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Those Hindering Cosmic Powers

18th Sunday : 3 August 2014  : Romans 8: 35, 37-39

At a death bed a priest who is giving the last rites will sometimes use a very traditional prayer that goes like this:

Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul–Go in the name of Angels and Archangels; in the name of Thrones and Dominations; in the name of Princedoms and Powers; and in the name of Cherubim and Seraphim, go forth!

All very impressive language, but what does it actually mean? Thrones and dominations, princedoms and powers, cherubim and seraphim are the different sorts of angels and heavenly beings in their ranks and types. This is a way of thinking about reality that assumes an unseen spiritual world that is just the other side of this world of everyday living. With it goes the kind of spirituality that talks about each of us having a guardian angel who has been on the job protecting and guiding us since we were a tot. It goes hand in hand with the kind of approach to worship that thinks that if we had eyes to see we could discern the heavenly host gathered around this altar uniting their voices with ours to sing God’s praises – a kind of alternative, invisible and very superior church choir.

Those who take the unseen spiritual world and its inhabitants seriously will want to make sure that they are on our side, working on our behalf, or at the least benignly taking a mild interest in us, and letting us get on with our lives unhindered by any invisible, unhelpful interference. And that is the snag with this approach to religious reality. Just suppose there are malignant cosmic powers on the other side of our temporal world actively doing all they can to make things difficult for us, and bringing at times some frightening evil phenomena into our lives. I find it very interesting that in a world that is supposed to have been conquered by the forces of logical, rational, scientific modernity it is a fact that horror movies make so much money for the film industry. In particular films about demon possession and exorcism remain perennially fascinating to unchurched audiences who are supposed to have given up on all that religious nonsense.

At Baptism Services in the Anglican Church in New Zealand the parents and God parents are asked:

Do you renounce all evil influences and powers that rebel against God – to which they reply – I renounce all evil?

That is a pretty tame version of what used to take place at that point in the baptismal liturgy, and what is in fact still there in Eastern Orthodox baptisms. "Do you reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness," used to be the question – and a lengthy prayer of exorcism was then recited over the child to cast out any demons that might be around in its life. Our liturgical revisers seem to have thought that this was, in the words of the counter culture, too much of a heavy trip.

But can we dismiss this rather full-blooded approach to spiritual reality? Isn’t this what St Paul was getting at in those famous words that are often read out at funeral Services:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What Paul is driving at is that we should never allow the experience of suffering or isolation to discourage us because the immense spiritual vitality of Jesus Christ surrounds us and connects with us even when it seems that we are on our own in the midst of a sea of troubles. The very language that Paul uses assumes that those unseen hindering cosmic powers are there all right, doing their worst, but we should remain unimpressed by them because Christ has the power to see them off. What is more they are hollow creatures, lacking any substance or positive spiritual content to bind their victims to them in an enduring attraction.

I have never met an angel, nor consciously seen a demon at work in a human being, or felt myself to be under demonic attack. But then I have lived a relatively sheltered life, and have never been in those parts of the Third World where animist cultures make demon possession an evident reality. What I have noticed though is how often troubled people, or depressed people, seem to perceive themselves to be the victims of a larger reality than their own personal world. Everything is against me, whatever I try to do goes wrong, my past is full of mistakes and failures that fill me with unhappy memories, and lets face it I am jinxed. These are the self- defeating messages they seem to repetitively play to themselves. So any attempt to initiate a conversation in which they might factually assess their situation, and then start some simple problem solving initiatives meets with what I call a grump, grump, grump response. My situation is depressing, nothing will work, and I have just got to put up with it.

A friend of mine has worked in the field of addictions counselling for a number of years. She tells me about the different approaches that are used in different cultures. In western cultures the approach often is – take responsibility for your situation, get your act together, become an empowered autonomous individual who takes pride in their achievements. In indigenous cultures addiction counselling can place the sufferer in the middle of a circle and then says, consider all the allies and positive influences you have going for you as you look around the outer spokes of this wheel – your immediate family, your extended whanau, your friends, your ancestors, the unseen spiritual agencies who wish you well – you are never alone, you don’t have to do this on your own, this company of well wishes will carry you forward in your walk back to health and sobriety, and sanity.

This approach, as I understand it, is close to what Paul is talking about this morning. The angels and archangels, the thrones and dominations, the princedoms and powers, the cherubim and seraphim are part of a heavenly hierarchy, instituted by God, which is a radiant display that reaches out from God throughout the whole of the created order and draws it back into union with him, to quote Andrew Louth. We are not on our own in our struggles and sufferings. This enrapturing heavenly company carry us forward. And as a result of our active prayer life, and our whole hearted participation in the life of the Church, we place ourselves under the mandate of heaven in such a way that a remarkable number of coincidences come into play to move us away from a grump, grump, grump approach to life.

Lets be clear that God and his angels are not operating in our world like a magician who is in total control of things. The results of that would be an impoverished world that would lack the drama and the diversity and the adventure and the beauty that our human strivings produce. God is expecting us to get off our backsides and to exert ourselves with courage and energy. But we are not on our own in our strivings. And this isn’t a world of blind contingency and chance.