Sunday 26 September, Michael and All Angels

When shall we three meet again
in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly’s done,
when the battle’s lost and won.
That will be ere the set of sun.
I thought about calling this the ‘Scottish sermon’: after all, it’s said that even speaking the name of the antihero of the play which opens with those lines brings bad fortune. But despite the costumes and the chorus this is a church, not a theatre, and we are not (most of us) luvvies, so: secret black and midnight hags, do your worst!

When Macbeth (for it is he) encounters the Weird Sisters he does so as an all-conquering hero. He has led Duncan’s army to victory over the invading Norwegians and their treacherous Scottish allies. His personal courage and blood-stained military prowess have been sung in glowing terms and his future as a great General and as a great Lord seems assured. Then he is hailed as the future King. The question that generations of theatregoers have puzzled over is the impact that this greeting has on him.

One interpretation is that the witches’ intervention tempts him away from the path of loyal service and sets him on his course as a usurping murderer. Another is that through the device of the three witches Shakespeare has externalized an interior debate that is raging within the troubles Thane of Glamis. Macbeth is an ambitious man who is prepared to kill his King and seize the throne - such are the plots and schemes that haunt his every waking moment. In the three witches these plots and schemes are given quasi-human form and shape. Shakespeare projects Macbeth’s turmoil onto the public stage and enacts it, enabling his audience to follow the inner conversation and to witness the growing hold that Macbeth’s dark desires have over him.

St John the Divine employs a not dissimilar technique in the book of Revelation. The heavenly struggle of Michael against the dragon mirrors exactly the earthly struggle of the Christian martyrs against their accusers that forms the context of the book’s writing. Michael first appears in our Bibles in the book of the prophet Daniel, where he is cast as the figurehead of God’s people in the celestial realms. In Revelation, we read of the victory of Michael and his angels; then we read of the victory of what St John calls ‘our comrades’. Michael wins in heaven; the Christian believers who have been tested even to the point of death win on earth. Their struggle, like Macbeth’s, is projected onto a new stage.

But whereas Shakespeare’s purposes are dramatic, St John’s are theological. He wants his readers to understand that the sufferings they are enduring even as he writes are no small matter. He wants them to understand that their cries are heard in heaven; he wants them to understand that their tribulations are of cosmic significance. When they resist their opponents on earth rebel angels are expelled from heaven. Macbeth’s strife within himself has consequences for all Scotland. The martyrs’ strife within the new Babylon, Rome, has consequences for all creation. But why? Why does the sporadic persecution of a new religious sect threaten to split the heavens asunder?

Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth upon which the angels of God are ascending and descending. It’s a dream, perhaps as much the work of the subconscious as are the longings which tempt Macbeth. But Jacob awakes and finds himself alone. His dream has no external form or shape. There is no ladder and there are no angels. Jacob has to set up a stone pillar to remind himself and others of what has happened. Form and shape come only in the advent of Jesus Christ. He is the ladder, he tells Nathanael. He is the one upon whom the angels of God will ascend and descend. The dream of Jacob, who is also known as Israel, is made real in Jesus.

It is on account of this Jesus that the blood of John’s readers is being spilt; it is on account of their faith in this Jesus. But the faith that has given rise to their plight is not a longing like Macbeth’s or a dream like Jacob’s. It is not an interior belief – it is a baptismal faith. Those facing persecution have conquered ‘by the blood of the Lamb’. They have been incorporated into Christ; he is in them and they are in him. What is interior (a first spark of faith, if you will) has become exterior (the clothing of Christ) and there is no longer any distinction between them. When the martyrs suffer Christ suffers; their wounds are his wounds; as they sustain blow after blow the ladder set up to heaven from earth sustains blow after blow. Rupture between the mortal and the divine threatens. Of course the martyrs’ suffering is played out upon the most public stage of all.

Macbeth falls when the unimaginable happens. Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, and a man not born of woman confronts the desperate tyrant. Humankind is saved when the unimaginable happens. God in Christ bridges the gulf that separates heaven from earth. As the beliefs and acts of our martyred forebears resonated throughout the cosmos so our beliefs and acts resonate throughout the cosmos, for we too have been baptized into Christ. When we witness to truth the heavens sing; when we are false, they weep. On this feast of the angels may we be recalled to the responsibility that is ours. Amen.