5th October 2025
The family story of how our third child has his name – Michael – is part of our family lore. Charlotte and I were choosing names as you do and it came down to a short list for a boy or a girl – we never knew whether the baby was a girl or a boy. We were living at the Seminary in Adelaide at the time and had pretty much an ‘open house’ where many of the single guys would come – and stay as long as they wanted – our children grew up with many ‘uncles’! And there were a lot of Michaels and they were all nice – so Michael it was if we had a boy. The event came – Michael was born – and later that week I bumped into the Seminary Principal who congratulated us and asked details – when, name, etc. And when I told him the details, he said, “Ah, well done, of course, being born on St Michael’s Day that makes sense!”.
There’s a St Michael’s Day??!!!
We didn’t know! Actually since the English Reformation the official name for last Monday (29th September) is ‘St Michael and All Angels’. My guess is that unless 29th Sept is a Sunday this festival quietly slips by because the snapshots of the angelic beings in the heavenly realm are rather ambiguous and strange – more like the bar scene of aliens in Star Wars – and Christians seem to oscillate between paying too much attention to angels (now often ‘cutesy-fied’) or basically ignoring them. Fundamentally messengers it would seem, they do seem superfluous to God who is all powerful (why does he need warriors?) and ever present (why does he need messengers?) and yet they are mentioned occasionally – often with the same sense, it seems to me, as happens today – in passing. They have work to do but they are not the focus of the message or our attention. They work at the Lord’s bidding not at our whims or wishes.
And for me, I go to Hebrews 1:14 for my orientation – Are [angels] not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? (ESV) The ‘ministering’ here is really ‘liturgising’ and in essence whatever they do they are helping us worship God. In our Divine Service every Sunday we join with the angels or you might like to think of them joining us when we sing ‘Gloria in excelsis’ in preparation of hearing God through his Word and when we sing the ‘Sanctus’ in preparation of receiving Jesus at his Table. Even if we are just two or three – or two or three hundred – or more – the angelic host help us focus on Jesus, remind us that we haven’t joined a tiny group but God has brought us into his Church, we are his people – new creations in Christ – living in our time and place to God’s glory and for the benefit (blessing) of those around us. And in all our everyday ‘stuff’ of life, there are God’s angels who so often ‘slip by’ our notice and if we were to encounter one, we would be directed away from being gobsmacked in the moment and directed to Jesus, to his cross and empty tomb, and to the truth that God is with us in our life here and now and will never abandon us.
GS