Sharing the Universe with Angels

Extract

A Sermon preached at Evensong in St John’s College, Oxford on 1 March 1992. The readings chosen were Isaiah 6:1—8 and Revelation 22:1-9. The poetry is from Rilke's Duino Elegies, the passage in St Thomas is from Summa Theologiae I q. 61 a. 3.

I am honoured and excited at being invited to preach in College on a theme of my choice. Honoured for obvious reasons—excited because as a Roman Catholic I am used to everything being forbidden unless it is compulsory. It is an exciting change to taste Anglican freedom, and to choose one’s texts and one’s theme.

So, I have chosen to reflect on angels, basing myself on those intriguing biblical texts we have just heard from the prophet Isaiah and from the book of Revelation. But has the subject of angels been a wise choice? Is there not something irresponsible in preaching on such an abstruse and specialised subject in our day and age? Is this going to be an exercise in Christian day-dreaming and telling fairy tales? It might be said that if angels prove anything, they prove the irrelevance of our faith today. Some will say that this is what you should expect if you invite a Dominican friar to preach; antiquarian theology. Some will say that this is the kind of concern that makes Christianity beautiful but of no real use; well-meaning silliness.