Do you believe in angels?

Sermon for the observance of the Feast of Ss Michael and All Angels, Sunday 28 September 2025, preached by the Revd Canon Prof Sue Gillingham

Have you ever noticed how many angels there are in this church? I’ve counted over thirty, and I’m not referring to members of the congregation, but to images of angels on altar frontals and banners, on this pulpit, and, most prominently of all, high up on the north side mosaics. Perhaps I can challenge the younger ones amongst us to look round the church and count out the angels after the service? I’m willing to give a prize of this chocolate angel for the person who can find the number closest to mine!

The Feast of St Michael and All Angels has marked the beginning of the academic year in Oxford since the Middle Ages. It raises the question: what do we believe about angels? Later in the Mass the celebrant will sing ‘Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven,. we proclaim your great and glorious name,. for ever praising you and saying…’ and the choir will sing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ (the Sanctus). The assumption is that at this holy point in time we are all singing with a heavenly choir of angels. Do we believe it?

All the angels in this church have wings. Indeed, if you were asked to draw an angel, my guess is that you’d sketch a figure with at least two wings. However, this doesn’t correspond with descriptions of angels in the Bible. There they are so human-looking they are often mistaken as humans. They walk and talk. In the Hebrew they’re almost always called ‘messengers’ - a word used for human mediators, too.

In Genesis, shortly before our reading about Jacob, we hear how Abraham encountered three messengers who appear at his tent. They accept his hospitality, so they can apparently eat and drink. Their role is to promise Abraham and Sarah that they will have a son in their old age. They are never referred to as angels. They certainly don’t have wings. But yet in Christian art, these visitors are depicted as three angels, with wings. The famous icon by Andrei Rublev presents each of the three as the Trinity, and all have wings. Another well-known painting by Marc Chagall paints them with white and gold wings, sitting somewhat uncomfortably at a table with Abraham looking on.

Later in the Old Testament other heroes of faith, such as Lot, Jacob, Gideon, and Manoah, encounter a single figure, not three. As in Genesis they’re usually called, in Hebrew, ‘a messenger of the Lord’. They appear and disappear quite suddenly, and they are not immediately recognized as coming from God. There is never any mention of wings. Indeed, that’s why it’s hard for them to be recognized as an angel. They seem human in form.

Throughout the book of Daniel, these figures have a prominent role. When Daniel is let out of a den of lions, unscathed, he says that a ‘messenger of God’ had protected him. In the last half of the Book of Daniel other mysterious beings appear and disappear. They are variously called ‘one like a human in appearance’, ‘a holy one’ and ‘a man clothed in linen’. One of them is actually given a name: he is ‘the man called Gabriel’. At the end of Daniel another of these figures is given a name: ‘Michael’ who is called a prince, and protector of God’s people. We will come back to Michael later. Again no mention, as yet, of angelic wings.

Gabriel appears again in the New Testament, at the beginning of Luke, announcing to Mary the birth of Jesus. The language here is Greek and the specific word ‘angel’ is now used. Later in Luke unnamed angels sing to the shepherds at the time of Jesus’ birth. In Matthew an unnamed angel appears to Joseph. Other unnamed angels appear once again at Jesus’s death, explaining Jesus’ resurrection to the bewildered disciples. Unnamed angels also play a key role in the early part of the Book of Acts, for example helping Peter and later Paul escape from prison. Thus far only Gabriel is mentioned by name, and that just once. In the books of Jude and Revelation we hear of Michael again, where, as in Daniel, he is fighting for God’s people. He’s the only angel in the entire Bible whose location is in heaven not on earth.

But not one one single messenger or angel is described as having wings. In fact, it wasn’t until the fourth century that Christians started to draw angels on tombstones – with wings. I well remember a fifth-century mosaic in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where again Abraham’s three visitors all have wings. Perhaps this was to imitate the Roman god Mercury, known in Greek as Hermes. It is more likely that angels had to be presented as being different from human saints and martyrs: their wings indicate they have a heavenly origin, whilst saints and martyrs, having suffered intense persecution were taken from earth up to heaven after their death. So heavenly angels had to have wings; earthly saints and martyrs did not. From then on, through to the Renaissance period and to pre-Raphaelite times up to the present day, angels always had wings.

There is a good deal of evidence of angels without wings appearing to people today. For example, Bishop Graham Tomlin tells us the true story of a soldier on an army exercise on Mount Kenya whose climbing partner fell to his death from a sheer rock face. This was a lonely and inaccessible part of the world, and the soldier found himself trapped on the ledge and totally alone, facing death himself. Out of absolutely nowhere a climber appeared, moved onto the ledge, tied a rope to his harness and lowered him down the rockface. He disappeared up the rock face, never to be seen again. Who was this? Was it an angel without wings?

I have a friend who was once trying to get onto a crowded train on a busy London line, encumbered with heavy luggage. Absolutely out of nowhere a stranger wearing a white suit appeared, and gently but firmly helped her to get on board and then stowed away her heavy case. He stayed on the train until she needed to disembark. Again he took her luggage and helped her off the train. When on the platform she turned to thank him: but there was absolutely no sign of him, white suit and all. Who was this? Was it an angel without wings?

There must be one or two in this congregation who have had experiences like this or know of others who have had them. Someone we never know appears out of the blue, saves us from an intractable situation, or warns us of a forthcoming danger, or perhaps just gives us a sense of peace, then disappears and we never see them again. Angels without wings… It could all be coincidence: but as Psalm 34 has it, ‘The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.’ A guardian angel, human or divine: this world is a mysterious places, so who knows how many of us have sensed the presence of a guardian angel?

But what about angels with wings? These are the ones whose carved and painted presence in our church reminds us of heavenly realities: they are those whose praise we share when during the Mass the choir sings the Sanctus. These are the ones which include Gabriel, Michael, and also Uriel and Raphael: they are all depicted with wings in the frieze above us. These are the ones who abide in heaven and from there they protect us, directing our worship away from them and towards the mystery of God the Holy Trinity.

We are still almost five weeks away from All Saints Day and then All Souls Day, but during this long stretch of the season of Trinity, the Feast of St Michael and all Angels is a reminder that there is often a thin veil between time and eternity. Our last hymn, ‘Ye holy angels bright’, will make much of this transition from angels coming from heaven to earth and saints and martyrs being translated from earth to heaven.

So angels come in two types, each challenging us to accept the presence of God in our midst. They may be quite ordinary, human in appearance, helping us to accept that God can and will protect us when danger is near: angels on earth and within time, and without wings. Or they may be extraordinary, semi-divine in appearance, helping us to join in the praise of God the Trinity in heaven: angels in heaven, outside time, and with wings.

So this Sunday challenges us: whether with or without wings, do you believe in angels? In the words of our next hymn ‘Angel Voices ever Singing’:

Thou who art beyond the farthest
mortal eye can scan,
can it be that Thou regardest
songs of sinful man?
Can we feel that Thou art near us
and wilt hear us? Yea, we can…

Now unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be ascribed, as is most justly due, all honour, power, might, majesty, and dominion, for ever and ever; Amen.