A Rumour of Angels

Hebrews 13.1-7

The truth about the world is not always plain. The truth of things is not necessarily the self-evident reality that most people accept. Often, truth is only understood by a select few whose insight into reality and whose clarity of vision is miles ahead of the times. These heroes of knowledge must face the taunts of the crowd until gradually the accepted view of things crumbles and people recognise that these dedicated pioneers do indeed have the truth! Such were those who first stood up for the abolition of slavery. Such were the early pioneers of quantum physics and relativity. Such are those of us today who are members of the Flat Earth Society.

The Flat Earth Society, not surprisingly, stands for the proposition that the earth is flat. There was a time when this was self-evident to all persons. Then came several centuries in which the dogma of Galileo and Copernicus and a swag of astronomers suggested to people that the world is round, or, to be a little more precise, spherical. In this perception the majority of the enlightened minds of the world continue. However, those of us in the Flat Earth Society have realised that the world has come full circle again. The world is being flattened. Far from being well-rounded, having depth and texture and colour as it hangs in the mysterious blackness of space, the world is flat - flat, that is, in any sense that really matters.

Galileo and all his scientific children tried to give us a world of depth and solidity and shape - a home fit for the humanity that was much the measure of their thinking. And for a time perhaps it was so. But we have inherited a world flattened by rationalism, a world that is disenchanted, a world that looks more like the inside of a clockwork toy than what any well-rounded world ought to look like. The end of the processes of science and cultural development were summarised by the philosopher Nietsche when he announced "God is dead!" What he meant was that all sense of mystery, all unexplained causes, the spark of the divine that flares up in this world has been banished. The sprites, the fairies, the wonder, the whimsy, the romance, the aching beauty of it all have been gradually bulldozed to the margins and the world we have been left to inhabit is like an enormous shopping centre carpark - convenient, consumerist, colourless, and flat!

In one of his early books the sociologist Peter Berger explored the impossible situation that this left for the people of God. How can we speak of God when the world is flat? What witness can we bear in a secular world. He pointed to what he called signals of transcendence, aspects of everyday life that seem to point to another dimension. The world may believe that God is dead, but there is from time to time a rumour of angels, a recurring suggestion of the spiritual realm.  If we cannot speak of God, says Berger, at least we can help spread such rumours.

What speech about God is possible in our world? Religion may be coming back into centre stage in public life, but is there room to talk about “God”? In a moving reflection on the meaning of the terrorist attacks of Sept 11th 2001, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, compares the last words of those on the planes - the passengers who used their mobile phones to leave messages on their home answering machines and the religious writings of the hijackers as to what should be in their minds as they fly the planes into the buildings:

The religious words are, in the cold light of day, the words that murderers are saying to themselves to make a martyr’s drama out of a crime. The non-religious words are testimony to what religious language is supposed to be about – the triumph of pointless, gratuitous love, the affirming of faithfulness even when there is nothing to be done or salvaged.

It should give us pause, especially if we think we are religious. You don’t have to be Richard Dawkins to notice that there is a problem. (Rowan Williams, Writing in the Dust, 2002)

Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, is one of the bulldozer drivers of contemporary secularism – a gifted and very effective critic of faith. Williams is talking about the cultural pressures that will flatten the world upon our heads and squeeze out talk about God – how religious violence and hypocrisy within faith communities works with secularism and cycnicism without faith communities to flatten the world on our heads and limit any space for talk about God.

Is there a beam that might hold up the roof of meaning and give us room to breathe? Theologians and preachers here play an important role, but there is also something that all believers can do: look for the rumour of angels, some sign of transcendence, that might give us space to think and pray.

If you accept that we are living in a flattened earth, an earth where any notion of spiritual depth has been banished, such a rumour can be vital in finding space to believe, space to live. And it is not only contemporary sociologists who point to this strange rumour. It actually was first circulated by the writer of the letter to the Hebrews. He wrote of something that was never verified, something that people couldn't actually be sure of. He wrote of people in the very ordinary course of Christian living - of giving someone a cup of tea, or inviting a visitor home for lunch, or taking food around to Stewart Flats. These people,  just doing the ordinary things that Christians do, actually entertained angels without ever knowing it. If you never know it, it can only be rumour, and yet it is a rumour that has been remembered and circulated and trusted and believed for two thousand years.

The congregation of the Hebrews were also living through profound shifts in their world. Their culture, their religion had been turned on its head by the gospel of Jesus. Most of the book is devoted to helping them reinterpret an old faith system that would no longer hold the truth for them. The writer assured them that “Jesus is the fulfilment of all your hopes, and he is the perfection of that old system that hasn't got power anymore. Its dead, but your faith is living and the new high priesthood of Jesus is the way forward.” And the book is full of amazing descriptions of what this new system of faith is all about:

…we have freedom to go into the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he has opened for us (10.19-20)

…Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, every sin that clings so closely and let us run with perseverance the race that is before us (12.1)

...You have come to Mount Zion ands to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jersualem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a God who is the judge of all and to the spirits of just people made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel."  (12. 18-24)

If there is a loftier view of the worship of the people of God in the New Testament I haven't found it!  But it's one thing for the preachers to proclaim it and the apostles to write about it, it’s quite another thing for the congregation to believe, or to experience it.

You see, their world had been flattened. All the old texture and shape of their religious world had collapsed. And when a world gets flattened, people are squeezed out. All the high theology and the lofty preaching of Hebrews is addressed to a community that is struggling. There are references to "the root of bitterness springing up and causing trouble" (12.15). There is a frank admission that "neglecting to meet together has become a habit for some" (10.25). There are drooping hands and weak knees (12.12) and flagging spirits in this congregation.

In the first twelve chapters of Hebrews the writer uses all his eloquence, all his theological skill to inspire and exhort and cajole them and finishes with a rallying cry "therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." (12.28-29)

Like many preachers, the writer of Hebrews knows that all his eloquence and his theological insight, all his passion, might not be enough. There may have been a time when great preaching meant that the foundations of the threshold shook and the place was full of smoke, but now people would simply complain of “smoke and mirrors”. In a flat earth like theirs, or like ours, the eloquence of great preaching may not do the trick.

And so he turns to chapter 13, the practical outworking of all this theology. It’s back to basics really. It’s a reminder of the little things, the ordinary things of Christian faith. Keep loving one another. Show hospitality to strangers. Remember the ones in prison and those who are ill treated. Look after your marriage partners and don't get hung up about money. Remember your leaders - consider them, imitate their faith. Remember Jesus and worship him, modelling your life on his.

It’s in this very ordinary practical Christian living, without you even knowing it, the spiritual realities of which I have spoken will draw near you. The realm of glory will touch you, although you may be unaware of it. The angels who are the messengers of God and the bearers of his people will be in your homes and at your table unbeknown to you. For those who know and trust this rumour the earth is never flat and meaning never completely collapses.

In the novel Open Heart by Frederick Buechner, Leo Bebb the strange southern preacher is shadowed by the mysterious Mr Golden. Mr Golden is a furtive and silent character who wears a shapeless suit and a pork pie hat. The suit is badly cut and sits high on his shoulders making him look slightly deformed, or at least mishapen, his sand-coloured trousers flapping about him. He often is seen on the other side of the street quietly watching Bebb. He turns up in unexpected places. Bebb's son-in-law Antonio worries about Mr Golden and what his business might be. Is he a taxation inspector or government official keeping an eye on them? Is he, as he claims, a criminal who did five years in jail with Bebb? Or is he an angel, for his pants billow so much that he seems not to have legs and the strange shape of his clothes seems to hide the pleats and counterfolds of hidden wings. At one point Antonio thinks he almost sees them unfurling. Who is he: criminal, bureaucrat, angel? Antonio never could get an answer. He did take some photographs but

… the sun must have been too much for the automatic camera because my last shot of him is badly overexposed. Except for the merest suggestion of his withered, boyish face, and the pale sand colour of his billowing pants you can hardly make Mr Golden out in the storm of light that rages all around him".

Is it simply that some of us have an over-exposed take on life? Or is there a storm of light raging around ordinary people doing the ordinary things of Christian living? Those who have heard the rumour of angels find the world full of Mr Goldens and the storm of light rages round much of their experience. Despite the levelling bulldozer of modern life, despite the faintly hollow ring of high religion, they have found something in the practical living out of Christian discipleship that nourishes their hearts and transforms their vision.

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some. Show hospitality to strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Those who do the little things - the ordinary things of Christian discipleship - discover beneath the shapeless suit of everyday the golden wings of glory, and that is enough to raise the roof of meaning in a flattened world!