What happened to the Angels?

Texts:  Judges 13.2-7, 24-end & Luke 1.5-25 

Today, we reflect on a theme that runs through both the Old and New Testaments: angels delivering important messages from God. In Luke 1, we hear the story of Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, who are elderly and childless. In Judges 13, we encounter Manoah and his wife, who also long for a child. In both cases, angels appear with remarkable announcements, setting into motion God’s plan for His people. In Zechariah’s case, the angel foretells the birth of John the Baptist, who will prepare the way for the Messiah. In the story of Manoah, the angel announces the birth of Samson, a deliverer for Israel. And in the New Testament, the angel Gabriel visits Mary, announcing that she will conceive Jesus, the Saviour of the world.

These angelic visitations share a common thread—they disrupt the ordinary course of life, delivering messages that challenge, inspire, and require faith. The angel Gabriel’s visit to Zechariah, for example, was not merely to announce the birth of a child, but to declare the coming of God's salvation. Similarly, the message to Manoah’s wife was not just about a son, but about the deliverer who would begin Israel’s liberation. The message to Mary, though filled with wonder and awe, was a call to faith that would change the course of history. Each of these angelic encounters brings news of transformation, not just for the individuals involved, but for God’s entire redemptive plan.

Angels are not merely symbols of hope or benign figures of comfort. In Scripture, they are powerful agents of God’s will, breaking into human history at crucial moments to announce divine plans. And these encounters are often awe-inspiring. Whether it’s Zechariah, Manoah, or Mary, the response to an angel’s appearance is typically one of fear. “Do not be afraid,” the angel must assure each of them, acknowledging the overwhelming presence of divine messengers. The first words angels speak in the Bible are often to calm the fear that their presence invokes. The angel Gabriel’s visitation to Mary, for instance, comes with the command: “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God.” The same words were spoken to Zechariah and Manoah, for angels in Scripture are mighty, awe-inducing figures, not the soft, comforting beings often depicted in popular culture. Nor, as popular culture sometimes suggests, are angels the spirits of our ancestors.  Angels are God’s messengers. They bring divine truth, and that truth often challenges, unsettles, and calls for a response.

But where are the angels today?  If angels no longer appear to us in the same way, how does God communicate with us today? We may not see angels descending from heaven to deliver personal messages – and indeed, angels may be more mythological than real.  But that doesn’t mean God is silent. The ways God communicates with us have shifted from that imagined by the writers of Scripture, but His desire to speak to His people has not changed. 

The most direct way God speaks to us today is through the Scriptures. The Bible, inspired by God, points us to the true Word of God—Jesus Christ. The Scriptures are not in themselves the Word of God, but they are inspired by God, much like a landscape inspires a painter. They invite us into the story of God’s redemptive work, pointing us to Jesus, the Word made flesh, who reveals God’s love and salvation.

The Scriptures guide us in how to live as God’s people, showing us His will and inviting us to trust Him with our lives. Just as Zechariah, Manoah, and Mary received divine messages that shaped the future of God’s people, the Scriptures continue to speak to us today. In them, we find messages of hope, challenge, and transformation that are just as relevant now as they were in biblical times.

Another way God speaks to us is through prayer. In the quiet moments of prayer, God’s voice may not come in a dramatic way, but in a still, small whisper. We may not hear an angel’s trumpet, but we can sense God’s presence in our hearts, through peace, conviction, or unexpected wisdom. Just as Zechariah, Manoah, and Mary had to respond in faith to the angels’ words, we are called to respond in faith when God speaks to us through prayer.

Let us not forget the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come and dwell within us, guiding us into all truth. The Spirit is God’s presence with us today, and He speaks to us in ways that are deeply personal. Though we may not experience the dramatic encounters of Zechariah, Manoah, or Mary, we have the Holy Spirit living within us, always prompting, guiding, and empowering us for faithfulness.

Finally, God speaks to us through others. Just as the angel brought a message to Zechariah, Manoah, and Mary, God continues to use people around us—friends, pastors, and fellow believers—to speak into our lives. In times of need, a word of encouragement, a Scripture shared, or counsel from a trusted friend can be the very message God wants us to hear.

We may not encounter angels in the same way today, but God still speaks. The message delivered by the angel to Zechariah, Manoah, and Mary lives on in the promises of the Scriptures, in the still, small voice of the Spirit, in the fellowship of believers, and in the quiet moments of prayer. The question is not whether God still speaks, but whether we are listening.

As we reflect on these stories, I invite you to consider how you are hearing God’s voice in your life. Are you waiting for an angelic visitation, or are you listening for God’s voice through the Scriptures, through prayer, through the Spirit, and through others? God is still speaking. Let us tune our hearts to His voice and respond with faith and obedience.

May God give us the grace to hear His voice clearly and to respond, just as Zechariah, Manoah, and Mary did, trusting that His messages are always filled with hope and purpose.  Amen.

Advent 2: Making the crooked paths straight

 Luke 3.1-6  & Malachi 3.1-4

“In the 32nd year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the 2nd, during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, when Robert Runcie was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and when Torvill & Dean won gold at the Olympics by dancing to Bolero, the word of God came to Billy Graham at Wembley Stadium.” That’s something like how Luke’s readers would have heard his opening words of chapter 3. 

The problem for Luke was that no-one had come up with the idea of dating years by numbers.  In Luke’s day, events were tied to the reigns or activities of significant people.  Which is why he situates John the Baptiser’s ministry in time with the long list of posh people that I had to read out just now!

Luke wants his readers to know that the events he is reporting can be traced to a particular time and place.  He is saying: “Pay attention!  Listen up!  I’m telling you about something that happened in living memory!  A herald came with an urgent message from God”.  And what was that message?  John the Baptiser quotes Isaiah’s vision of the massive earth-works needed to build a road across a wilderness – reconfiguring the landscape shovelful by shovelful.  Because that ultimately is how you build a kingdom…brick by brick, shovel by shovel, or…if it’s a spiritual Kingdom, person by person, or soul by soul.

The prophet Malachi – who wrote our first reading for today – had similarly dramatic ideas of what God’s coming means:  God is in the precious-metals business, refining, purifying gold and silver by putting it through the fire to reveal its pure state; God is a consuming fire.   

In another stunning image, God is a washerwoman armed with fuller’s soap – not soft, perfumed lavender-scented handwash, but abrasive laundry soap that scrubs and scours.  Fulling is the art of cleansing wool – to strip out all the oils, dirt, manure and other impurities.  Pure white wool has been “fulled” – with some pretty abrasive chemicals!

You see, the transition of society away from his current state to one that looks like the Kingdom of God will not be a gentle affair.  It will require the heat of smelting gold, the acid of Fuller’s soap.  Modern society is not going to give up its languid comfort, easily.  It’s not going willingly reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless.  Western society in particular is not going to transfer its wealth to the poorer nations of the world – even though much of Western society was built on the backs of such nations.  We only have to consider the recent failures of climate and plastics conferences to see how unwilling the West is to shoulder its fair share of worldwide burdens.

In Jesus, Luke sees a vision of the sheer purity that is the goal for all humans. That holiness is what God made us to share when we were made in God’s image.  The very idea of God challenges us to be what we were created to be.  And in Advent, these flamboyant images of fire, scrubbing and highway-engineering describe what it is like to prepare to experience the salvation of God.

Malachi’s name means “my messenger” – and he was part of God’s plan to clean things up.  He roundly condemned the laxity and corruption of the leaders of his day.  John the Baptiser, in the verses that follow today’s reading, goes on to call the people who heard him a ‘brood of vipers’.  If either Malachi or John were around today, they would have many people to hurl such insults at, wouldn’t they?  Corrupt politicians, tyrannical dictators, greedy bankers, ultra-capitalists and extremist preachers.

But John and Malachi would not have confined themselves to the mighty people of society – even if the calendar depended on them!   They would ask not just about bankers, but about how you and I use our wealth and power too.  

It is sobering to consider just how sharply our society is divided between the rich and the poor.   The people who queue in Waitrose and those who queue in food banks are not actually from different species. They are brothers and sisters. One of the core messages of the Gospel is that the rich need to beware of constantly pressing down on the poor – and that’s not just for the sake of the poor.  

The rich will suffer too, in their own way: forced by their own greed to retreat behind their gated community fences, with bars at the window, and paid security guards.  Constantly fearful of being robbed.  Fearfully protecting their land and wealth.  Encumbered by endless bills for staff, maintenance and upkeep of their gilded cages and manicured gardens, barely experiencing their neighbourhood, or their neighbours at all.  How many wealthy people in gated mansions end up dying friendless, or dependent on drugs and alcohol to dim the pain of their separation from others?  If there is one lesson to take from Wolf Hall, which we’ve all been enjoying I guess, is that even being King is not a place of happy contentment!

Christmas is a time for giving.  It is good to give gifts to our families and friends, of course. – because friendship is a wonderful gift to celebrate and strengthen.  But we who are among the wealthiest people in the world can choose to level the playing field, to fill up the valleys of poverty, and lower the mountains of greed.  Shovelful by shovelful.  Pound by pound. Penny by penny.

Perhaps we might add up what we will spend this year on Christmas celebrations, and make a similar donation to charities on top – like the Beacon Food Bank?  Then, people who have no one to give them a gift can receive a gift from us.  Or how about a Christmas donation to the church – so we can continue the task of building the Kingdom here in Havant?

And what does it mean to prepare ourselves spiritually for the coming of the King?  How can the crooked parts of our lives be made straight?  One shovelful at a time – beginning with ourselves.  Perhaps now is a good time to take up reading the bible daily, starting with the Gospels.  Maybe daily bible reading notes would help…there are some examples on the community table in the north aisle.  Perhaps now is the time to say yes to volunteering in the church, the charity shop or the Pallant Centre, in service of our community?

Both John the Baptiser and Jesus himself learned to say ‘Yes’ to the call of God on their lives.  Are we also learning what it means to say ‘Yes’ – Yes to the chance to go deeper, to live more fully, to expand our spiritual horizons – engaging with all the opportunities that there are in this parish for worship of God, and service to our community?

Advent is a call to wake up and respond to God’s initiative.  “In the 3rd year of the reign of Charles the 3rd, when Keir Starmer is the Prime Minister and Justin Welby is still the Archbishop of Canterbury (just) the word of God comes to us: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.  Make his paths straight.”

On this rock I stand - the intersection between science and religion

 For Thursday 5 Dec 2024

In today’s Gospel, we hear a familiar image from Jesus: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

 Today’s Gospel is one of Jesus’ more famous parables.  Did some of you learn the Sunday School hymn: ‘the wise man built his house upon the rock’?  I know I did.  This powerful image, of building our life on rock or on sand, seems to invites us to think about our lives in terms of foundation and stability.  Many a preacher has challenged us, over the years, to ponder the strength of our beliefs when the storms of life come. But I think there is more here than meets the eye. What does it really mean to build on the rock? What does Jesus want us to understand about our faith and its foundation?

When we hear the word “rock,” we might immediately think of certainty, of immovable truths. After all, in our world, certainty feels like security. We crave clarity. We want answers—clear, final, and unshakable. This is true in many parts of our lives, whether in science, philosophy, or religion. We seek to have everything figured out, to hold our beliefs firmly and never waver. We often assume that certainty is what makes a faith solid and secure.

But is that really what Jesus meant? Is the rock about knowing everything, about being sure of all the answers? Is it a call to build our lives on unwavering certainty? Or is it something deeper, something more open?

Franciscan writer, Richard Rohr, challenges us to reconsider this idea. He compares the way many of us approach our faith to the scientific method. Scientists, as he points out, are not afraid of not knowing. They are willing to experiment, to test, and to learn, always open to new discoveries and evidence. Yes, science operates in the material world, but its method—its openness to discovery—is something we might learn from. Scientists move forward with a sense of humility, knowing that their understanding is always subject to change. They’re not afraid to fail, to be wrong, and to revise their theories. They build on what they know, but they don’t assume that everything is already known. And that, I think, is where faith and science intersect: in the willingness to live with mystery, in the trust that the journey of discovery is itself valuable.

Now think about this in relation to our faith. So often, we treat belief like a set of facts to be defended rather than a living, evolving practice. We insist on knowing everything about God, everything about the world, and every answer to every question. We want to be certain that we have it all figured out. But too often, when the storms of life crash around us, we find that our certain faith in, say, a God who answers our prayers, or the God who protects and shields us from harm, or who fights for us on the battlefield becomes severely tested….or it crumbles away.  When the foundations of the faith we have built around us are undermined, rock can quickly turn into sand.

To build on the rock is not to possess all the answers but to trust in the God who is the foundation of all things – the ground of our being.  It is to root ourselves in a faith that is open, humble, and alive, like the scientific method itself—always growing, always learning, always ready for new discoveries. Jesus does not call us to build our lives on sand, which shifts with every new breeze, but on the rock of God’s presence in our lives. This rock is not immovable because it is rigid and unchanging; it is immovable because it is the foundation of trust in the one who holds all things together, seen and unseen.

Think of the great scientists and thinkers of history, those who have transformed the world with their discoveries. They did not start with all the answers. Instead, they approached the world with a sense of wonder and curiosity, with a willingness to experiment, to fail, and to grow. They never stopped asking questions. What they built on was not a fortress of certainty but a foundation of humility and openness to the unknown. They trusted that, even in their uncertainty, they were on a path toward greater truth.

This is the spirit Jesus calls us to: a faith that is not afraid of doubt or failure but is rooted in trust in God’s love, God’s grace, and God’s presence. We are called to build our lives not on the shifting sands of certainty but on the solid rock of faith that is alive, always growing, always transforming. This kind of faith does not ignore the storms of life; it faces them with courage and hope, knowing that no matter how fierce the winds or how deep the floods, we are grounded in the love of God.

And yet, even as we build on this rock, we must remember that the rock is not something we possess in its fullness. We cannot hold it in our hands. We cannot define it in the precise, mathematical way we might like to. The rock is God, the eternal foundation of all things, a foundation that invites us to trust even when we do not have all the answers. It is not a foundation of certainty but of love—love that calls us forward, love that transforms us, love that invites us to take the next step, even when we do not know exactly where it will lead.

When the storms come—and they will come, for that is part of life—we will not fall, not because we know everything, but because we trust in the one who holds us. The rains will fall, the winds will blow, and the floods will rise, but our house will stand, not because we have built it perfectly, but because we have built it on the love and grace of God.

So let us ask ourselves today: what kind of foundation are we building on? Are we building on the rock of trust, of love, of openness to God’s presence in our lives? Or are we building on sand—on rigid certainty, on the illusion that we can control everything? If we are to build a life that stands firm in the face of the storms, we must build on the rock—not of certainty, but of humble trust in the God who is with us, who calls us to grow, to experiment, and to trust in the mystery of life itself.

May we have the courage to build on the rock of faith, always open to the unexpected, always grounded in love, and always trusting that God’s presence will guide us through every storm. Amen.