Irvine United Congregational Church                                       Rev. Paul Tellstrom

“Suddenly an Angel” (Year B, Proper 14)                                August 13, 2006  

Scripture- 1 Kings19: 4-8                                                           word count: 2,433                                 

                John 6:41-51

            It has been close to 21 years that I have been dragging Carl up into bell towers, always forgetting that he has a discomfort with heights.  First, there was Riverside Church in New York, ending twenty floors up on open metal staircases past rows and rows of bells until you emerge at the top into a breathtaking view of the city.  In 1988, within an hour of arriving in Paris completely jetlagged, I walked Carl straight to Notre Dame.  Carl had no idea that a visit to Notre Dame necessarily meant walking up all those stairs to the bell tower, but he gamely followed me up and out onto the rooftop.

            I promised I wouldn’t do it again, but on our first day in Ireland, he was climbing up the turrets of Bunratty Castle with me in a similar state of jet-lag.

And the same was true in Montreal.  La Chapelle de Notre Dame de Bonsecours was rebuilt in 1773 with a bell tower that just beckoned.  The church’s history revolves around Mary’s protection of sailors, and the sanctuary has many lamps that are in the shapes of different wooden boats, donated by sailors before going off to sea.  High on the main steeple, Our Lady of the Harbor, as the statue of Mary is known, looks out onto the St. Lawrence River.

            More than halfway up, we were in a lonely wooden tower, where, in French, are written these words by Leonard Cohen: 

“And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water                          

And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower

                       And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him

                       He said, "All men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them"

            We climbed up higher on steep yellow stairs that crisscrossed and finally ended at a small doorway.  I walked out onto a metal catwalk on the front of the tower and looked out at the harbor along the old city of Montreal.  I leaned around to see the city behind us, and when I did, suddenly an angel appeared.  Tall, copper clad and green, its wings in a state of readiness, it looked at me and past me to the water which it constantly watched.  The angel was perched on a ledge of a smaller tower, and I assumed that if I walked to the other side of the main tower I would find another one similarly perched, which I did.  These magnificent statues were so much larger than life and very fine in their detail, and I turned to Carl and said, “Look!” 

            I asked Carl if I could tell this story today, and he was very good-natured about it.  Carl’s modus operandi when suddenly dragged up into old bell towers is to cling to the innermost wall with his hands, and when I turned and said “Look!” this is how I found him.  He looked, and said “Very nice,” which is his usual reply to anything I say to him at while standing at great heights.

I didn’t know this at the time, but it was from here that songwriter Leonard Cohen wrote about meeting an artist named Suzanne who lived in a warehouse next to the church.  He said, "The song was begun, and the chord pattern was developed, before a woman's name entered the song.  I knew it was a song about Montreal, it seemed to come out of that landscape that I loved very much in Montreal, which was the harbor, and the waterfront, and the sailors' church there, called Notre Dame de Bon Secour, which stood out over the river, and I knew that there're ships going by, I knew that there was a harbor, I knew that there was Our Lady of the Harbor, which was the virgin on the church which stretched out her arms towards the seamen, and you can climb up to the tower and look out over the river, so the song came from that vision, from that view of the river.” And from that place in the company of those angels, Leonard Cohen was inspired to write his best song:

“Now Suzanne takes your hand and she leads you to the river

                         She is wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters

                         And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbor.”

            The image of the angel so close to me, standing against the old tower poised to swoop down was so strong, that when I got home, I had to watch William Wender’s German film, “Wings of Desire.”  It begins with a statue of an angel high over Berlin, and a man in a black overcoat nestled against the wing and face of the angel, and he is looking down.  Suddenly, this man has wings himself and is standing on the tower of a ruined church watching the humanity below.  Only children can notice him there.  He is Damiel, an angel, and in the company of other angels, he follows people, listening to their thoughts and touching them, and those touched by angels may be only slightly aware that a spiritual presence has come upon them.  The angels see only in black and white, and when the film is shown from their viewpoint, that’s what you see.  They trade notes on what they saw and heard each day in the company of the people they randomly watch over, and the angel Damiel is finally determined to become human.  He says:

            “At each step, at each gust of wind, I’d like to say, ‘Now!’…  I’d like to say, ‘now…’ and then ‘now…’ instead of ‘since always’ and ‘forever.’”  He says, “I want to shout ‘Hey,’ or ‘oh’ or ‘ah’ instead of ‘yes and amen.’”

            Through the broken streets of Berlin and in the library there, he follows an old man who seems remotely aware that he is not alone.  The old man is Homer, the storyteller, piecing together the Berlin he once knew.  Suddenly, an angel is with him as he tries to find parts of ruined Berlin that have turned to fields from maps that he pores over in the library. 

His namesake, Homer, reminds us in the Odyssey, that Odysseus and Telemachus are often suddenly visited by the unseen goddess Athena and are protected on their way.  Throughout our literary heritage, we are reminded that we are blessed in all times by the presence of the Spirit with us in some form or another depending upon the tradition. 

In today’s scripture reading from 1 Kings, we hear about the prophet Elijah, in a situation where we see that even prophets can want to lie down and give up on life.

“But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree.  He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’

Then he lays down under the broom tree and falls asleep.  Suddenly an angel touches him and says to him, ‘Get up and eat.’  He looks, and there at his head was bread baked on hot stones, and a jar of water.  He eats and drinks, and lays down again.  The angel of the LORD comes a second time, touches him, and says, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’  He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights towards his goal.

            Elijah was one of the first of the great prophets, a prophet to the nation of the Northern Israel, to the people who would later become known as the 10 lost tribes.

Like us, Elijah is on a journey.  He travels into a journey of the Spirit.  It has led him into terrible confrontations, even one where the powerful Queen Jezebel wishes him dead, and so he flees from the city and into the wilderness where he comes to a solitary broom tree in the midst of this wilderness, and sits under it and asks God that he might die.

There are times, are there not, when people we know and love despair to the point of wanting to die.  Perhaps there have been times when we, like Elijah, have thought of giving in as a sweet alternative to being a solitary voice.  An alternative to feeling under attack.  An alternative to the loneliness and fear of being the odd person out, the forgotten person, the person who has done what was right only to find that all who have stood with him or her have vanished away.  An alternative to when every hand seems set against you.  An alternative to feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, you are no better and perhaps even worse than those who have gone before you; no better even than those who are against us.

Our journey through life takes us through some very dangerous country; our pilgrimage can lead us into some very desolate wilderness.  And so Elijah prays that he might die:

“It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”

And then he lies down under the broom tree and falls asleep, a sleep that I know that each one of you here today understands; the sleep of exhaustion, the sleep of stress so high or depression so low, and the energy to go on fighting at such an ebb that it sweeps over you and is too soon gone.

And in that sleeping something happens—some answer to his prayer.  Suddenly an angel is there and touches him, wakens him to life, and tells him to “get up and eat.”  And there is food—a piece of bread and a jar of water are set near.

And he eats and he lies down again, till some time later suddenly an angel returns and touches him once more, and says: “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”

And he rises, and he eats and he drinks, and he goes on.

Think of the words of the angel to Elijah, the words “Get up and eat, otherwise the

journey will be too much for you.”

To survive on our journey, to have the strength to go through the barren places of life, those places where we are alone, because of divorce, or illness, age, depression, or death.  We need to eat and to drink the food and the drink that is suddenly there all along for us.

We need to cry out when we are in need, when we are in despair, and then heed the tap that comes upon our shoulder in the middle of the night, the voice that whispers in our inner ear, and tells us to believe, to trust, to rise up and take the bread and the water that will be there for us and to eat and drink, and to eat and drink again, and go forward to complete our journey.

Are you running on empty?  Do you sometimes feel that you do not have the strength to travel onward for another day?  Perhaps it is time to be fed.  The food is all around us, in this place and in the people who sit near you, people who are on the journey with you and who need that same connection to the Spirit.  The Spirit is here.  God's angels hover round us, even in human form.

God is here; in the Spirit that we feel—in the bread that was shared last week, in the light that falls down upon us across white wings soaring over us, and in ordinary things—the daily miracles that we take for granted.

Carved in wood or stone, perched on cathedrals or depicted on television, stuff of imagination or friends very real; suddenly an angel appears and we are reminded that we have need of these creations, these beings that look after us, in order to have the sense that we are not alone.  It is no mystery that we hear so much about them today—we have depicted them in art and literature for hundreds and hundreds of years.

In order to feel fully human and not to forget what a short and sense and spirit-filled journey being human is, the image of the angel suddenly comes to mind. 

The angel Damiel is determined to become human.  He says:

            “At each step, at each gust of wind, I’d like to say, ‘Now!’…  I’d like to say, ‘now…’ and then ‘now…’ instead of ‘since always’ and ‘forever.’”  He says, “I want to shout ‘Hey,’ or ‘oh’ or ‘ah’ instead of ‘yes and amen.’”

The Spirit is in the one who says: "I am the bread of life" and again "I am the living bread that came down from heaven, whoever eats of this bread will live forever."

The Spirit is alive in the one who said to his disciples and to us:

"Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."  The food is available that will sustain us on our spiritual journey. 

Jean Pierre Caussade writes in the book Abandonment to Divine Providence:

"God speaks to every individual through what happens to them moment by moment." He goes on - "We find all that is necessary in the present moment."  Again: "We are bored with the small happenings around us, yet it is these trivialities - as we consider them - which would do marvels for us if only we did not despise them."

Bread—simply for the eating.  Ordinary stuff.  But the ordinary is powerful, it is magical; it is immaculate and glorious and wondrous, for those who have the eyes to see—those who seek a greater connection to their sense of the Spirit, and are willing to get up and eat and drink what has been provided.

We have been provided with bread for the journey.  Suddenly an angel is at your shoulder whose presence you feel, who says, “take and eat that you may be strong in the Spirit and so reach the place that you are being called to, still able to say of life, “’Now’, and then ‘now again’—to shout ‘Hey,’ or ‘oh’ or ‘ah.’  Fully human—fully alive, with everything needed to go on standing at great heights with life all around us—your life—still wanting to reach, to give—to feel a reassuring brush of wings, and to receive.  AMEN.

Sermon Resources

“Food For The Journey” by Rev. Richard J. Fairchild, pgs.3-4

“Wings of Desire” dir. William Wenders, 1987

Scripture—August 13, 2000

“Suddenly an Angel”

Year B, Proper 14

1 Kings 19:4-8

            Elijah went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors."

            Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat."  He looked, and there at his head was bread baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again.  The angel of the LORD came a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you."  He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

John 6:35, 41-51

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.  Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven."

They were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?"  Jesus answered them, "Do not complain among yourselves.  No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.  It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.'  Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.  Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.  Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.  I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."