Monday, July 19, 2010

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost Year C 2010

When Good Angels Go Bad
(The Mystery)

July 18, 2010

Let's take a little trip, shall we? Let's fly on up to heaven. Got your wings on? Let's go!

Have you ever seen pictures of the Imperial City in China? It's huge, let me tell you. In the old days before Communism, the emperor of China lived in this gi-normous palace in the middle of this magnificent walled city, surrounded by somewhat less huge mansions occupied by all the thousands of ministers and generals they needed to run the empire. Well, in most of the bible, heaven is pictured like that, only the ministers and generals are mostly angels.

Now, just like people, all these angels were created by God, and so like people, they are basically good. But sometimes, just like people, angels go bad.

Yes, it's scandalous I know. Angels, of all creatures in the universe! I mean, they're angels, for heaven's sake!

Let's swoop down into this little neighborhood of God's imperial city. Check out the mansion, third from the left. Here's an angel who presides over the gift of wealth. Now this angel is a good angel, created by God, and we hear of many good and faithful people, people who really loved God and who also enjoyed wealth as a gift from this angel.

But then someone comes along who worships the Angel of Wealth. Well now, the angel, being only a creation of God and not God, gets tempted. "Why should God get all the glory? It's nice to have some worshippers of my own."

And just like that, the angel goes bad.

What's really, really awful about this is not just that its mistaken. It's that when people worship the Angel of Wealth in the way they should worship God, they begin to think that it's okay to steal and exploit and cheat and lie in order to get the wealth they are seeking. Without the word of God, all the goodness that might be associated with receiving a little well-earned abundance is sucked out of it, and it becomes dark and evil.

Well, now, you know the angel of wealth really doesn't have anything to offer if it doesn't keep its position in heaven. So it not only gets too big for its britches, it gets sneaky. Whenever it goes before God it sings, "Holy, holy, holy, yeah, yeah yeah." But then it sneaks back to its mansion and its little secret band of worshippers, and they all sing "Holy holy holy" to it. (Maybe quietly, thinking God can't hear them.)

Now let's take a look at what happens on earth when the Angel of Wealth goes bad. This is heaven so time doesn't matter here. Let me see. Ah, there's ancient Israel in the time of the prophet Amos. Let's see what's going on there. Got your wings on? Let's go!

It's the reign of Jeroboam the Second and boy, do things look great. Listen to the royal messenger at the city gates... wow, seems like things have never been better. Israel is powerful, it's gaining territory. Its army is one of the most feared in the region. Look at the impressive building going on. Look at all the fancy clothes people are wearing.

Ah, but if you go out into the rural areas, what do you see? You see starving, enslaved families, misery, ignorance, violence. What's going on here?

Apparently there's a huge gap between the many who are desperately poor and the few who are wildly rich. As the elite rich class gathered wealth, they used various deceitful means to build up the debt of the agricultural poor to the point that they could steal their ancestral lands and more-or-less enslave them.

Now check this out: the wealthy elite give all kinds of lip service and indeed pretty big piles of gold to their religious observance. The temples have never looked better, and the priests are driving the latest model chariots. Not only was the northern kingdom one of the strongest nations in the world, it also appears to be one of the most religious.

But you know the truth is that the Angel of Wealth isn't God, so no matter how many big beautiful buildings you have and how many gorgeous silver and gold sets of altar-ware, no matter how entertaining or inspiring the sermons, if it's the Angel of Wealth you're worshipping, you'll not hear anything at all from God.

That's what happens on earth when the Angel of Wealth goes bad in heaven.

OK, that's enough about that angel. Let's fly back up to heaven and check out this other angel I know about.

Let's call this one the Angel of Traditional Womanhood. Now the Angel of Traditional Womanhood is a good angel. A traditional woman takes care of everyone around her, her parents and her children and her husband and all the guests of her house and everyone she works with and everyone she goes to church with too. That's how people benefit from the gifts of this wonderful angel. And women who serve in this way also receive a nice sense of self-esteem and peace as a gift from this angel.

But let's say some people decide to put the Angel of Traditional Womanhood on the pedestal that rightly belongs to God. Remember, angels aren't God, so they get tempted too. The Angel of Traditional Womanhood says, yes, you know, it's true, I do deserve some worshippers.

And another angel goes bad.

The problem is not just the mistake. The problem is that when the Angel of Traditional Womanhood becomes more important than God's word, its worshippers will think its okay for women to be enslaved and abused and exploited.

Well, now, lets swoop back down and see what happens on earth when the Angel of Traditional Womanhood goes bad. I see a good spot: Mary and Martha's house during Jesus' earthly ministry. Let's go!

Now, here's Martha preoccupied with keeping all the hospitality customs of her people, which were extensive. Nothing wrong with that. It's a beautiful thing, you know, a woman who keeps a warm and welcoming home.

But Mary, Martha's sister, makes a different choice. She chooses to sit at the feet of Jesus and enter into discipleship. Now to sit at the teacher's feet while women waited on you was the norm only for men in Jewish society. Yet this is no problem apparently for Jesus.

So Martha is running around practicing hospitality, the Angel of Traditional Womanhood is doing its thing, and Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet and listening to the word of God. Everything is still fine.

But then Martha says it. "Lord," she says, "tell that Mary she can't do what she's doing. Tell her that the Angel of Traditional Womanhood is more important than God's word!"

Bad, bad angel.

Paul writes in today's lesson from Colossians that Jesus Christ not only fixes us, but he fixes the bad angels as well. Indeed, from heaven's point of view, fixing the angels is what Christ is all about. Paul says that Christ is the firstborn of the new creation, and that in him and for him all things in heaven and on earth were created, "whether thrones or dominions or powers." And through him all things in heaven and on earth are reconciled. In other words, if we keep Christ first in our minds and hearts, the angels are themselves saved from the temptation to take God's place, and return to their rightful places.

I've chosen this whimsical way of imagining heaven to make a very serious point. It's not bad things that most powerfully tempt us into unfaithfulness, that lead us into sin. It's good things. Good things we love very often creep up in our esteem beyond the word of God, and the next thing we know, we have forgotten love, decency, generosity, and respect, all for the sake of the good thing we are worshipping in the place of God.

Good angels don't want to go bad anymore than we do. Let's help them out, shall we? Let's keep our eyes on Christ.

Amen.

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