22nd October 2025
MORE ON ANGELS.
Angels feature rather more in Scripture than in Baptist thinking, but most of our Christmas carols feature the agency of angels, who fulfil a number of roles:
- Voices of praise and adoration in the presence of God, including cherubim and seraphim.
- Messengers, of whom Gabriel is the most celebrated, appearing first in the Old Testament as the interpreter of Daniel’s dreams, but in the gospels announcing the births of John the Baptist and then of Jesus.
- Spiritual forces charged with the protection of human life [Psalm 91, 11-12], a verse used by Satan to tempt Jesus to undertake unnecessary risk. Nevertheless here is the source for the idea of us each having a guardian angel.
But the work of angels in Christian history is less easily identified. Here Hebrews 13,2-3 is helpful: ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality; by doing this some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those in prison, as if you were there with them, and those who are being maltreated, for you are vulnerable too.’
This is the inspiration behind a statue that Pope Francis had erected in St Peter’s Square in 2019, the first addition on that location for 400 years. Entitled ‘Angels unawares’, it depicts a great cluster of migrants and refugees – for example Jews escaping Nazi Germany, a Syrian fleeing civil war in his country, Poles escaping a communist government, and many other examples of suffering humanity. At the back of the images are a set of angel wings suggesting that these migrants could be angels in our midst.
In church on Michaelmas Sunday, the church walls were covered with pictures of angels drawn by children in our village school. Wings were everywhere, but perhaps jeans and sweaters ought also to have been in the drawings, depicting down-to-earth modern angels exercising compassion within an all-too-often cruel world.
Angels in our modern world may come as those who need our help, or equally in the guise of those providing that help.
John Briggs