Truth Came by Jesus Christ

Truth Came by Jesus Christ

Last week we contemplated the circular relationships between grace, mercy, truth, and the Word suggested by John 1:14-17:

"14And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
 15John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
 16And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
17For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."

Today we will focus on that last bit, the "came by Jesus Christ" bit. We will consider the role of Jesus as the channel of Divine Truth in Its various forms, and how He functions as intercessor between us and the Father. We will list and discuss a number of distinct features of Jesus' incarnate personality that uniquely qualify Him to be our one and only intercessor to God. I say "uniquely" quite purposefully, because one of the cornerstones of Christian dogmatics is the firm FACT that Jesus is the ONLY Son of God. A lot of New Age philosophies include Jesus in a pantheon of great saints, but they disparage the idea that Jesus was the one and only manifestation of the Christ Consciousness; thus, He cannot, therefore, be the ONLY Son of God.

But even among New Agers there is disagreement about the position Jesus occupies in the Heavenly Choir, and there is an interesting story about how one important New Age philosophy became divided over this point. The "Denomination" Theosophy was created in the late 19th century by Madame Blavatsky; Rudolf Steiner was the head of the organization in Germany. There was happy agreement for some years, but Steiner eventually broke off from the main body of Theosophists to form the separate "denomination" Anthroposophy, precisely because the Theosophists would not recognize the unique position (again I emphasize the word "unique) of Jesus in the history of the world.

Of the many wondrous miracles we can contemplate, as we ponder the life and death of Jesus, no small one is how Jesus was deemed by God to be the one and only entity equal to the task of saving this sinful world. On the spiritual side He had the Love and the Light going for Him, and, on the physical side, He had the street smarts of a big-city boy. Not only an over-arching understanding of, but an interpenetrating IDENTIFICATION with, the men walking the earth. Can we even take in a faint glimmer of the glory that attends this magnanimous roar of power and intellect?

First I want to remind you of something I said last week:

"The phrase “I tell you the truth,” appears 79 times in Scripture, 78 times spoken by Jesus."

We may not always understand everything Jesus says to us; He may speak to us in dreams, or in symbols, or in some other elevated language, the sense of which lies just outside our ability to completely apprehend it; He may speak to us in subtle intimations, intuitions, pre-cognitions, and synchronicities--but however He speaks to us, we can always count on the essence of truth that will reside at the core of each and every utterance. We can also count on the flowering increase of power in the meaning, as we ourselves flower under the beneficent influence of heavenly illumination bestowed on us through grace, freely given, gratefully received.

There is something else that we can count on: the unique personality of Jesus-- the ego of Jesus that permeates our own identity and links us to the divine mind. Jesus' humanity provided the crucial connection between Him and the World, which, in turn, connected us to God. As a mediator, the hypostatic union of the human and the divine, in Jesus' dual nature, HAD to include a personality that the human mind could appreciate; as such, this personality had to have the best, the absolute IDEAL, of every possible human attribute. Once again God's choice is staggering to consider.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible gives a short list of some of the many attributes of Divine Grace which were the property of Jesus, but which He came to bestow on us:

"Full of grace and truth; that is, he dwelt among men, and appeared to have a fulness of each of these: for this clause is not to be joined with the glory of the only begotten, as if this was a branch of that; but regards him as incarnate, and in his office, as Mediator; who, as such, was full of "grace"; the Spirit, and the gifts of the Spirit; of all the blessings of grace, of justifying, pardoning, adopting, sanctifying, and persevering grace; of all the promises of grace; of all light, life, strength, comfort, peace, and joy: and also of truth, of all Gospel truths; and as he had the truth, the sum, and substance of all the types and prophecies concerning him in him; and as he fulfilled all his own engagements, and his Father's promises; and as possessed of sincerity towards men, and faithfulness and integrity to God. . ."

But before we get into the nitty gritty of Jesus' intercession for our sins, here is a little general background on the subject of intercession take from Wikipedia:

"Intercession of the saints is a Christian doctrine held by Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and some Anglican churches, that deceased saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary intercede (or pray) for believers, and that it is possible to ask deceased saints for their prayers. The doctrine of requesting intercession from deceased saints can be found in Christian writings from the 3rd century AD. The 4th century Apostles' Creed states belief in the communion of saints.

Biblical basis
Advocates of the doctrine say that Jesus' parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31 indicates the ability of the dead to pray for the living. On the basis of Christ's intercession for believers, who is present at the Right hand of God (Romans 8:34;Hebrews 7:25), it is argued by extension that other people who have died but are alive in Christ may be able to intercede on behalf of the petitioner(John 11:25;Romans 8:38–39). On the basis of other texts (Hebrews 2:11;Hebrews 10:10; 1 Timothy 2:1–5) it is argued that if those living here on earth can intercede on behalf of each other, then those already glorified in Heaven, and even closer "in Christ", are made holy as "one" unified through him (the mediator between God and men – on earth and heaven) by his sacrifice, can certainly intercede for those on earth as well.

Roman Catholic views
Roman Catholic Church doctrine supports intercessory prayer to saints. Intercessory prayer to saints also plays an important role in the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches. Also some Anglo-Catholics believe in saintly intercession. They may point to such Scriptural passages as Tobit 13:12–15, Revelation 5:8, or Revelation 8:3–4, which depict heavenly beings offering the prayers of mortals before God, and in addition to James 5:16 (where all those in heaven can be presumed to be living righteously), which states the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Both those for and against the intercession of saints quote Job 5:1

Intercessory prayer to saintly persons who have not yet been canonized is also practiced, and evidence of miracles produced as a result of such prayer is very commonly produced during the formal process of canonization.

Protestant views
"Scripture does not teach calling on the saints or pleading for help from them. For it sets before us Christ alone as mediator, atoning sacrifice, high priest, and intercessor."—Augsburg Confession, Article XXI.
Many Protestant churches strongly reject all saintly intercession, in accordance with verses like 1 Timothy 2:1–5, which says that Jesus is the sole mediator between God and man, as well as Deuteronomy 18:10-11 NIV, which seems to forbid invoking departed souls. They also point to the fact that there are no examples in the Bible of living humans praying to dead humans — Jesus Christ being the lone exception, because He is believed to be alive and resurrected, and because He is believed to be both human and Divine. The practice was attacked both by the Waldensians of the 12th century, and the various Gnostic Bogomil groups (including the Albigensians). The Calvinists and Zwinglians were particularly zealous in their rejection of saintly intercession.

Anglican views
William Tyndale had been an early opponent of the practice of praying to saints. The Thirty-Nine Articles (1563) of the Church of England condemned the "invocation of saints" as "a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God" (Article XXII).

Lutheran views
Traditional Lutheran belief accounts that saints pray for the Church in general, but are not mediators of redemption. Martin Luther, the founder of Lutheranism, approved honouring the saints by saying they are honoured in three ways: firstly by thanking God for examples of His mercy; secondly by using the saints as example for strengthening our faith, and thirdly by imitating their faith and other virtues."

This, from the Theopedia, An Encyclopedia of Christianity, is an article about the issues that led to the Reformation, and the separation of the Lutheran brotherhood from the Catholic church. It turns out that the issue of saintly intercession was one of the dogmatic disagreements that tore the church apart into its numerous protestant denominations:

"Priesthood of all believers
The third great principle of the Reformation was the priesthood of all believers. The Scriptures teach that believers are a “holy priesthood,” 1 Pet. 2:5. All believers are priests before God through our great high priest Jesus Christ. “There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,” 1 Tim. 2:5. As believers, we all have direct access to God through Christ, there is no necessity for an earthly mediator. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox concept of the priesthood was seen as having no warrant in Scripture, viewed as a perversion and mis-application of the Old Testament Aaronic or Levitical priesthood which was clearly fulfilled in Christ and done away with by the New Testament.

As a result of these principles, the Reformers rejected the authority of the Pope, the merit of good works, indulgences, the mediation of Mary and the Saints, all but the two sacraments instituted by Christ (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper), the doctrine of transubstantiation,

(The Roman Catholic doctrine that the bread and wine, used in the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist, actually become the literal body and blood of Christ at the “consecration” by the ordained priest.)

the mass as a sacrifice, purgatory, prayers for the dead, confessions to a priest, the use of Latin in the services, and all the paraphernalia that expressed these ideas."

The following quotation from Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary develops the connection between the dual nature of the Word and Grace:

"John the Baptist came to bear witness concerning Jesus. Nothing more fully shows the darkness of men's minds, than that when the Light had appeared, there needed a witness to call attention to it. Christ was the true Light; that great Light which deserves to be called so. By his Spirit and grace he enlightens all that are enlightened to salvation; and those that are not enlightened by him, perish in darkness."

[Sidebar: The use, here, of the word "enlightened" is not accidental. We have noted, many times, the character of Heavenly energy as it descends into the physical dimension through light. We have talked about angels coming in the light. We talked about the spirit of Christmas coming through light. I'm just spit-balling here, but it may be that when the divine Mind descends into the physical, it first manifests itself in Light--light seen as the first form, in a sequence of many modulating forms, before it breaks down into other material forms. Thus, Jesus is the way the truth and the light. It is this heavenly illumination, that we Christians carry around with us, that sets us apart from the rest of the world--a world that has not petitioned for Jesus' protection.]

Back to Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary:

"Christ was in the world when he took our nature upon him, and dwelt among us. The Son of the Highest was here in this lower world. He was in the world, but not of it. He came to save a lost world, because it was a world of his own making. Yet the world knew him not. When he comes as a Judge, the world shall know him. Many say that they are Christ's own, yet do not receive him, because they will not part with their sins, nor have him to reign over them.
All the children of God are born again. This new birth is through the word of God as the means, and by the Spirit of God as the Author.

1st Peter 1:23

"Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever."

By his Divine presence Christ always was in the world. But now that the fulness of time was come, he was, after another manner, God manifested in the flesh. But observe the beams of his Divine glory, which darted through this veil of flesh. Men discover their weaknesses to those most familiar with them, but it was not so with Christ; those most intimate with him saw most of his glory. Although he was in the form of a servant, as to outward circumstances, yet, in respect of graces, his form was like the Son of God His Divine glory appeared in the holiness of his doctrine, and in his miracles. He was full of grace, fully acceptable to his Father, therefore qualified to plead for us; and full of truth, fully aware of the things he was to reveal."

I repeat: "He was full of grace, fully acceptable to his Father, therefore qualified to plead for us; and full of truth, fully aware of the things he was to reveal." This sentence says it all in a nutshell: coming from the Father, Jesus was the Father's gift of mercy to humanity, able both to forgive our lower nature its weaknesses and exalt our lower nature with revelations of eternal truth tailor-made for each specific individual in Creation.

But let's take a moment to think about "how", what is the precise mechanism used by Jesus to mediate for us. The Truth of the Word is transmitted to us through Divine Intercession, but what does that mean, exactly? Prayer is the the accepted technique that mainstream Christianity uses to connect with God, although the distinction between prayer, and the type of meditation many Eastern religions promote, is lost on me; unless it has solely to do with the fact that meditation attempts to open the heart by direct contact with the Word, while prayer gives the Word a name--Jesus. I am sure that many prayers are answered that are not addressed to Jesus by name, but I am equally sure that Jesus gets all His mail, even if it has the wrong address on it.

Indeed, people shouldn't fuss about the different forms that different cultures give to things; the people in those cultures are all attempting to reclaim the divine in themselves, just like we are. Do you really think Jesus would reject the open-hearted devotee because he used the wrong NAME? Anyway, people who thus complain are not taking into account the magnitude of the Christ Consciousness, which includes a vast network of angels who disseminate divine energy like rain. The word "angel" has sometimes been equated with the word "angle"; thus, an angel is an angle of God, a teensy corner of the divine mind that reaches out and down into every made thing. Do you really think that there is a prayer anywhere, breathed in silent privacy, that is unheard? The angels are included in the structure of the Christ Consciousness, so what they hear, He hears. Thus all prayers sent to heaven via a saint or any other celestial entity, eventually go through Jesus. If you think about it that way, the whole issue of the intercession of saints becomes moot.

1 Timothy 2:5

"For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;"

From New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia

"Mediator defined
A mediator is one who brings estranged parties to an amicable agreement. In New Testament theology the term invariably implies that the estranged beings are God and man, and it is appropriated to Christ, the One Mediator. When special friends of God — angels, saints, holy men — plead our cause before God, they mediate "with Christ"; their mediation is only secondary and is better called intercession. Moses, howover, is the proper mediator of the Old Testament (Galatians 3:19-20).

Christ the Mediator
St. Paul writes to Timothy (1 Timothy 2:3-6) . . . "God our Saviour, Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus: Who gave himself a redemption for all, a testimony in due times." The object of the mediatorship is here pointed out as the salvation of mankind, and the imparting of truth about God. The mediator is named: Christ Jesus; His qualification for the office is implied in His being described as man, and the performance of it is ascribed to His redeeming sacrifice and His testifying to the truth. All this originates in the Divine Will of "God our Saviour, Who will have all men to be saved". Christ's mediatorship, therefore, occupies the central position in the economy of salvation: all human souls are both for time and eternity dependent on Christ Jesus for their whole supernatural life. "Who [God the Father] hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, In whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins; Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature . . . all things were created by him and in him. And he is before all and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he may hold the primacy: Because in him, it hath well pleased the Father, that all fulness should dwell; And through him to reconcile all things unto himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, both as to the things that are on earth, and the things that are in heaven". (Colossians 1:13-20)

Qualifications
The perfection of a mediator is measured by his influence with the parties he has to reconcile, and this power flows from his connection with both: the highest possible perfection would be reached if the mediator were substantially one with both parties. A mother, for instance, is the best mediator between her husband and her son. But the matrimonial union of "two in one flesh", and the union of mother and child are inferior in perfection to the hypostatic union of the Son of God with human nature. Husband, mother, son, are three persons; Jesus Christ, God and man, is only one person, identical with God, identical with man. Moreover, the hypostatic union makes Him the Head of mankind and, therefore, its natural representative. By His human origin Christ is a member of the human family, a partaker of our flesh and blood (Hebrews 2:11-15); by reason of His Divine Personality, He is "the image and likeness of God" to a degree unapproached by either man or angel. The Incarnation establishing between the First-born and His brethren a real kinship or affinity, Christ becomes the Head of the human family, and the human family acquires a claim to participate in the supernatural privileges of their Head, "Because we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." (Ephesians 5:30). Such was the expressed will of God: "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman . . . that we might receive the adoption of sons." (Galatians 4:4-5; also Romans 8:29) The man Christ Jesus, therefore, who was designed by God to mediate between Him and mankind, and whose mediatorship was not accidental and delegated, but inherent in His very being, was endowed with all the attributes required in a perfect mediator.

Christ's function as mediator necessarily proceeds from His human nature as principium quo operandi; yet it obtains its mediating efficacy from the Divine nature, i.e. from the dignity of an acting person. Its first object, as commonly stated, is the remission of sin and the granting of grace, whereby the friendship between God and man is restored. This object is attained by the worship of infinite value which is offered to God by and through Christ. Christ, however, is mediator on the side of God as well as on the side of man: He reveals to man Divine truth and Divine commands; He distributes the Divine gifts of grace and rules the world. St. Paul sums up this two-sided mediation in the words: ". . . consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus" (Heb. iii, I); Jesus is the Apostle sent by God to us, the high priest leading us to God."

Notice, above, the expression "yet it obtains its mediating efficacy from the Divine nature". In other words, the POWER of spirit (to move, to transform, to enlighten, etc.) is embedded in the Christ's divine nature, but the self-limiting INTELLECT, that speaks to our puny brains, comes precisely from the HUMAN personalty (remember the IDEAL HUMAN personality), that Jesus dons, like a raincoat, in order to bring us His truth. The Mind of God jump starts the Mind of Man, and Jesus is the cable.

Christ the Mediator, By Rev. Oliver Hart, Pastor, Hopewell Baptist Church, N. J. The ministers and messengers of the several Baptist churches, met in Association, at Philadelphia, October 22d, 1782.

"Again, Christ, as Mediator, not only kept the law inviolable, but he died the cursed death of the cross, to atone for the sins of his people. Without shedding of blood there could be no remission. And as the blood of slain beasts was insufficient to cleanse from sin, Christ offered his own,
Heb. 9: 12

"Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered once into the holy place: having obtained eternal redemption for us."

1 John 1:7

"The blood of Jesus Christ,"

(being the blood of the Son of God, hath a divine efficacy, and)

"cleanseth from all sin."

But, not only did Jesus suffer in his body, he endured infinitely greater torture in his soul. His bodily sufferings were indeed great, beyond compare. In this view, he was emphatically "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," Isa. liii. 3. His wounded, mangled, bruised body, was so changed from what it had been, as to excite astonishment in the beholders. "As many were astonished at thee. His visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons [of] men," Isa. lii. 14. So distorted were his limbs, as to extract from him this grievous complaint; "My bones are all out of joint. I may tell all my bones, they look and stare upon me," Psalm xxii. 14-17.

Let imagination paint to faith's view the innocent Jesus, clothed in a robe of mock majesty, enveloped round with invidious foes taunting and jeering at him, spitting on his face, smiting it with their hands, piercing his head with a crown of thorns, plowing furrows, long and deep, on his back, with a whip of wires; driving iron spikes through his hands and feet, nailing them to the cross, and thus suspending him between heaven and earth, exposed naked to the inclement rays of a burning sun, a spectacle to men and angels. Thus behold the agonizing Jesus, and judge whether there were ever any sorrows like unto his sorrows, or pains comparable to those he endured.

But, after all, the sufferings of his soul were infinitely superior to these. These he bore -- those he deprecated. Apprehensions of the divine wrath, which was to fall on his soul, caused his human nature to shrink, and drew from him these mournful accents, "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father save me from this hour," John xii. 27. And when the vials of wrath began to be poured out upon him, he was in an agony -- sweat great drops of blood, and said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt," Luke xxii. 44; Matt. xxvi. 38, 39. And when his soul was made an offering for sin, and divine wrath was poured out upon him to the uttermost, he cried out, "My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" Matt. xxvii. 46.

Thus Jesus, the Mediator, suffered for us men, and for our salvation. Thus he died, commending his spirit into the hands of his heavenly Father, Heb. ii. 10. And that his humiliation might be reduced to the lowest degree, he was laid in the grave, where he continued three days and three nights, but his body "saw no corruption." On the third day he arose from the dead; for it was not in the power of the grave to hold him. Though he had been put to death in the flesh, he was quickened by the Spirit, Heb. iii. 18. ... "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept," 1 Cor. xv. 20. After his resurrection he continued many days on earth, showing himself to his disciples; comforting, encouraging, and confirming them; and then "ascended up on high, leading captivity captive;" when the everlasting doors were opened to receive the King of glory; and the heavenly arches rang with joyful acclamations; shouting, The Redeemer! God the Father manifested his approbation of all that he had done, and the high esteem he had for him as Mediator, by placing him at his right hand, "Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named," Eph. ii, 21. There the Mediator now sits, pleading the value of his merits on behalf of his chosen people; and we may be sure that "he is able to save them to the uttermost, that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them," Heb, vii. 25."

This sermon makes it clear that the unique character of Jesus' self-sacrifice totally validates Jesus' claim to the post of Mediator; a post given in reward for an appropriate sacrifice--for the shedding of higher-quality-than-calf's blood. However, this passage is also fun, because of its colorful language and vivid description of the crucifixion. The ideal character of Jesus's incarnate personality is glorified and exalted by such language as this, the language of tales and legends; and, rightly so, for, as the ideal man, every single thing He did became a myth; and through prayer and supplication, we too can partake of the ideal Man and become mythologized ourselves.


On the subject of myth, I cannot imagine the suffering that Jesus went through--and my inability to imagine it, is what gives it its vast cosmic resonance, is what elevates it to the level of a true myth. The importance, and the near-impossibility of the whole thing makes it more than something that just HAPPENED, it lifts it outside time and makes it become something that ALWAYS HAPPENED. Let's face it, Jesus was not the only guy that was cruelly, shamefully crucified that year; I'll bet he was not even the only INNOCENT man crucified year. What makes His crucifixion such a magnificent act is not the depth of the insult to which He was subjected, but the HEIGHT from which He had to descend. For the Royal King of Creation to lower Himself, of His own accord, to the lowest of the lowest possible ignominies, is an act of humility of such grandiose cosmic proportions, it makes all other human acts pale in significance. We can attach symbolic significance to the sacrifice of a good man in a story, but there is no symbol capable of supporting the weight of the Christ laying Himself down on the cross to spare each and every one of us the just punishment for our sins.

The Grand Miracle, by Johan D. Tangelder, September, 2008, is about the miracle of the virgin birth of Jesus. Its argument is one more justification for the unique authority Jesus claims to intercede for us:

"What difference does it make whether or not we believe in the truth of Christ's miraculous birth? The difference is either despair or hope. Through this great miracle, God has made salvation possible for human beings separated from God by the awful abyss of sin. The Gospel is the movement from God to man. It does not tell the story of a human search for God at all, but of something done by God for, to, and about, man. The Gospel is not about human beings finding God on their own – to be better and better disciples – but God reaching to human beings. We cannot reach God in our own strength. We can do a lot of things, even go to the moon and Mars, but we cannot save ourselves. Salvation is the work of God (John 3:16). No one can attain to eternal life, except through the mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. (John 14:6). Human death was the result of sin and the triumph of Satan. To overcome sin and death, the Incarnate Son of God lived, suffered, and died on a cross. This is the ultimate testimony to His humanity.

Jesus is also our Immanuel which means, "God with us" (Isa. 7:14). It means that God is not a distant deity who lives in glorious isolation. He is neither cold nor inaccessible. Believing in Christ means to trust Him to know what to do when a problem or a crisis arises. On the one hand, it is encouraging to know that when we turn to Jesus with our problems, He understands us because He is like us. On the other hand, we may rejoice because this Jesus is so much more than we are. He is the sinless Son of God, and thus, with divine power, He can sustain those who trust in Him. We can trust Him to help us when we are in trouble."

From C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity we get yet another justification for Jesus' authority to intercede for us:

“… The second person in God, the Son, became human Himself: was born into the world as an actual man – a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular colour, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.”
The result of this was that you now had one man who really was what all men were intended to be: one man in whom the created life, derived from his Mother, allowed itself to be completely and perfectly turned into the begotten life. The natural human creature in Him was taken up fully into the divine Son. Thus in one instance humanity had, so to speak, arrived: had passed into the life of Christ. And because the whole difficulty for us is that the natural life has to be, in a sense, ‘killed,’ He chose an earthly career which involved the killing of His human desires at every turn – poverty, misunderstanding from His own family, betrayal by one of His intimate friends, being jeered at and manhandled by the Police, and execution by torture. And then, after being this killed – killed every day in a sense – the human creature in Him, because it was united to the divine Son, came to life again. The Man in Christ rose again: not only the God. That is the whole point. For the first time we saw a real man. One tin soldier – real tin, just like the rest – had come fully and splendidly alive.”

I repeat, "you now had one man who really was what all men were intended to be. . . . For the first time we saw a real man." Thus it is Jesus' humanity, not His divinity, that gives us access to Him, and through Him to the Father.

To remind you of an important point I made last week:

"Thus, we seem to have run full circle: the law, the flesh, the truth, and the deliverance from the flesh--they all come from the Word. We are all participating in a continuously revolving cosmic flow, a revolving door, or, better, a revolving escalator that is constantly moving between, and stopping off at, different floors--different stages on a continuum that extends from the higher to the lower and back again, in a unending circular modulation. Which floor we stop at is a function of some over-arching cosmic rhythm, similar, I'm sure, on a macrocosmic level, to the rhythm involved in the the re-centering epiphanic experience. But regardless of the rhythm, and the level on which we find ourselves at any particular moment, (in the sequential series of time), we must remember that Jacob's vision at Bethel involves angels going up AND down the divine escalator to heaven. Truth is given to us through Grace, as a mercy, a way of dealing with material reality; the Truth is an articulation, a limitation, of the Word; Truth takes the mind-boggling vastness of the Eternal and breaks it down into terms that our human minds can sort of comprehend. In terms of the purpose for Truth, its reason for being, I can think of no more important function than its ability to push us onto the escalator: it is an instruction manual for jumping onto the escalator. Thus, the best Truth is not a single, static, constant entity, like the law, but is, rather, an ever-changing and evolving kaleidoscope of forms; it is shaped by the inconstant, anomalous rhythm of the heart, just like every other aspect of our multi-dimensional existence."

Is it Jesus's Truth or the Truth of Jesus, that opens the doors to heaven? I don't know--I guess it depends on which way you are looking. But I do know that this declension is going to occupy my thought for some time to come: us--truth--the Word--Jesus--God.

Let us pray. Jesus sometimes it seems that the more we try to understand You, the further we get from true understanding. Then we remember to feel your tender embrace, always patient, always ready, and we can sleep, and we can dream. Amen.

Advent I

Advent I

Last Sunday we took a tour through some background material on Advent, and suggested the proposition that the coming of the Christ consciousness is given through grace and taken through choice. We also talked, in a general way, about the signs and symbols of the time and how a childlike perspective on the season's archetypal energies may reveal phenomena of a pre-conscious quality--may, in fact, lead to a perception of these symbols at a higher-than-normal level of magical resonance.

This magical resonance may be said to derive from the deep past of Man's sojourn on Earth--from a time when Man's literal consciousness was not so dominant, and his "unliteral, or non-verbal consciousness" allowed shifts from one consciousness state to another with more freedom, less inhibition, than is typical in people today. I'm glad I can talk and I'm glad I can think, but I know the talking and the thinking have cost me something: they have cut me off from a more primitive version of myself. Indeed when I think of Santa's elves, or Narnia's centaurs, I think of something quite ancient, something buried quite deep in my collective memory. Perhaps Christmas is such a nostalgic time because the radiance of primordial light beacons out of these ancient symbologies like searchlights of memory, enlightening our vision, but directing our eyes BACKWARD.


When one asks oneself, "Am I better off now, with all my fancy pants ideas, expressions, and concepts? or was it better back then, when we traveled, unhindered, over the rolling planes of experience, in a relatively mindless medium of intuitive understanding, connected to the infinite, but lacking definition? In this regard, I am reminded of the remarks I made in the sermon on New Wine:

. . . let us not forget that, seen from the spiritual perspective, the new is always contained in the old, and we MUST keep the eternal in our sights, as we struggle to find new ways of articulating transient, temporal, earthly experience. . .

Jesus, lend us your divine intelligence so that we may see ourselves growing and changing in your transforming light. Prepare us to accept the new wine of your eternal changeless truth as it leads us ever upward to a heaven where all contradictions are moot, and all peace and love calm our clamoring voices into silence.

Yes, we must always have the infinite before us, regardless of the level of consciousness on which we may find ourselves at any given moment; and yet, eternity notwithstanding, the ancient images seem so much more powerful at this time of year than they do at other times. Is it the time of year that evokes the images, or do the images evoke the time of year? Perhaps it is, as C.S. Lewis says, the RHYTHM of the seasons that makes each phase seem unique and significant? that makes Christmas the special, stand-out time that it is.

We hear a lot about keeping the spirit of Christmas all year round. Yuck. True, Christmasy attitudes of generosity, cheerfulness, intimacy, and grace, are qualities we would like to see regularly inspiring all our daily doings with heavenly radiance; but to have Christmas ALL YEAR ROUND? Who could handle it? To me, Christmas is like a great oasis in the sea of life's journey. To enjoy the oasis is our pleasure and our right, but to stay forever at an oasis, when the rest of the journey is yet to be traveled? No way! I think our attraction to, and comfort in, the deep past works like this: when a child is first learning to walk, or do some other independent act, he may push off from his mother's lap, take a few steps, return, take a few more steps, return, take a few more steps, return, and so on, each time returning to the mother before taking bigger and bigger steps, off on his own; perhaps connecting with the ancient symbols for a season, and getting in touch with pre-conscious states, is the kind of motherly confidence builder we need to help push on out to sea in search of our own personal adventure, and, eventually, next year's oasis.

No matter how you cut it, we are in a season all of whose social conventions direct our attention to the mind states of ancient days; and although the symbols have been massively trivialized, so that nochildisleftbehindeverybodyisequalandgetsavoteGodblessuseveryone,
the latent power of these symbols still works its way into our pre-consciousness (where it belongs), and registers its presence as a background hum that sometimes sings louder, sometimes softer.

Today's featured work is Steiner's Signs and Symbols of the Christmas Festival, a lecture given in Berlin, December 17, 1906

The Christmas festival, which we are about to celebrate, gains new life through a deepened spiritual world view. In a spiritual sense the Christmas festival is a sun festival, and as such we shall become acquainted with it today. To begin, we shall hear that most beautiful apostrophe to the sun that Goethe puts in the mouth of Faust.

Refreshed anew life's pulses beat and waken

To greet the mild ethereal dawn of morning;

Earth, through this night thou too hast stood unshaken

And breath'st before me in thy new adorning,

Beginst to wrap me round with gladness thrilling,

A vigorous resolve in me forewarning,

Unceasing strife for life supreme instilling.
—
Now lies the world revealed in twilight glimmer,

The wood resounds, a thousand voices trilling;

The vales where mist flows in and out lie dimmer,

But in the gorges sinks a light from heaven,

And boughs and twigs, refreshed, lift up their shimmer

From fragrant chasms where they slept at even;

Tint upon tint again emerges, clearing

Where trembling pearls from flower and leaf drip riven:

All round me is a Paradise appearing.

             Look up! —
The peaks, gigantic and supernal,

Proclaim the hour most solemn now is nearing.

They early may enjoy the light eternal

That later to us here below is wended.

Now on the alpine meadows, sloping, vernal,

A clear and lavish glory has descended

And step by step fulfils its journey's ending.

The sun steps forth!
— Alas, already blinded,
I turn away, the pain my vision rending.
             Thus is it ever when a hope long yearning

Has made a wish its own, supreme, transcending,

And finds Fulfilment's portals outward turning;

From those eternal deeps bursts ever higher

Too great a flame, we stand, with wonder burning.

To kindle life's fair torch we did aspire

And seas of flame — and what a flame! — embrace us!


Is it Love? Is it Hate? that twine us with their fire,

In alternating joy and pain enlace us,

So that again toward earth we turn our gazing,

Baffled, to hide in youth's fond veils our faces.
             Behind me therefore let the sun be blazing!

The cataract in gorges deeply riven

I view with rapture growing and amazing.

To plunge on plunge in a thousand streams it's given,

And yet a thousand, downward to the valleys,

While foam and mist high in the air are driven.

Yet how superb above this tumult sallies

The many-colored rainbow's changeful being;

Now lost in air, now clearly drawn, it dailies,

Shedding sweet coolness round us even when fleeing!

The rainbow mirrors human aims and action.

Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing

Life is but light in many-hued reflection.

Goethe lets his representative of mankind speak these mighty words in the presence of the radiant, rising morning sun. But it is not this sun, awakening anew every morning, with which we have to deal in the festival we will speak about today. This sun is a being of much profounder depths, and the nature of it shall be the leitmotif of our present considerations.

We shall now hear the words that reflect the deepest meaning of the Christmas Mystery. These words have been heard by the pupils of the Mysteries of all ages before they entered the Mysteries themselves:

Behold the Sun

At midnight hour,

And build with stones

In lifeless clay.

So find in world decline

And in the night of death

Creation's new beginning

And morning's youthful strength.

Let heights above reveal

The Gods' eternal word,

May depths preserve and seal

The peaceful treasure-hoard.

In darkness living

O now create a Sun!

In substance weaving

O know the Bliss of Spirit.

Many people who today merely know the Christmas tree with its candles believe that to have a tree symbolizing Christmas is a traditional custom dating from ancient times. This, however, is not the case. On the contrary, the custom of decorating a tree at Christmas is most recent and does not date back more than a few centuries. The custom of decorating a Christmas tree is a recent phenomenon, but the celebration of Christmas is old. The festival at Christmas time was known in the most ancient Mysteries of all religions everywhere, and has always been celebrated.

It is not merely an outer sun festival, but one that leads man to a divination of the sources of existence. It was celebrated annually by the highest initiates in the Mysteries at the time of year when the sun's force was weakest and bestowed least warmth upon the earth. It was also celebrated by those who were unable to participate in the entire celebration, but were permitted to experience only the outer pictorial expression of the highest Mysteries."

It is worth it to interrupt the flow here, to comment on the subject of "parable". Remember, we have commented profusely on Jesus' use of the parable in transmitting his good news. We have mentioned how Jesus' message is appreciable on many different levels of meaning--that there is in it, indeed, something for everybody. My point here is that, yes, you guessed it, Christmas has something in it for everybody. The glitter, and the tinsel, and the fluorescent lights can never completely shout down those mystic voices singing to us from distant peaks, crooning the old songs. I think it must be impossible for any individual to be completely unaffected by the celebrations of the season, but I'm sure there are various degrees of inspiration.

This brings us to us: we can enhance the degree of inspired connection with the spiritual potentials of the season through acts of choice and will--we can use this heightened psychic atmosphere to pump up the volume, and get more out of the time than if we just passively let it happen to us. I'm saying that one of the prime spirits of Christmas should be enthusiasm. I'm saying we should "seize the day" and hasten its blossoming with blessings of power. I'm saying we should get going while the going is good. I'm saying we should look into some candles around here and see Baby Jesus smiling back His fragile, pathetic smile.

Back to Steiner:

"This imagery has been preserved throughout the ages and has assumed forms in accordance with the various religious confessions. The celebration of Christmas is the festival of the Sacred Night, which, in the great Mysteries, was celebrated by those personalities who were ready to bring about the resurrection of the higher self within their inmost being. Today we would say, "Within their inmost being they gave birth to the Christ."

. . . Those who were prepared for the awakening, as were pupils of the Mysteries, were first taught what the awakening signifies in the great universe; only then was the rite of awakening performed. It took place at the time when darkness on earth is greatest, when the outer sun has reached its lowest point at Christmas time, because those who are acquainted with spiritual facts know that at that time of year, forces stream through cosmic space that are favorable to such an awakening.

[There's the answer to my question about whether the season brings the symbols or the symbols bring the season.]

In his preparation, the pupil was told that the one who really wished to know should not merely know what has taken place during thousands and thousands of years on earth, but he must learn to survey the entire course of human evolution, realizing that the great festivals have their place within this, and that they must be dedicated to the contemplation of the great eternal truths.

. . .The pupils were prepared by these teachings, which were constantly impressed upon them. Then they were led to their awakening. The moment arrived when, as chosen ones, they experienced by means of their awakened spirit organs, the spiritual light within them. This holy moment came when the outer light was weakest, on the day when the outer sun shines least. On that day the pupils were gathered together, and the inner light revealed itself to them.

Those who were still unable to participate in this celebration were able to experience at least an outer likeness of it from which they learned that for them, too, the great moment would come.

[Here we return to "parable". Note the reference below to "lesser Mysteries.]

"Today," they were told, "you behold only an image; later you will experience what you now see as a likeness." These were the lesser Mysteries. They showed in pictures what the neophyte was to experience later.

We shall hear today of what took place in the lesser Mysteries on Christmas eve. . . Everywhere the pupils of these Mystery Schools had the same experience at the midnight hour on the Night of Consecration.

The pupils gathered in the early evening. In quiet contemplation they had to make clear to themselves what this most important event signified. In deep silence they sat together in the darkness. By the time midnight drew near, they had been sitting in the dark room for hours. Thoughts of eternity pervaded their souls. Then, toward midnight, mysterious tones arose, resounding through the room, up welling and diminishing. The pupils who heard these tones knew that this was the music of the spheres. Then the room became dimly lit, the only light emanating from a dimly lighted disc. Those who saw this knew that this disc represented the earth. The illumined disc became darker and darker, until finally it was quite black. Simultaneously the surrounding space grew brighter. Those who saw this knew that the black sphere represented the earth. The sun, however, which ordinarily irradiates the earth was concealed; the earth could no longer see the sun. Then around the earth-disc, at the outer edge, rainbow colors formed, ring upon ring. Those who saw it knew that this was the radiant Iris. At midnight a violet-reddish circle gradually arose in place of the black earth sphere. On it a Word was written. . . Christos.

Those who saw it knew that this was the sun, which appeared to them at the midnight hour, when the world around rests in deepest darkness. The pupils were now told that what they had experienced was called, "Seeing the sun at the midnight hour." . . .

[That it was] a symbolical indication of the fact that from apparent death life springs forth . . . They were told that just as the sun force, after it had seemingly died, waxes anew from this day on, so does new life forever arise out of dying life.
The same event is indicated in the Gospel of St. John in the words, "He must increase, but I must decrease." John, the herald of the coming Christ, of the Spiritual Light, whose festival day falls in the course of the year in mid-summer — John must decrease, and simultaneously with his decrease the force of the coming light waxes, increasing in strength as John decreases. In like manner the new, the coming life prepares itself in the seed that must wither and decay in order that the new plant may spring forth from it.

The pupils of the Mysteries were to experience that in death life resides, that out of decaying matter the new, glorious blossoms and fruits of spring arise, that the earth teems with the forces of birth. They were to learn that at this time something happens in the inner being of the earth — the overcoming of death by life that is present in death. This was shown them in the conquering light. This they felt and experienced when they saw the light arise and shine in the darkness. They beheld in the stone cave the sprouting life arising in splendor and abundance out of the seemingly dead. . . the spiritual essence will remain with all men who have become radiant in their innermost nature through the spiritual Light. Earth and humanity will then awaken to a higher existence, to a new phase of existence.

When Christianity arose in the course of evolution, it bore this ideal within it in the highest sense. Man felt that within Christianity the Christos was to appear as the great Ideal of all men, that He had been born on the Night of Consecration about the time of deepest darkness as a sign that out of the darkness of matter a higher man can be born in the human soul. . .

Everything in the cosmos takes its rhythmic course. The stars as well as the sun follow a great rhythm. Were the sun to change this rhythm but for a moment, were it to leave its orbit only for a moment, a revolution would result in the entire universe of quite unheard-of significance. Rhythm rules all nature, right up to man. Only with man does the situation change. The rhythm that rules until death throughout the course of the seasons in the forces of growth, propagation, etc., ceases with man. He is to stand in freedom, and the more highly civilized he is, the more does this rhythm decrease. Just as the light disappears at Christmas, so apparently has rhythm disappeared from the life of man and chaos prevails. Man, however, gives birth to this rhythm out of his own initiative out of his own inner nature. He must so fashion his life out of his will that it takes its course within rhythmical boundaries, steadfast and sure, like the course of the sun. Just as a change in the course of the sun is unthinkable, even so is it unthinkable that the rhythm of such a life be interrupted.

Christ Jesus was also a Sun Hero and was conceived as such in the first centuries of Christianity. His birth festival was, therefore, placed at the time of year when, since primeval days, the birthday of the Sun Hero has been celebrated. This is also the reason for all that was linked with the life story of Christ Jesus. The Midnight Mass, which the first Christians celebrated in caves, was in memory of the Sun Festival. In this Mass an ocean of light streamed forth at midnight out of the darkness as a memory of the rising sun in the Mysteries. Christ was thus born in a cave in remembrance of the cave of rock out of which, symbolized in the growing stalks of grain, life was born. Earthly life was born out of the dead stone. So, too, out of the lowly, the Highest, Christ Jesus, was born!

Thus, in the meaning of the Christmas Festival, we feel something echoing to us from the most ancient ages of mankind, and it has come down to us in the special coloring of Christianity. In its symbols we find images for the most ancient symbols of mankind. The Christmas tree with its candles is one of them. For us, it is a symbol of the Tree of Paradise, which represents all of material nature. Spiritual nature is represented by the tree in Paradise that encompassed all Knowledge, and by the Tree of Life.

There is a narrative that imparts clearly the significance of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life:

Seth stood at the Gates of Paradise and begged to be allowed to enter. The Archangel guarding the portal let him pass. This is a sign for initiation. Seth, now in Paradise, found the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge closely intertwined. The Archangel Michael, who stands in the presence of God, let him take three seeds from these intertwining trees, which, standing there as a single tree, pointed prophetically to the future of mankind. Then the whole of humanity shall have been initiated and shall have found knowledge. Only the Tree of Life will still exist and death will be no more. For the time being, however, only the initiate may take the three seeds from this Tree, the three seeds that signify the three higher members of man.

When Adam died, Seth placed these three seeds in Adam's mouth, and from them grew a flaming bush. From the wood cut from this bush, new shoots and green leaves continually burst forth. Within the flaming circle of the bush, however, was written, "I am He Who was, Who is, Who is to be." This points to the entity that passes through all incarnations, the force of evolving man repeatedly renewing himself, who descends from light into darkness and ascends from darkness into light.

The rod with which Moses performed his miracles was carved from the wood of the flaming bush. The portal of Solomon's Temple was fashioned from it. This wood was carried to the waters of the pool of Bethesda, and from it the pool derived its power.
From the same wood the Cross of Christ Jesus was fashioned, the wood of the Cross that shows us life passing into death, but which at the same time bears the power in itself to bring forth new life. The great world symbol stands before us here — life, which overcomes death. The wood of this Cross grew out of the three seeds from the Tree of Paradise.

The Rose Cross also expresses this symbol of the death of the lower nature and, springing from it, the resurrection of the higher. Goethe expressed the same thought in the words:

As long as you have not

Died and been reborn,

You are but a gloomy guest

Upon the darkened earth.

What a wondrous connection there is between the Tree of Paradise and the wood of the Cross! Even though the Cross is a symbol of Easter, it also deepens our Christmas mood. We feel in it how the Christ Idea streams toward us in new welling life on this night of Christ's Nativity. This idea is indicated in the living roses that adorn this tree. They tell us that the tree of the Sacred Night has not yet become the wood of the Cross, but the power to become this wood begins to arise in it. The roses that grow from the green symbolize the Eternal that grows from the Temporal.

At this point, Steiner gets into describing a group of geometric shapes and detailing their symbolic significance. He does this with everything--I have a book in which he gives the precise spiritual significance of every single musical interval. I'm cutting most of this, but the last one, the star, is of great interest:

Finally, all that permeates the cosmos is present in man and is symbolized in the pentagram at the top of the tree. The deepest meaning of the pentagram may not now be mentioned, but it is the star of mankind, of mankind developing itself. It is the star that all wise men follow as did the priest-sages in ancient ages.

It symbolizes the earth that is born on the Night of Consecration, because the most sublime light radiates from the deepest darkness. Man lives on toward a state when the light shall be born in him, when one significant saying shall be replaced by another, when it will no longer be said, “The Darkness does not comprehend the Light” but when the truth will resound into cosmic space with the words, “Darkness gives way to the Light that radiates toward us in the Star of Mankind, Darkness yields and comprehends the Light.”

This shall resound from the Christmas celebration, and the spiritual light shall radiate from it. Let us celebrate Christmas as the festival of the most lofty ideal of the Idea of Mankind, so that in our souls may rise the joyful confidence: Indeed, I, too, shall experience the birth of the higher man within myself. The birth of the Savior, the Christos, will take place in me also.

Let us pray: Jesus, we call you to come to us in as many guises as you care to put on. We will look for you in candle flame, in wreaths of red, in decorated trees, and tinsel. Most of all we will seek you in the eyes of our friends. Amen.

Equal to the Angels II

Equal to the Angels II

The scripture, "He is not God of the dead, but of the living," was the springboard for the three-part sermon of which we have already heard the first and second parts. Two weeks ago, we heard from George MacDonald, commenting on the sacred physical body; last week we took a closer look at Jesus' peripheral comment about the body after death--the "angel" body--we talked about angels in different cultures and religions, mostly by way of description, and we suggested several different ways of thinking about the phenomenology of angels. This week we will hear what Rudolf Steiner has to say about the subtle spiritual bodies, and the way angels help us channel divine reality into the physical dimension. As, when I read the George MacDonald sermon, I will be reading not all, but a lot from The Work of the Angels In Man's Astral Body A Lecture By Rudolf Steiner, Zurich, 9th October, 1918.

For the purposes of this presentation, we don't need to repeat very much of the scripture we have been using--this much is plenty:

Matthew 22:30

30For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

Mark 12:25

25For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.

Luke 20:34-36

34 And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry , and are given in marriage :
35 But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage :
36 Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

In order to get into Steiner, a few introductory notes are in order. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), was a German philosopher, mystic, writer, and teacher. He founded both the Theosophical Society, and the Waldorf School. The impact of these two entities, worldwide, has been prodigious, both in terms of the activities and publications of the Theosophical Society, and in terms of the thousands of Waldorf schools that offer alternative education to children in a world in which public education is in serious decline. I became aware of Steiner when I got a job teaching violin at a Waldorf school in Santa Cruz. The very rigidly regimented teaching process implemented by this school was kind of a turn-off, but when I read some of Steiner's work, I realized I had found another powerful man of spirit--someone I could learn from.

You will soon see that much of Theosophy deals with occult subjects. My father-in-law used to make fun of occult jargon, calling it "gobble-dee-gook". At a superficial first glance, it might easily be so considered, if it were not for the fact that, as mentioned last week, occultists are quite scientific in their explanations for these phenomenologies. They may ultimately be wrong, and they may definitely be accused, (as in the case of all dogmatists), of putting the cart before the horse, but they are NOT flaky.

In the following statement from last week, we suggested a definition of the word "occult":

Angels, like magic, fall into the category of the "occult" or "knowledge of the hidden", and are therefore outside the general realm of "seeable" subjects. Thinking about angels can be a mere academic exercise, they being generally unseen, and largely unfelt. Of course, if we can learn to enter into a conscious dialogue with angels (note the word "conscious"), as in prayer or meditation, then we can get a whole new slant on the thing, discover a new dynamic that drives the relationship into matters of immediate real (rather than theoretical) significance, matters either spiritual or mundane--you can never predict. However, in such ecstatic dialogues the angels rarely talk about themselves.

Hence, a discussion of angels cannot be considered "helpful" in any direct way, since any delving into occult subjects, (delving into the phenomenology of the mysteries, you might say), may only be considered to be of mere intellectual interest. We have said many times that verbal descriptions of spiritual reality can only amount, ultimately, to pretty fictions, that satisfy our inquiring minds but which do not actually convey any real truth. Occult jargon can only hint at what must REALLY be the case, by pointing our minds in the direction of the great mysteries without truly getting around them. The way we reduce the great mysteries into tales of magic must be comical to higher beings.

The great thing about Jesus is that He threw away all the magic and superstition of His culture and presented a clear, practical, Earthbound philosophy of life. This is not to say that Jesus was not aware of the magic and superstition of His age, nor is it to say that something of that magic and superstition is not true--it is merely to say that Jesus was always pointing at something beyond the phenomenological baggage of the occult sciences, at something more immediate, and, ultimately more powerful.

Nevertheless, this occult discussion is interesting indeed, and is likely provoke a thought or two that may actually prove to be helpful after all--by focusing our mental attention on an issue, our hearts may follow and contribute their transcendental understanding to the problem.

The following Wikipedia summary gives a general overview of Theosophy in general, and of Theosophy's dogmatic views on the subject of angels in particular. This will lead directly into the following Steiner piece on angels. Both this article and the Steiner speech are crammed with jargon that is characteristic of most so-called "New Age" writing. We will pass over definitions of much of this jargon, since most of it is defined in the text to follow. Needless to say, like the disclaimers at the beginnings of movies that say, "The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect. . . blah blah blah,": but these ideas are pretty mainstream now, the New Age having substantially become the Now Age; and, as to their contribution to our attempts at "creating a pretty fiction" and calling it true", they make a lovely bouquet of details that lace around the central truth like ballerinas.

From Wikipedia:

Theosophy

In the teachings of Theosophy, Devas are regarded as living either in the atmospheres of the planets of the solar system (Planetary Angels) or inside the Sun (Solar Angels) (presumably other planetary systems and stars have their own angels) and they help to guide the operation of the processes of nature such as the process of evolution and the growth of plants; their appearance is reputedly like colored flames about the size of a human. It is believed by Theosophists that devas can be observed when the third eye is activated. Some (but not most) devas originally incarnated as human beings.

It is believed by Theosophists that nature spirits, elementals (gnomes, undines, sylphs, and salamanders), and fairies can be also be observed when the third eye is activated. It is maintained by Theosophists that these less evolutionarily developed beings have never been previously incarnated as humans; they are regarded as being on a separate line of spiritual evolution called the “deva evolution”; eventually, as their souls advance as they reincarnate, it is believed they will incarnate as devas.

It is asserted by Theosophists that all of the above mentioned beings possess etheric bodies that are composed of etheric matter, a type of matter finer and more pure that is composed of smaller particles than ordinary physical plane matter."

What follows is a lengthy excerpt from The Work of the Angels In Man's Astral Body A Lecture By Rudolf Steiner, Zurich, 9th October, 1918, Translated by D. S. Osmond with the help of Owen Barfield.

This lecture is regarded as one of the centerpieces of the so-called "New Age" thinking, even though it was composed in 1918. Its main purpose in the context of this sermon is to suggest a relationship between the physical body and the "equal unto the angels" body of Luke 20.

Moreover, it is a work of prophecy: as Steiner says later in the text, spiritual enlightenment promotes clairvoyance; thus, the things he says and predicts in this lecture can only be the result of a spectacular clairvoyance. We all experience little snatches of clairvoyance every day when we go to pick up the phone before it rings, or set out a dinner plate for company we didn't know was coming. Well, Steiner had a BIG talent for this, and I wouldn't say that if I didn't feel that, in a way, some of the things Steiner looked forward to, (almost a hundred years ago), seem to me to have come true. We will comment further on this at the appropriate place in the following material.

Now the Steiner:

". . . To arrive at a clear conception of these things, we must above all consider in greater detail the nature of man himself. In the sense of Spiritual Science, the members of man's being, beginning from above downwards, are: Ego, astral body, etheric body — which latterly I have also called the body of formative forces — and physical body. The Ego is the only one of these members in which we live and function as beings of spirit-and-soul. The Ego has been implanted in us by the Earth-evolution and the spirits of Form who direct it. Fundamentally speaking, everything that enters into our consciousness enters it through our Ego. And unless the Ego, as it unfolds itself, can remain connected — connected through the bodies — with the outer world, we have as little consciousness as we have during sleep. . . .

But if you study the description of these bodies given in the book, An Outline of Occult Science, you will realise by what a complicated process this fourfold constitution of man came into being. It is not evident from the facts presented in that book that Spirits belonging to all the Hierarchies participated in the formation of the three sheaths of man's being? Is it not evident that our threefold sheath composed of physical body, etheric body, astral body, is extremely complicated? It is not simply that these sheaths owe their origin to the co-operation of the Hierarchies; the Hierarchies are still constantly working within them. And those who believe that man is merely the apparatus of bones, blood, flesh and so forth, of which natural science, physiology, biology and anatomy speak, have no understanding of his nature.
If we genuinely study these sheaths of man, we realise that spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies are working together with wisdom and set purpose in everything that takes place, without our being conscious of it, in our bodily sheaths. . . .
What are the Angels — the spiritual Beings nearest to men — doing in the human astral body in the present cycle of evolution?

. . . What is there to be said in the general sense when it comes to answering a question such as this? It can only be said that spiritual investigation, when earnestly pursued, is not a matter of juggling with ideas or words, but works its way into the actual sphere where the spiritual world becomes perceptible. . .

What are the Angels doing in our astral body? Conviction of what they are doing can come to us only when we have achieved a certain degree of clairvoyance and are able to perceive what is actually going on in our astral body. A certain degree at least of Imaginative Knowledge must therefore have been attained if this question is to be answered.

It is then revealed that these Beings of the Hierarchy of the Angels — particularly through their concerted work, although in a certain sense each single Angel also has his task in connection with every individual human being — these Beings form pictures in man's astral body. Under the guidance of the Spirits of Form (Exusiai) the Angels form pictures. Unless we reach the level of Imaginative Cognition we do not know that pictures are all the time being formed in our astral body. They arise and pass away, but without them there would be for mankind no evolution into the future in accordance with the intentions of the Spirits of Form. The Spirits of Form are obliged, to begin with, to unfold in pictures what they desire to achieve with us during Earth-evolution and beyond. And then, later on, the pictures become reality in a humanity transformed.

Through the Angels, the Spirits of Form are already now shaping these pictures in our astral body. The Angels form pictures in man's astral body and these pictures are accessible to thinking that has become clairvoyant. If we are able to scrutinise these pictures, it becomes evident that they are woven in accordance with quite definite impulses and principles. Forces for the future evolution of mankind are contained in them. If we watch the Angels carrying out this work of theirs — strange as it sounds, one has to express it in this way — it is clear that they have a very definite plan for the future configuration of social life on earth; their aim is to engender in the astral bodies of men such pictures as will bring about definite conditions in the social life of the future.

That is the one principle in accordance with which the Angels form the pictures in man's astral body.

[Sidebar:
Simple, direct, practical, social, just like Jesus. The idea of clairvoyance is of particular interest to artists, because we all know that some significant percentage of what we create is given to us, transmitted through us without much act of will on our part. If this higher mind material can go out into the world and impress on people a vision of "a very definite plan for the future configuration of social life on earth", then art has served its spiritual purpose. A purpose manifested through the creation of IMAGES.]

But there is a second impulse in the work of the Angels. The Angels have certain objectives in view, not only in connection with the outer social life but also with man's life of soul. Through the pictures they inculcate into the astral body their aim is that in future time every human being shall see in each and all of his fellow-men a hidden divinity.

Quite clearly, then, according to the intention underlying the work of the Angels, things are to be very different in future. Neither in theory nor in practice shall we look only at man's physical qualities, regarding him as a more highly developed animal, but we must confront every human being with the full realisation that in him something is revealing itself from the divine foundations of the world, revealing itself through flesh and blood. To conceive man as a picture revealed from the spiritual world, to conceive this with all the earnestness, all the strength and all the insight at our command — this is the impulse laid by the Angels into the pictures.
The bestowal on man of complete freedom in the religious life — this underlies the impulses, at least, of the work of the Angels.

And there is a third objective: To make it possible for men to reach the Spirit through thinking, to cross the abyss and through thinking to experience the reality of the Spirit.

. . . These events can be characterised in greater detail, for to know what the Angel is doing is only the preparatory stage. The essential point is that at a definite time — depending, as I have said, upon the attitude men themselves adopt it will be earlier or later or at worst not at all — a threefold truth will be revealed to mankind by the Angels.

Firstly, it will be shown how his own genuine interest will enable man to understand the deeper side of human nature. A time will come — and it must not pass unnoticed — when out of the spiritual world men will receive through their Angel an impulse that will kindle a far deeper interest in every individual human being than we are inclined to have to-day. This enhanced interest in our fellow-men will not unfold in the subjective, leisurely way that people would prefer, but by a sudden impetus a certain secret will be inspired into man from the spiritual side, namely, what the other man really is. By this I mean something quite concrete — not any kind of theoretical consideration. Men will learn something whereby their interest in every individual can be kindled. That is the one point — and that is what will particularly affect the social life.

[It is worth interrupting the flow of this discourse to emphasize something about the word "concrete": as I have repeatedly stated, Jesus was nothing if not practical--He really wanted a heaven on earth. It is nice to see Steiner taking the same attitude: he wants the message of the angel to help us live here on Earth.

Furthermore, in regard to the afore-mentioned prophetic aspect of this piece, I feel that a good case can be made for the proposition that the reality of the world wide web constitutes "a far deeper interest in every individual human being than we are inclined to have to-day." In other words, it appears to me that, almost a hundred years ago, Steiner saw a heightened understanding of MAN, of himself, as a natural side-effect of the huge information explosion that has been made possible by the internet. True, the world is pretty messed up: there are pockets of serious problems in many places; but there are also numerous positive trends that I think will take hold soon enough, and usher in an age of peace.]

Secondly: From the spiritual world the Angel will reveal to man that, in addition to everything else, the Christ Impulse postulates complete freedom in matters of religions life, that the only true Christianity is the Christianity which makes possible absolute freedom in the religious life.

And thirdly: Unquestionable insight into the spiritual nature of the world.
As I have said, this event ought to take place in such a way that the Spiritual Soul in man participates in it. This is impending in the evolution of humanity, for the Angel is working to this end through the pictures woven in man's astral body.
But let it be emphasised that this impending event confronts the will of man. Many things that should lead to conscious awareness of this event may be and indeed are being left undone.

But as you know, there are other beings working in world-evolution, beings who are interested in deflecting man from his proper course: these are the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic beings. What I have just said belongs to the divinely-willed evolution of mankind. If man were to follow the dictates of his own proper nature, he could not very well fail to perceive what the Angel is unfolding in his astral body; but the aim of the Luciferic beings is to tear men away from insight into the work of the Angels. And they set about doing this by curbing man's free will. They try to cloud his understanding of the exercise of his free will. True, they desire to make him good — for from the aspect of which I am now speaking, Lucifer desires that there shall be goodness, spirituality, in man — but automatic goodness, automatic spirituality — without free will. Lucifer desires that man shall be led automatically, in accordance with perfectly good principles, to clairvoyance — but he wants to deprive him of his free will, to remove from him the possibility of evil-doing. Lucifer wants to make man into a being who, it is true, acts out of the spirit, but acts as a reflection, as an automaton, without free will.

[Sidebar: I had a lovely "Aha" moment when I read that bit about free will. You will remember that we have discussed free will in detail in past weeks, and have pretty much agreed that free will is one of the human qualities that is most like God. When I read that Lucifer wants to have "automatic spirituality — without free will", I thought of so many works of fiction that describe the ultimate evil as regimented conformity: the Empirial troops in Star Wars, the soldiers of the Wicked Witch of the West, (Yo-Hee-Ho, Yo-Ho), the Stepford Wives, and that chilling scene in A Wrinkle in Time when all those kids march outside their houses at once, and bounce their balls together in perfect unison, etc. Indeed, the aura of evil that emanates from the Glennallen High School was vastly intensified when they put up that horrible fence that makes the place look like a cage, a prison. Proseletyzing Jehovah's witnesses should think about the magnanimous, tender-hearted Satan who really, like them, only wants what's best for us--he wants to nurture and protect us, enfold us in his loving arms--as long as we do it his way; as long as we are willing to give what up what is most ourselves. Such a deal.]

But the Ahrimanic beings too are working to obscure this revelation. They are not at pains to make man particularly spiritual, but rather to kill out in him the consciousness of his own spirituality. They endeavour to instill into him the conviction that he is nothing but a completely developed animal. Ahriman is in truth the teacher par excellence of materialistic Darwinism. He is also the great teacher of all those technical and practical pursuits in Earth-evolution where there is refusal to acknowledge the validity of anything except the external life of the senses, where the only desire is for a widespread technology, so that with somewhat greater refinement, men shall satisfy their hunger, thirst and other needs in the same way as the animal. To kill, to darken in man the consciousness that he is an image of the Godhead — this is what the Ahrimanic beings are endeavouring by subtle scientific means of every kind to achieve in our age of the Spiritual Soul."

Here ends the reading of the Steiner lecture.

I find the idea of angels planting "pictures" in our heads to be one of those fascinating but obvious-when-revealed, "Well, duh!" insights. Of course good angels put good pictures in our heads--just as bad angels put bad pictures in our heads! Well, duh!

But the notion of PICTURE evokes ideas of conceptualization, memory, and projection of ego that lead to spiritual considerations. One common synonym for "picture" is: icon. An icon is more than a "representation" of a spiritual reality, it is a FOCUS of a spiritual reality, in the same way, on a more modest scale of course, that the Christ Consciousness is a FOCUS of the Mind of God. This passage is laden with implicit significance:

. . . we must confront every human being with the full realization that in him something is revealing itself from the divine foundations of the world, revealing itself through flesh and blood. To conceive man as a picture revealed from the spiritual world, to conceive this with all the earnestness, all the strength and all the insight at our command — this is the impulse laid by the Angels into the pictures.

"To conceive man as a picture revealed from the spiritual world" is to attribute to Man the ability to channel divine reality into the physical. The medium is the MIND, able to receive and maintain in consciousness an IMAGE, divinely inspired and transmitted for the edification and transformation of Mortal Men into Sons of God. I'm sure, if Steiner speaks rightly, that angels prefer to relay their messages through the human astral body because of the sympathy (the having-something-in-common-ness) between the astral body and their own subtle bodies. Must it be, then, that an angel imprints a picture on the face of another picture?

Can this angel body, then, be thought of as a "picture"? Are we to surrender our physical bodies, so sound and solid, in exchange for a flimsy little PICTURE--a momentary static electric charge? Or is the idea to be taken in the opposite sense, that Man's physical body is a mere picture, a formal articulation of divine intelligence and energy--energy that cannot be contained by any formal design, pattern, or shape? Last week we heard George MacDonald insisting that a body, matter in of some degree of fineness, was really necessary, if we were to continue thinking of God as a good guy. Remember? "What kind of God would create us and then not let us get together in heaven for parties and chamber music concerts?" Perhaps MacDonald didn't think quite enough about the concept of "IMAGE"--image as icon or focus of heavenly light. Perhaps the exalted body he imagined was just a plop in the cosmic stew, no less real or eternal than anything else, but always subject to change, transformation, transcendence. I wonder if he ever gave serious to thought to this idea: that the egoic essence of the image is contained in the selfless non-image.

The idea of non-image has been invading my thoughts a lot lately, as I contemplate the angel body, and these other types of finer bodies described by Steiner. Even though the new physics has discovered many different grades of matter density, (neutrinos and the like), using the density of matter as a way of describing the difference between the physical body and the angel body seems like a pseudoscientific way of describing something beyond science. Nevertheless, we must admit that the quality of our devotions in spiritual practice may be described, at different times, as areas on a continuum that is not fixed, and not finite. Sometimes we are a "plop" on the surface of the boiling stew, and sometimes we lose ourselves in the stew.

In C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, a temple is described in which are situated two statues, representations of a lower and a higher goddess. The lower goddess, Ungit, is a great, round stone, of no particular shape; as the blood offerings trickle down its sides, the observer may see a face, or faces, or no face in the uninflected gray. The higher goddess is a white marble Grecian statue, beautiful, articulate, focused. A peasant woman has just come in and said prayers to Ungit, the lower goddess, and, as she is leaving, the the onlooking queen stops her:

"Has Ungit comforted you, child" I asked.
"Oh yes, Queen" said the woman, her face almost brightening, "Oh yes. Ungit has given me great comfort. There's no goddess like Ungit."
"Do you always pray to that Ungit," said I (nodding toward the shapeless stone), "and not to that?" here I nodded towards our new image, standing tall and straight in her robes and (whatever the Fox might say of it) the loveliest thing our land has ever seen.
"Oh, always this, Queen," said she. "That other, the Greek Ungit, she wouldn't understand my speech. She's only for nobles and learned men. There's no comfort in her."

The representations in this temple are very different faces of a single goddess, different phases of a single identity. Although the outer form of these representations are quite unlike each other, they both tend toward the same spiritual essence. Likewise, an artist has materials at his/her disposal which are of a contrasting character but which offer a similar opportunity to create synthetic works which integrate the various articulate voices of man into one great symphonic chorus.

The temple of art, usually thought to be inhabited by an exclusive brotherhood of high priests with nothing to say to the lowly men of earth, might become a popular emporium of enlightenment if composers could find a way to speak to the common man's higher mind by way of his/her lower referential vantage point. But why should they? Why might not the common man create his own music out of his own common materials? Is this possible? Does an association with a language automatically enable one to create discourses in that language? In Man and His Myths, Joseph Campbell makes the following insightful comment:

"There's an old romantic idea, in German, das Volk dichtet, which says that the poetry of the traditional cultures, and the ideas, come out of the folk. They do not. They come out of an elite experience, the experience of people particularly gifted, whose ears are open to the song of the universe. These people speak to the folk, and there is an answer from the folk which is then received as an interaction. But the first impulse in the shaping of a folk tradition comes from above, not from below." (p. 107)

This passage indicates that, traditionally, the task of creating art for the folk has been willingly shouldered by a trained elite; the passage implies that no matter how much the folk need to have their basic spiritual identities expressed, they cannot do it themselves—they need the help of experts. It is therefore incumbent upon the most gifted of our generation to speak to the people of their ultimate identification with super-personal reality. Those with the gift of articulation naturally feel responsible for their brothers and sisters who cry out in their dreams for someone to help them understand who they are, for someone to give them a jingle, a catch-phrase, a hook by the door to hang their identities on for awhile, to assuage their deep ontological insecurities. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Perhaps this is the angel's job.

The point here, is that: there are many levels of existence, like rungs on a ladder, or floors in an apartment building. The eternally now, changeless God lives on every floor, but the quality of our personal experience of God on every floor is different. Maybe our job is to move up the ladder, maybe our job is to just take in the whole ladder--I don't know.

Several times, in the above quoted material, angels are referred to as links between God and Man. Thus, there is one more hair to split: is the angel the link, or is it the message, the image, the picture? Does the picture have a will of its own, or is it fixed, defined, mortal? It is easy for me to imagine myself as an image, but I always keep sensing that connection with something deeper than the image, the source of the image, the shape without a shape.

I think it must be to this formless shape that our earthly bodies propend--that after these puny earthly dust balls fall apart, there will emerge a far more perfect representation of the spiritual identity that makes me me and you you. Now, we see this picture in a glass darkly, but then: there will be no distance between us, between me and you, nor between yourself and yourself. But, for now, always the picture, the IMAGE is necessary for the mind to grasp and contemplate in time. And with each layer of snakeskin we shed we get closer to the TRUE form, the formless form, the essence, the heart.

Let us pray:
Jesus, we stand silenced with awe before the vast cosmic structure you have given us to live in. We don't expect to make sense of most of it, but, thanks to the ideas, the forms, the pictures of divine reality you send down to us, through the angels, we can glimpse, even with vague human eyes, the glorified bodies our spirits will inhabit, indescribable heaven world which one day is to be our haven and home. Amen.

Equal to the Angels I

Equal to the Angels I

The scripture, "He is not God of the dead, but of the living," was the springboard for the three-part sermon the beginning of which we heard last week, and the second part of which we hear today, and the third part of which we will hear next week. Last week we heard George MacDonald's comments on the sacred physical body. Today we will examine, close-up, Jesus' peripheral comment about the body after death--the "angel" body. Next week we will hear what Rudolf Steiner has to say about the subtle spiritual bodies, and the way angels help us channel divine reality into the physical dimension.

In Luke 20:36 Jesus says, "for they are equal unto the angels." I thought that looking at angels, for a bit, might give us some hint as what our equal-to-angel bodies might be like. It is hard to resist drawing parallels and comparisons between physical bodies and angel bodies. However, angels, like magic, fall into the category of the "occult" or "knowledge of the hidden", and are therefore outside the general realm of "seeable" subjects. Thinking about angels can be a mere academic exercise, they being generally unseen, and largely unfelt. Of course, if we can learn to enter into a conscious dialogue with angels (note the word "conscious"), as in prayer or meditation, then we can get a whole new slant on the thing, discover a new dynamic that drives the relationship into matters of immediate real (rather than theoretical) significance, either spiritual or mundane--you never know. However, in such ecstatic dialogues the angels rarely talk about themselves.

Hence, a discussion of angels cannot be considered "helpful" in any direct way, since any delving into occult subjects, (delving into the phenomenology of the mysteries, you might say), may only be considered to be of mere intellectual interest. We have said many times that verbal descriptions of spiritual reality can only amount, ultimately, to pretty fictions, that satisfy our inquiring minds but which do not actually convey any real truth. Occult jargon can only hint at what must REALLY be the case, by pointing our minds in the direction of the great mysteries without truly getting around them. The way we reduce the great mysteries into tales of magic must be comical to higher beings. The great thing about Jesus is that He threw away all the magic and superstition of His culture and presented a clear, practical, Earthbound philosophy of life. This is not to say that Jesus was not aware of the magic and superstition of His age, nor is it to say that something of that magic and superstition is not true--it is merely to say that Jesus was always pointing at something beyond the phenomenological baggage of the occult sciences, at something more immediate, and, ultimately more powerful.

Nevertheless, this occult discussion is interesting indeed, and is likely provoke a thought or two that may actually prove to be helpful after all--by focusing our mental attention on an issue, our hearts may follow and contribute their transcendental understanding to the problem.

For the purposes of this presentation, we don't need to repeat the complete scripture passage from last week--a short excerpt will suffice:

Matthew 22:30-34

30For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
31And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God:
32 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not God of the dead, but of the living."
33And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.

Mark 12:25-27
 

25For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.
 26And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
 27He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.

Luke 20:34-40

34 And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry , and are given in marriage :
35 But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage :
36 Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.
37 Now that the dead are raised , even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
38 For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living : for all live unto him.
39 Then certain of the scribes answering said , Master, thou hast well said .
40 And after that they durst not ask him any question at all.

Today's Wikipedia sampling is lengthy, and some of it is off topic, but it is all interesting--I cut quite a bit out, but there is still plenty of information here:

Angel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Angels are spiritual beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The Hebrew and Greek words originally mean messenger, and depending on the context may refer either to a human messenger (possibly a prophet or priest, such as Malachi,) or to a supernatural messenger, such as the "Mal'akh YHWH," who (depending on interpretation) is either a messenger from God, an aspect of God (such as the Logos), or God Himself as the messenger (the "theophanic angel.")

The term "angel" has also been expanded to various notions of spiritual beings found in many other religious traditions. Other roles of angels include protecting and guiding human beings, and carrying out God's tasks. The theological study of angels is known as angelology.

[Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was the first occult writers to claim to have been in constant communication with angels. Many of his comments are worth recording; on the subject just mentioned about the different classes of angels, Swedenborg says:

"There are angels that receive more interiorly the Divine that goes forth from the Lord, and others that receive it less interiorly; the former are called celestial angels, and the latter spiritual angels."

On the subject of man's after-death angel body he says:

"In the spiritual body moreover, man appears such as he is with respect to love and faith, for everyone in the spiritual world is the effigy of his own love, not only as to the face and the body, but also as to the speech and the actions. . .
That every man after the life in the world lives to eternity, is evident from this, that man is then spiritual, and no longer natural, and that the spiritual man, separated from the natural, remains such as he is to eternity, for man's state cannot be changed after death."

On the general topic of "talking to angels" he says this:

"I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections.
I have often talked with angels on this subject, and they have invariably declared that in heaven they are unable to divide the Divine into three, because they know and perceive that the Divine is One and this One is in the Lord."

Philosophy
Philosophically, angels are "pure contingent spirits."Philo of Alexandria identifies the angel with the Logos as far as the angel is the immaterial voice of God. The angel is something different than God Himself, but is conceived just as a God's instrument. According to Aristotle, just as there is a First Mover, so, too, must there be spiritual secondary movers. Thomas Aquinas (13th century) expands upon this in his Summa contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica.

Judaism
The Bible uses the terms מלאך אלהים (mal'akh Elohim; messenger of God), מלאך יהוה (mal'akh YHWH; messenger of the Lord), בני אלהים (b'nai Elohim; sons of God) and הקודשים (ha-qodeshim; the holy ones) to refer to beings traditionally interpreted as angels. Later texts use other terms, such as העליונים (ha'elyoneem; the upper ones). Scholar Michael D. Coogan notes that it is only in the late books that the terms "come to mean the benevolent semidivine beings familiar from later mythology and art. . . Coogan explains the development of this concept of angels: "In the post-exilic period, with the development of explicit monotheism, these divine beings—the 'sons of God' who were members of the divine council—were in effect demoted to what are now known as 'angels', understood as beings created by God, but immortal and thus superior to humans. . .

Medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides explained his view of angels in his Guide for the Perplexed II:4 and II:6:

...This leads Aristotle in turn to the demonstrated fact that God, glory and majesty to Him, does not do things by direct contact. God burns things by means of fire; fire is moved by the motion of the sphere; the sphere is moved by means of a disembodied intellect, these intellects being the 'angels which are near to Him', through whose mediation the spheres [planets] move... thus totally disembodied minds exist which emanate from God and are the intermediaries between God and all the bodies [objects] here in this world.

According to Kabalah, there are four worlds and our world is the last world: the world of action (Assiyah). Angels exist in the worlds above as a 'task' of God. They are an extension of God to produce effects in this world. After an angel has completed its task, it ceases to exist. The angel is in effect the task.
Famous angels and their tasks:
• Malachim (translation: messengers), general word for angel
• Michael (translation: who is like God), performs God's kindness
• Gabriel (translation: the strength of God), performs acts of justice
and power
• Raphael (translation: God Heals), God's healing force
• Uriel (translation: God is my light), leads us to destiny
• Seraphim (translation: the burning ones), sing and praise God
• Malach HaMavet (translation: the angel of death)
• Satan (translation: the adversary), brings people's sins before them
in the heavenly court
• Chayot HaKodesh (translation: living beings)
• Ophanim (translation: arbits) Guardians of the Throne of God

[Sidebar: It is an interesting idea that an angel may come into existence to deliver a message from God, and then wink out of existence once the message has been delivered. It sounds kind of like getting a letter from God, a telegram, or maybe an email that, like on Mission Impossible, self-destructs after ten seconds. I doubt that any created thing ever ceases to exist, but it is easy to imagine an angel body dissolving into the mind of God after its message has been delivered. It reminds me of something a friend of mine in L.A. said to me years ago concerning life after death; he said, "I think of us all as bits of information--you can't destroy information!" I'm sure that angel body, having served its purpose as a focus of information, does not cease to exist, but merely changes, in terms of ego resolution in the Divine Consciousness, to a different value. Might it be possible that, ultimately, when we don our own angel bodies, that they may melt into the mind of God like a bubble in a pan of boiling pudding rises to the surface, gives a cheerful "plop", and then sinks back down into the stew? The "plop" is the link between spirit and the physical world; having "plopped" do we take our little message back with us under the wave, and nestle in the bosom of the father?

Something like this idea is expressed in this quote from Emmanuel Swedenborg:

"Destruction was effected after visitation, for visitation always precedes."

On a related topic he says:

"The angels taken collectively are called heaven, for they constitute heaven; and yet that which makes heaven in general and in particular is the Divine that goes forth from the Lord and flows into the angels and is received by them. . . The Divine of the Lord in heaven is love, for the reason that love is receptive of all things of heaven, such as peace, intelligence, wisdom and happiness."]

Christianity
Early Christians inherited Jewish understandings of angels, which in turn may have been partly inherited from the Egyptians. In the early stage, the Christian concept of an angel characterized the angel as a messenger of God. Angels are creatures of good, spirits of love, and messengers of the savior Jesus Christ. Later came identification of individual angelic messengers: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel, and Satan/Lucifer. Then, in the space of little more than two centuries (from the third to the fifth) the image of angels took on definite characteristics both in theology and in art.

Many Christians regard angels as asexual and not belonging to either gender as they interpret Matthew 22:30 in this way. Angels are on the other hand usually described as looking like male human beings. Their names are also masculine. And although angels have greater knowledge than men, they are not omniscient, as Matthew 24:36 points out.

The earliest known representation of angels with wings is on the "Prince's Sarcophagus", discovered in the 1930s at Sarigüzel, near Istanbul, and attributed to the time of Theodosius I (379-395). From that period on, Christian art has represented angels mostly with wings, as in the cycle of mosaics in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major (432–440). Four- and six-winged angels, drawn from the higher grades of angels (especially cherubim and seraphim) and often showing only their faces and wings, are derived from Persian art and are usually shown only in heavenly contexts, as opposed to performing tasks on earth. They often appear in the pendentives of church domes or semi-domes. Saint John Chrysostom explained the significance of angels' wings:

"They manifest a nature's sublimity. That is why Gabriel is represented with wings. Not that angels have wings, but that you may know that they leave the heights and the most elevated dwelling to approach human nature. Accordingly, the wings attributed to these powers have no other meaning than to indicate the sublimity of their nature."

In terms of their clothing, angels, especially the Archangel Michael, were depicted as military-style agents of God and came to be shown wearing Late Antique military uniform. . . Other angels came to be conventionally depicted in long robes, and in the later Middle Ages they often wear the vestments of a deacon, a cope over a dalmatic; this costume was used especially for Gabriel in Annunciation scenes—for example the Annunciation in Washington by Jan van Eyck.



Latter Day Saints
Adherents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (generally referred to as "Mormons") view angels as the messengers of God. They are sent to mankind to deliver messages, minister to humanity, teach doctrines of salvation, call mankind to repentance, give priesthood keys, save individuals in perilous times, and guide humankind.

Latter Day Saints believe that angels are the spirits of humans who are deceased or who have yet to be born, and accordingly Joseph Smith taught that "there are no angels who minister to this earth but those that do belong or have belonged to it." As such, Latter Day Saints also believe that Adam (the first man) is now the archangel Michael, and that Gabriel lived on the earth as Noah. Likewise the Angel Moroni first lived in a pre-Columbian American civilization as the 5th-century prophet-warrior named Moroni.

Joseph Smith, Jr. described his first angelic encounter thus:

While I was thus in the act of calling upon God, I discovered a light appearing in my room, which continued to increase until the room was lighter than at noonday, when immediately a personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor.

He had on a loose robe of most exquisite whiteness. It was a whiteness beyond anything earthly I had ever seen; nor do I believe that any earthly thing could be made to appear so exceedingly white and brilliant....

Not only was his robe exceedingly white, but his whole person was glorious beyond description, and his countenance truly like lightning. The room was exceedingly light, but not so very bright as immediately around his person. When I first looked upon him, I was afraid; but the fear soon left me.

Islam
Angels (Arabic: ملائكة , Malāʾikah; Turkish: Melek) are mentioned many times in the Qur'an and Hadith. Islam is clear on the nature of angels in that they are messengers of God. They have no free will, and can do only what God orders them to do. An example of a task they carry out is that of testing individuals by granting them abundant wealth and curing their illness. Believing in angels is one of the six Articles of Faith in Islam.


Bahá'í Faith
In his Book of Certitude Bahá’u’lláh, founder of the Bahá’í Faith, describes angels as people who ‘have consumed, with the fire of the love of God, all human traits and limitations’, and have ‘clothed themselves’ with angelic attributes and have become ‘endowed with the attributes of the spiritual’. 'Abdu’l-Bahá describes angels as the ‘confirmations of God and His celestial powers’ and as ‘blessed beings who have severed all ties with this nether world’ and ‘been released from the chains of self’, and ‘revealers of God’s abounding grace’. The Bahá’í writings also refer to the Concourse on High, an angelic host, and the Maid of Heaven of Bahá’u’lláh's vision.

When I saw that my angel sermon had too much material in it for a single Sunday, I was forced to ask myself, "What was the point of today's presentation?" The real stuff comes next week, with Rudolf Steiner, but so far, today, I have not made any salient points about angels, other than to describe how they are regarded by different cultures, and to suggest that, on the cosmic continuum of material density, angel bodies area a ways down the list from physical bodies. Perhaps that is the incipient message after all.

Earlier this morning, I introduced the topic of angels as an "occult" subject of "hidden knowledge", implying that there is a kind of private, exclusive quality to it that requires you to have an "Official New Age Membership Card" to understand it. Then I turn around and point out that every religion you can name, nearly every philosophy, every culture not only acknowledges the existence of angels, but has elaborate theories as to the hierarchical organization and cosmic responsibilities of angels. I can't imagine how all this information came into being, unless angels are not so hidden after all.

The way God speaks must be qualitatively different for every person, but I'm sure that every one here has had the very real experience of talking to God. Does thinking that you are never actually in DIRECT contact with God, but always going through a medium, a filter, you might say--does that thin barrier compromise the quality of the communication? Does using a telephone to reach someone far away make the communication less valid? Dare we crave a MORE DIRECT contact with the Father? Maybe--later.

For now, I suggest that angels, just like every other article of the spiritual discipline, may become a part of our lives by PAYING ATTENTION. No matter whatever else you have to say about occultists, in general, you have to grant them this: they pay attention--they seek significant knowledge in subtle disguises, they search for sign, and make much of little. To be sure, as in any field of knowledge, this kind of fussing may end up obscuring the big picture, but nobody said that detailed understanding has to be a bad thing. Many times a noticed detail can lead us around a corner into whole nother world of big pictures.

Clearly, sensitivity to angels is one more discipline we can engage in as we try to develop an overall sensitivity to the superphysical. If we are not sharpening our skills in this area every day, we cannot be properly be said to be walking the spiritual path--what must the spiritual path be if not exploring elements of spirituality, hidden or not hidden, which bring us closer to God and to our realizing our spiritual destinies as we may. If our bodies become like angel bodies after death, then that makes angels like relatives--like cousins or brothers-in-law. I'm always willing to reach out to someone, especially if it is all in the family.

Let us pray: Jesus, Lord of all, thank you for your gifts of spirit which take so many forms we cannot count them. Thank you for lending us your heavenly telegraph, also the wings. Amen.