Michaelmas

Michaelmas 2015 (John1:47-51) “

You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.

Jesus is the great bridge between heaven and earth. He is Jacob’s ladder.

No loyal angel comes to earth unless Jesus permits it No human being can enter heaven apart from Jesus Christ. The governing principle in this is love.

If you believe in entitlement religion this makes no sense. If you adhere to a religion of rewards and sacraments this is offensive.

In Jesus and Jesus only, God the Father unites divinity through the incarnation of God the Son by the operation of God the Holy Spirit. In Jesus God unites divinity with humanity in a single individual. He becomes the new Adam. He is the pattern for a renewed and transforming humanity.

Jesus himself states that he is the bridge between heaven and earth. When it comes to heaven the Bible is very clear. You can’t there from here. You can only receive the invitation to enter heaven. It is a gift of universal unconditional love activated by choice.

All beings created for love have this choice. For a created being choice activates love. For God, love is simply and powerfully his divine nature. God just doesn’t have love as an attribute. God is love.

God created the angels before he created the material universe. He created them by love, through love and for love. The choice point for created beings to accept and delight in divine love is worship.

Worship is the highest form of love a created being can experience. Through worship we enter into the inner being of the one God who is three persons. We live and move and have our being in the active, dynamic, creative, spontaneous and infinite delight in the One God who is eternally manifesting in the three persons of love.

The choice point of love for the angels came when the highest of the angels. Lucifer- which means light bearer_ decided that all of the other angels were inferior to him. He made a choice to turn away from God to compare himself to the other angels. Through pride he decided the other angels were not worthy to worship God.

Lucifer told the angels: I am the highest of the Seraph Class angels. I am the one who bears the light of the eternal within my own being. You are inferior, and not worthy to worship the divine. Worship me and I will take your imperfect worship and purify it to offer to the Infinite. I am like God.

One third of the angels chose to believe Lucifer and to follow him by worshipping him. A basic principle of Creation is that if we worship any one or any thing other than the One God we distort the inherent love within worship into pride, self-will and power.

If we break the divinely ordered pattern of worship we separate from God and plunge our souls into conflict.  This is the meaning of the war in heaven.  Michael, the smallest and weakest of the lowest class of angels refused to worship Satan. As Lucifer chanted before the heavenly host: “I am like God,” Michael shouted out: “Who is like God”.

At that point, the distortion in worship Lucifer chose to embrace and offer to the angels morphed love into conflict. The war in heaven was a war about who to worship, how to worship, when and where to worship.

Lucifer lost the battle. He lost the war in heaven because worship is the highest form of love. He lost because the reality of God is the love of God. Lucifer and his followers had to kill a portion of their own essential being in order to distort the highest form of love.

The lesson for us is in the reality of love. Jesus is the love of God in human flesh. Worship is the highest form of love. For a created being love can only be activate by choice.

Lucifer, now called Satan- which means adversary or enemy- is motivated by pride that manifests in this world as deceit and spite. He has abandoned love. And, since he has abandoned love he has separated from God. He has convinced himself that he is the equal and opposite of God.

Moses, the prophets and Jesus are very clear. God has no equal. God has no opposite.

Satan and the rebel angels always seek to subvert love. Their plan of damnation for humanity is motivated by spite and activated by deceit. They work to keep people from reunification with God in Jesus Christ. Failing that, they seek to steal the joy of our salvation by focusing our attention of “the issues”.

Jesus invites us to focus on him. He is the love of God manifesting in the universe, our planet, our species and in our souls.

The loyal angels, and more specifically our guardian angel, always lead us to worship at the time and place and in the manner God himself designed into the universe. The rebel angels seek to subvert love by distorting the highest form of love we as created beings can experience.

It is love that reunites us to God. It is love that helps us reconcile to each other. It is love and only love that motivates us to transform sin back into its original virtue.

The primary role of the angels in our world is the role Satan once had and chose to reject. The role of the loyal angels is to help us choose universal, unconditional and transforming love through worship.