God because they are animals. Human beings have bodies and the presence of the soul throughout the body for example, and the way in which the soul and body cannot be separated, help us to understand something about the presence of God throughout creation. The fact that human beings reproduce their kind teaches us something and images something about God's generativity God's fertility and creativeness which the angels are not able to image or represent within creation.
So the angels are helpful to us in that they keep us in our place they set the boundaries they help us to understand something about our own nature and not to fall into that very common but deeply mistaken belief that we are somehow ourselves angels trapped in bodies. Christ of course is always at the centre of our experience of God and our understanding of redemption and salvation. Christ Jesus of Nazareth our brother who is our teacher the Son of God the King of Israel one like the Son of Man the Lamb. The angels ascend and descend on him.
Everything in these texts is towards Christ, places Christ at the centre. He is the Lamb and this city is his bride. He is the one on whom the angels of God are ascending and descending. So the angels are preachers as Saint Augustine puts it, they are witnesses pointing us towards God teaching us something about God leading us towards God protecting us on our way to Go. Now it is Christ who is at the centre of this experience, this root, this road, this way to God for us who are the firstborn of creation, the firstborn from the dead.
You can listen here to a homily for the feast of St Bartholomew
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