Angels Watching Over Me?
Sermon by Stephen D. Edington
March 10 1966
Reading
(From Angels A To Z by James Lewis and Evelyn Oliver (Kelle Sisung, Editor)Angel books, angel jewelry, angle newsletters, specialized angel stores, and even an angel cover story in Time magazine (December, 1993)--clearly we are in the midst of a national phenomenon, a steadily rising interest in celestial beings that is not just confined to the New Age movement. As a statistical indication of increasing interest, a 1992 Gallup youth poll found that 76% of American teenagers believed in angels--up from 64% in 1978. And the interest in angels is not confined to New Age enthusiasts; Frank E. Peretti, an evangelical author with a marked anti-New Age message, has written two runaway best sellers ... which feature battles between celestial angels and fallen angels...The appeal of angels is easy to understand. in an age of uncertainty and upheaval, it is extremely comforting to believe in the existence of spiritual beings whose principal employment is the protection and encouragement of human beings...
In point of fact, far and away the great majority of contemporary angel books focus on stories in which people are helped by angels in some way. Typical of this literature is the kind of encounter reported in Ellen Elias Freeman's book, Angelic Healing. Freeman relates that she had an encounter with an angel in the guise of a hospital nurse. On the night before Eileen's cancer surgery, she was unable to sleep. She prayed, and received the sacraments of the church, but she was still crying into her pillow and shaking with fear. Suddenly a voice next to her said, "Can I help?" She felt a warm hand on her shoulder. She turned over to see a nurse sitting by her bed. Eileen told him she was scared, that she would never get through her illness, that she would die, and that the cancer had already spread too far.
"Get ahold of yourself," the man said quietly. "None of what you say is true. There is a purpose in everything that happens. You just have to go through this and learn from it. Whatever happens, God won't abandon you. Don't give into the fear."
Eileen looked a the man in amazement, as this was the same message she had been receiving in response to her prayers. She asked him if he was an angel. His response was, "I suppose I am. After all, we nurses are sometimes called 'angels of mercy' aren't we? You'd better try to get some sleep or your real angel will be put out." Eileen closed her eyes for an instant, and when she reopened them the nurse was gone. In his place was a luminous glow, which she perceived for only a moment before it faded away. If the bulging shelves of angel books are an accurate indication, there is a significant portion of the population that cannot get enough of these miracle stories.
Sermon
The "angel story" I contained in the reading I did is one of several dozen I've read over the past week or so. It seemed like everybody had an angel story except me. Then I remembered one, except rather than being recipient of angelic grace, I was the "angel"--sort of. This one goes back about fifteen years to when I was serving my first Unitarian Universalist congregation in the coastal town of Rockland, Maine. I had to go over to Augusta one day--some 40 miles inland--for reasons I've long forgotten. What I remember is an incident that happened when I stopped off at the UU church in Augusta to visit and chat with the minister there, who was and is a good friend.When I left the church and was walking up the block to where I'd parked my car, I saw a woman walking towards me with a rather dazed and lost look on her face. As she got closer, I recognized her. Her name was Connie; she was from Camden, Maine which is just few miles up the coast from Rockland. She and I worked together on the Board of Directors of a local community mental health agency. She was a very solid citizen type--involved in her community and an active lay leader in her Episcopal church. She kept getting closer and closer, still without seeing me. Just as she was about to walk into me I said, "Hey, Connie, what's up?" My words snapped her snapped her out of a trance; she jerked her head, looked at me with her eyes getting bigger and bigger, and then practically yelled out, "Steve, what are you doing here!?" I was so startled by her demand to explain myself that I actually fell all over myself explaining why I was there: "Well, see, I was in that church over there talking with the minister, and then I started walking for the car and ran into you." That served to bring her into the same zone of reality I was in; she laughed and then became the "Connie-person" I really knew, and proceeded to answer my original question of what was up.
What was up was that she had been in Augusta for a state-wide meeting of Episcopal lay leaders. As she was driving out of town her car had broken down; she had it towed to the sales and service place in town for her brand of car only to be told that they did not have the part needed to repair it and it would take a day or so to get one in. Her husband, over in Camden, was away on a business trip; the last bus from Augusta to Camden had already run; efforts to contact friends had failed. At that point she'd gotten this "abandoned in Augusta" feeling and had just started aimlessly wandering around not knowing what to do, and she'd aimlessly wandered into me.
I was pretty matter-of-fact about the whole thing myself. I just said, "Well, here get in and I'll run you over to Camden and then go on down to Rockland." As we drove off Connie went from being lost in Augusta to being overwhelmed at her good fortune. We hadn't been riding for more than five minutes before she blurted out, "Steve, I've had some doubts for most of my life, but now I have to say, there really is a God!" That remark could have cost us serious harm because I laughed so hard I nearly ran off the road. I said, "Now Connie, that's rich. You've been a good Episcopalian all your life, and yet it took a chance encounter with a Unitarian Universalist minister to convince you of the existence of God!" Well, it was no big deal for me, but it sure made an impression on her. For the next several weeks Connie could not stop telling her friends about this incident, to the point that for awhile I was known around Camden, Maine as the guy who'd rescued Connie in Augusta.
Now this incident does not, admittedly, fit the classic pattern of reported "angel encounters". I was not a mysterious stranger who showed up in a time of need or crises, performed my errand of mercy, and then mysteriously disappeared without a trace; which is the way the typical, alleged angel encounter goes. If Connie and I hadn't known each other, in fact, the incident never would have taken place, and she would have eventually figured out some other way of dealing with her problem. But what did strike me about it, in addition to the way in which we happened to meet one another got her out of a jam, was her really heartfelt insistence that there was some kind of a divine hand at work in the whole thing: "There really is a God." Once I regained control of my car I hastened to assure her that I wasn't laughing at her belief in divine intervention, only in the irony that she saw such intervention taking place through the presence of an agnostic minded UU minister. Even though, as I say, our encounter didn't fit the classic angel pattern, she truly saw me as an angel of mercy, and it confirmed her until then wavering belief that she did indeed live within and under the care of a benevolent deity. Who was I to argue with her?
Whatever it was that happened that day, it happened, as noted, fifteen years ago--well before the current angel-mania. I guess the cover of Time magazine is as good an indicator as any when it comes to tracking cultural trends and phenomena; and it was angels who made the cover of said magazine back in December of 1993, proclaiming that 69% of Americans say they believe angels exist, with 46% believing they have their own guardian angel. Among other things, the article contains several stories similar the one I read earlier.
Since this was a December, 1993 issue then I'm a little over two years behind the curve when it come to doing a sermon on the subject. The angel phenomenon, however, has hardly abated in that time. As I said in my newsletter blurb for this Sunday, I recently counted no less that 52 separately-authored books in the "Inspiration" section of the Nashua Barnes and Noble Bookstore with the word "angel(s)" in their title. In the appendix of the book from which I read (Angels A to Z) there are 11 pages of "Angel Resources" including organizations, publications, music and video services, and mail order services with respect to angels. It also lists five web-sites for angel enthusiasts or inquirers. My favorite web-site title was one called "Just Wingin' It." [For all you web surfers out there, I even made photocopies of the web-site page; they are on the Information Table.] The Harvard Divinity School, no less, where a good number of prospective UU ministers are educated for our liberal ministry, even offers a course or two on angels. As the Time editors said on their cover "What in heaven is going on?" I don't know about heaven, but for the next several minutes I will take a shot at what on earth is going on with this angel craze.
I begin with the with the rather straighforward observation made by the editors of Angels A to Z: "The appeal of angels is easy to understand. In an age of uncertainly and upheaval, it is extremely comforting to believe in the existence of spiritual beings whose principal employment is in the protection and encouragement of human beings." As for any actual proof about the existence of angels I thought the Time editors put it quite well when they said, "For those who say they have had some direct experience of angels, no proof is necessary; for those predisposed to doubt angel's existence, no proof is possible."
That's a fair assessment. So rather than deal with proof head-on, let's begin by looking at this phenomenon developmentally for a moment. Among the basic needs of children from their earliest days onward--beyond the necessities for physical survival--is a sense of security and protection.. Infants and children need to know, in one way or another, that there are other beings around--parents, other family members, close friends, etc.--other persons, other beings who will take care of things for them, make things right for them, keep them out of danger and harm's way; or, if they can't do that, to hang in with them through scary or dangerous times. Children who don't get that in their earliest years stand a good (or bad) chance of a noticeably troubled adulthood later. Now, part of the maturation process into adulthood, of course, is coming to the realization that you can't always be protected from danger, misfortune, from inexplicable tragedy, and from some of the truly inhumane things that human beings can, and do, do to one another. A large part of becoming an adult involves coming to terms with that hard piece of reality.
At the same time, however, we never completely let go of, or fully divest ourselves of, that fundamental childhood need. We carry our childhood need for a benevolent and protective environment into a quite understandable adult need, or desire anyway, to live a benevolent and protective universe--whether we actually do or not. There's a basic human dynamic we each and all live out: Between a desire for risk, innovation, and pursuing the unknown on the one hand, and a countervailing desire and need for security and protection on the other. My feeling is that the interest in angels comes out of the security and protection side of that dynamic, as does a good deal of religion and spirituality itself. And with reference to that childhood security need which we also carry into adulthood, I have noticed in the "New Age" literature that I manage to peruse, a high level of affinity between the writings on recovering one's "inner child" and references to angels.
At a later point I will get into whether or not I believe angels have any kind of a independent, free standing reality, beyond the workings of the human psyche, but for the next few minutes let me just do a little "Angels 101" here. The word angel itself comes from the Greek angelos which literally translates "messenger". In this case it means a messenger from God, or an agent who acts on God's behalf in certain situations where fear, danger, or confusion are present. In classic "angelogy", angels are purely spiritual beings who can take on either human, or celestial, forms as the situation warrants. It is within the world's monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--that references to and belief in angels are most prevalent. In polytheistic religions, like those of ancient Greece or Rome as well as present day Hinduism, where there is a god or goddess that relates to nearly all activities of human and natural life angels aren't so greatly needed; the deity, taking the form of many deities, is already up close and personal.
A monotheistic god, however, is usually perceived as more remote and transcendent, and is often seen as a lawmaker and judge. Angels can serve the purpose of loosening up and lightening up a monotheistic god. The Yahweh of the Hebrew scripture and the Christian Old Testament may come off as a remote and demanding lawgiver but He has a lot of angels around in order to make himself palatable and more accessible. The Christian God is one who appears on Earth for a time in the form of the human Jesus and then ascends back into heaven, to the "right hand of God the Father Almighty" as the creed states. Here again there are angels to bridge the gulf. I know far less about Islamic theology other than to know that Allah has his hosts of angels for essentially the same purpose--to act as his messenger and divine agents to human beings in particular human circumstances. To take this "101 course" a bit further, Catholicism, especially during the middle ages developed a very elaborate hierarchy of angels to the point that some of their theologians feared they were coming to eclipse God. The Protestant Reformation, it its zeal to correct all of its perceived corruptions of Catholicism, wanted nothing to do with any kind of an angel structure, in keeping with its insistence that there was no intermediary necessary between God and human beings--angels or otherwise. My wife, who was raised Catholic, can tell me about all sorts of different angels and what they're for and which prayer to use in praying to them, while in my Protestant upbringing we didn't do angels at all other than to acknowledge their Biblical existence. Angels were for Catholics, we Protestants just did God and Jesus. Today, as both the Time article and my angels encyclopedia pointed out, most of the interest in angels is found in certain strains of Catholicism--and in both fundamentalist or evangelical Christian and New Age thought, which is about the only thing those latter two have in common.
Alright, lets cut to the chase here, do I think angels exist and are there angels watching over me? They do exist in the human psyche and in the realm of human yearning. I would also say they exist in what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. According to Jung there is a is a common pool of racial memory and awareness--"racial"in the sense of the human race--a common pool of racial memory and awareness of symbols, stories and archetypes that all human beings draw upon in dealing with and finding meaning in life. Jung said this collective unconscious was the source of all religions. The late Joseph Campbell held that this is where all mythology originates as well. I would agree with Jung and Campbell that the human perception and experience of angels largely derives from this collective unconscious.
But to say, or suggest, that angels have their origin and their reality in a common human psyche explains some, but not all, intimations of angels. It explains the angel of mercy that Eileen Freeman saw as she faced her cancer surgery. In the angel stories I've read, not all of them bring deliverance from death; some appear to remove the fear and bring a measure of serenity for people who are dying and who do die. Some of those stories sounded quite similar to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' accounts of persons who are able to reach the final stage of acceptance in the dying process. I can accept that seeing an angel of deliverance is a way of getting to the acceptance stage itself. And if my friend Connie wished to believe that a higher and benevolent force or power caused me to leave that UU church when I did and plunk me right in front of her at a time of stress and confusion, I'm not going to argue with her, even though my own theology would interpret that event differently.
But do angels exist apart from the workings of the human mind and spirit? Consider this story from the Time article, also reflective of several I came across: A woman named Ann Cannady was scheduled for an operation for uterine cancer--the prognosis questionable. She and her husband were both in an understandably high state of anxiety as the operation date neared, and sought solace in their religious faith--Protestant Christianity. As Ms. Cannady told the story, a few days prior to the operation a stranger calling himself Thomas appeared at the door with her and her husband, Gary, both present. He told her the cancer was gone. She felt overwhelmed by both warmth and light, and when it passed, "Thomas" was gone. Convinced she was cured she called the doctor to cancel the surgery. The doctor, of course, wouldn't hear of it, assuming the whole thing was a stress reaction. He did agree, however, to perform one more biopsy on the morning of the surgery. The result was that no cancer could be found anywhere. It had not come back in the seven years between the alleged incident and the time the article was written.
Ms. Cannady is quoted in the article as saying it was all too fantastic to make up and that she'd been reluctant to talk about it at all before opening up to the Time reporter? I can understand that. So, did Mrs. Cannady and her husband hallucinate the same thing with respect to the mysterious Thomas and all he allegedly said and did? And why did the cancer disappear and not come back? I am prepared to believe this story and others similar to it. If one more biopsy shows no more cancer then that's what it shows, regardless of whatever was there before. But what I am not prepared to do is to draw any larger conclusions or explanations from such an event. All I'm willing to say is yes this apparently happened and no I don't know why. Her doctor said it was miraculous; I accept that. If Ann Cannady were a member of this congregation I would rejoice with her as I would hope all the rest of us would. But to attribute this event--however and why it may have occurred--to the deliberate working and intervention of a supernatural force or power runs me right smack into Calvinism, which is not a place I want to be.
Calvinism, or Calvinist theology, as many of you know, was the theology against which, and in opposition to, both Unitarianism and Universalism were originally formed. Its core point was the doctrine of the elect, i.e. that God elected to save some and damn others. The language and imagery of Calvinism, especially in its 18th century form, is, I clearly realize, a far cry from the benign, comforting, soothing, and reassuring kind of language that is usually invoked when speaking of angels. But to explain Ms. Cannady's experience, and other like hers, as the deliberate working of a supernatural power opens up far more troubling questions that anything it might purport to explain. It implies the existence of a Deity or supernatural force that willfully saves some and not others, in the same way that Calvinist theology did and does. The playwright Tony Kushner, whose play Angels in America, took Broadway by storm, echoes my own sentiments when he says "The question is why are you saved with your guardian angel and not the woman who was shot to death shielding her children in Brooklyn...? That suggests a capricious divine force. If there is a God he(she) can't possibly work that way." I know there are Calvinist scholars who would challenge me on this, but John Calvin's God also was/is the "capricious divine force" that Mr. Kushner speaks of. I am not prepared to tell Ms. Cannady and other like her who have similar stories, that they never happened (who am I to say that anyway?); but neither am I prepared to draw any "Godly" conclusions from such stories lest I run into the same dilemma as does Tony Kushner. So, if a belief in angles, in some form or other is a component in the spiritual lives of any of you here, I have no desire to discourage you; in fact, I'd like to hear about it. I have intimations of angels myself at times. But do be careful where you go with such beliefs or ideas because you might not like too well where you end up.
I want to bring this to a close by saying just a bit more about Tony Kushner and his play, Angels in America, which I have not seen and only know from its reviews and commentary. In its entirety Angels in America is a seven hour long--two plays in one--dramatization about various people dealing with having AIDS. One of the characters is the late Roy Cohn, the chief counsel for Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his infamous Senate hearings of the early 1950's. Mr. Cohn spent most of his life as a deeply closeted gay man whose sexual orientation was revealed only shortly before his death from AIDS. I'm obviously not going to develop the play now and will only refer to one review which quite aptly states that it "considers the AIDS plague as the defining metaphor for a national spiritual decline during the 1980's and as the starting point of a social order for the next century." An angel does appear in the play for the purpose of calling human beings to their own responsibility for being "angels" to one another; to be "angels in America" in this present and dawning age, and in ways that go well beyond the AIDS crises itself. Of his work, Mr. Kushner himself says, "I'm certain that if we are to solve the problems on earth, we will have to do it ourselves...the angel in (my) play is in no way meant to absolve humans of tough choices and hard spiritual work." I hope his wise words are heard and heeded in the midst of the many angel and miracle stories which as the compilers of Angels A to Z say, "a significant portion of the population...cannot get enough of.."
As for all the commentary these stories have generated, I'm more amused and intrigued by it than anything else; just as I was amused back there in Augusta when Connie decided I was a personal agent of God for her. I've already stated some of my misgivings about the angel phenomenon while also admitting that I entertain angelic notions myself now and then. I resonate well with Aldous Huxley when, in one of his novels, he has a character say, "I believe in God, but only when the violins are playing." Perhaps, in a similar vein, belief in angels is what happens when things come together in serendipitous ways--when the violins are playing, so to speak. Our calling, however, is to choose life for ourselves, and to be bearers of life--angels if you will--for others, even when the violins aren't playing and when the evidence of angels is scant. The words of our closing hymn state that calling quite well. May we sing it together. [Hymn: "Just As Long As I Have Breath"]
Copyright © 1996 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.
