Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity in the Octave of Michaelmas
“That ye may know”
The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, also known as Michaelmas, celebrated Thursday past, reminds us that there is a cosmic dimension to the conflicts between good and evil. “There was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels”. Here there be dragons? Who is this dragon? We are told that he is “that old serpent, called the devil and Satan which deceiveth the whole world”. We are presented with the reality of finding ourselves in a moral universe where there are conflicts and tensions, battles between good and evil. It is a world which, perhaps, we know only too well (unless we have deceived ourselves).
But left at that we have simply a kind of fatalistic dualism in the idea of two equally powerful and opposing principles, good versus evil. Yet that is neither the lesson of Michaelmas nor the lesson in today’s readings. “The dragon fought and his angels”, but, more importantly, they “prevailed not” against Michael and his angels. There was war but there was also victory, the triumph of good over evil.
Michaelmas reminds us of the idea of evil as that which opposes the good, hence the concept of Satan, the devil, “that old serpent”, recalling us to the story of the Fall in The Book of Genesis as well as to the theme of deception. But the important point is that the power of the good outweighs all and every form of evil. In the Christian understanding, St. Michael and his angels defeat the dragon and his angels, not through any special force or merit of their own simply, but “by the blood of the lamb”, an obvious reference to Christ and his sacrifice, and “by the word of their testimony”, their witness to God in Christ, and by extension, our witness. There was war in heaven, not there is war. A major point of difference.
Yet Michaelmas also reminds us that the dragon and his angels have been “cast out into the earth”. Conflict and war are inescapably features of our world and disturbingly so. Who cannot be moved with indignation and outrage at the bombing of relief and aid convoys in Aleppo, Syria, to mention but one of many global atrocities? Is the world, then, the place of dualism between two equal but opposing forces? No. The radical idea of Michaelmas means that while there is no end of wars and conflicts between good and evil in the world, the good is always greater in principle and in truth. At issue is whether we are capable of grasping this thinking any more. Not the least of our problems lies in how we think about good and evil whether in relativistic terms which deny their reality or in dualistic terms which despair of the ultimate truth of the good and its power over all evil. Part of the problem for all of us has to do with our discernment about what is the good and what is evil in our world and in ourselves.
