Warfare in Heaven
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today, the first Sunday in Lent, we reflect on temptation. It’s such a fitting topic as we enter Lent, and begin to focus on our fallibility, our mortality, our less-than-great choices, our attitudes and justifications, our good and not-so-good habits of the heart, our sins. All these things we address because we are getting ready to come home to God.
We hear today two very different stories about temptation, one that highlights the human side of things, and the other that highlights the divine.
First Adam and Eve encounter the figure of the tempter—the serpent. Notice what the story does: it personifies temptation, locating it in a talking snake. It says, in so many words, that evil is a very real thing, and is as close to us as the ground we walk on and the trees we harvest.
Humans seemingly have always identified evil with reptiles, especially snakes. They remind us of our lower natures, the parts of us driven by the needs of the body and the insistent cravings of the reptilian brain.
Whether or not we believe that there was a talking serpent who tempted humankind to commit the first sin, I hope we can all understand how the story of the fall of Adam and Eve makes clear for us how vulnerable we are to temptation and how easily we fall from our best intentions—all the time. The story reminds us that we are so susceptible to doing and thinking things that aren’t by their nature good—things like betraying others at work and within our marriages, lying, backstabbing, stubbornly refusing to forgive, and so many others.
And we engage in these behaviors because at the time we do them, it feels good and justified, despite what we know. To quote again the indomitable Mae West, “To err is human, but it feels so divine.”
Now, fast forward to the gospel today and its story of temptations. Again the presence of evil is personified in a character called Satan. Satan, according to Judaic tradition, was a rebellious angel cast out of God’s presence. Way-back-when, Satan was a kind of heavenly “devil’s advocate” figure—we see him in the Book of Job. But over time the figure of Satan became more and more dark and more and more identified with evil and temptation. This is the Satan we see here in today’s gospel.
He tempts Jesus to sin in three very specific ways, ways that humans find very seductive. These are, first, temptations to use power for one’s own comfort alone, second, to test God’s protection, and third, to trade one’s very soul for material comfort. And we see that each time, with each temptation, Satan craftily uses the words of Scripture in his attempt to make Jesus fall, and Jesus counters him with more words of Scripture. Jesus in a way, by not using his divine power to aggrandize himself, paradoxically demonstrates instead his divine power in humility and obedience.
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Now I invite us to take a look at the Xerox of the painting called “The Temptation of Christ” by the early 14th Century Italian painter Duccio. Jesus and the Evil One are larger than life, standing over the town, which was painted to look like the town of Siena. The buildings are that warm pink-ochre that one sees in Tuscany and the light really warms up the scene.
Jesus is portrayed in vivid colors, his robe a brilliant red, the color of suffering. His outer cloak is deep purple, the color of royalty. Satan is all black, looking very burnt and singed from the fires of hell. His feet are skinny bird claws and his body is scrawny. He is about as ugly and as scary as you can imagine.
Both Jesus and Satan tower over the setting in Tuscany. Jesus is standing regally and gesturing to Satan to get out. And behind Jesus are two angels, ready to take care of him. I invite you to go to Google Images to see this in color. It is quite dramatic.
Now I’d like us to use our imaginations and enter into the painting. Do you see that we might consider Jesus and the Evil One to be on a different plane from the earthly town below them? This representation evokes the Judeo-Christian theological concept of warfare in the heavens that determines the course of events on earth. Now, what do I mean by this? It’s surely not something we talk about very often.
Well the first allusion to the idea of warfare on the spiritual plane is in the late OT Book of Daniel. We see Daniel visited, in chapter 10 of the book, by a helper messenger or angel. The angel tells him he would have been there sooner except that he was delayed for three weeks in battle with the Prince of Persia, until the Archangel Michael came along to lend assistance.
So--here’s the assumption: every nation, and perhaps every concern on earth, has its own angel who’s working to advance its cause over and against the fallen angels. To bring it to the personal level, some early theologians speculated that each person has a guardian angel, who protects that person from fallen angels—the demons— that may seek to do the person harm or bring temptation.
There are other books in the Bible that allude to this kind of thing: see the apocryphal book of Tobit and also the 12th chapter of the book of Revelation. Current novels that take up the thread include the pulp novel “This Present Darkness” and the newer novel called “Angelology.” They are pretty sensational and totally speculative, and in places their theology is abominable. But there IS one piece of learning we might take away from these books and ideas, and incorporate into our spiritual and earthly lives.
Think of our own lives, our struggles with temptation to do evil and our struggle to choose a better way. Might our struggles mirror something happening on our behalf in the spiritual world—struggles between our guardians and other angels—angels of evil?
Think what’s happening in the world right now. Is it so far-fetched to imagine the Angel of Freedom struggling with the Angel of Totalitarianism or Megalomania in present-day Libya? Is it far-fetched to imagine an Angel of Chaos struggling with an Angel of Succor in Japan right now? Is it too far fetched to imagine a struggle of angels over the protection of the earth from global climate change? Is it too far-fetched to imagine spiritual struggles between fallen angels of materialism and angels of generosity, or fallen angels of exploitation and angels of freedom?
Even if this sounds, and perhaps is, far-fetched, it’s important to know that this concept of struggle on a different plane is rooted in the Bible. But it’s more important to know our role in the struggle.
Our role is to engage in prayer, hopefully to energize God or to rouse God to action on behalf of the better outcomes. [See, for example, The Powers That Be by Walter Wink for an exposition of this idea.] This is what the ancients tried to do, to attend to these very real situations that are in such need of help from above and at times to wake God up and shake God up to come and help.
Let us pray that the Evil One may be resisted and defeated. Pray for an end to the killing and for the gift of freedom to Libya and other struggling areas in Africa and the Middle East. Pray for the healing of the earth and an end to the exploitation of people of all stations and genders. Pray for healing for the people of Japan. And above all pray for help in resisting temptation, whether it is delivered to us by a reptilian creature or maybe even by someone we love.
We end this sermon with a passage from the fifth chapter of the first letter of Peter, written to strengthen and cheer us in the struggle. Peter writes,
“Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To God be the power forever and ever. Amen.” [1 Peter 5:8-11]
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