Tomorrow (Friday, September 29) is the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, traditionally known as “Michaelmas.” A group of us had a long discussion in our Thursday-morning series this week, roughly on the topic, “What’s the deal with angels, anyway???” I can’t say we came to any firm conclusions other than the fact that some of us have undeniably had experiences that we simply can’t explain any other way: moments in which someone or something reached out from beyond the expected and helped us, or spoke to us.

Such moments defy prose. So by way of a reflection this week, I simply offer you a poem from the priest and poet Malcolm Guite, entitled, “Michaelmas: a sonnet for St. Michael.”

Michaelmas gales assail the waning year,
And Michael’s scale is true, his blade is bright.
He strips dead leaves; and leaves the living clear
To flourish in the touch and reach of light.
Archangel bring your balance, help me turn
Upon this turning world with you and dance
In the Great Dance. Draw near, help me discern,
And trace the hidden grace in change and chance.
Angel of fire, Love’s fierce radiance,
Drive through the deep until the steep waves part,
Undo the dragon’s sinuous influence
And pierce the clotted darkness in my heart.
Unchain the child you find there, break the spell
And overthrow the tyrannies of Hell.

Click here to read more from Malcolm Guite about the poem, including an audio recording.

The beginning of the year often feels like a hurricane, to me.

I don’t mean that in the sense you might expect. The beginning of the year doesn’t feel like a hurricane because of the metaphorical whipping winds and drenching rain of a new school or program year, as the calm days of summer turn into a flurry of commitments and an empty calendar quickly fills up.

It feels like a Boston-bound hurricane, the kind where you simply don’t know what’s about to come.

There is a literal hurricane headed our way, of course. And as is often the case in the Northeast, it’s almost totally unclear what it’s going to bring. Will it pummel us full strength, bringing down trees onto power lines, overtopping seawalls and flooding busy streets? Or will it snooze on by, squeezing in a few more downpours at the end of the wettest summer in living memory?

How can you know? How can you prepare?

I don’t give natural-disaster advice. (Maybe people really should be buying up cartons of eggs and gallons of milk at the grocery store this week to get ready. Storms are apparently perfect omelet weather.) But as we face the unpredictable storm of another new year, I think that the best advice might be this: Be prepared. And be prepared to be unprepared.

I have no idea what this hurricane will bring, or not. I hope no new leaks spring for you during the storm; but I hope you have a bucket if they do. And I have no idea what this year will bring, for us as a church or for any of you as individuals. I hope that all our hopes for this year come true, and I’m sure that there are some surprises ahead. But I know that whatever happens next, we’ll be prepared to face it together.

Independence Day is one of only two national holidays set aside for observance in our church calendar. (Do you know the other one?*) And like all holy days, it comes with its own set of rituals and ceremonies, both inside and outside the church.

The civic and national observance of Independence Day is one with which we’re all familiar: flags and fireworks, hot dogs and parades, family gatherings and trips to the beach. Up in the small town in Maine where we’ll be this Fourth of July, the day is a joyful celebration of Americana: decorated antique pick-up trucks and kids on red-white-and-blue-streamered tricycles, slowly looping around the tiny downtown area in one of the world’s slowest parades. At our house, we’ll be making our usual “flag cake” with whipped-cream, strawberries, and blueberries in a geometrically-sketchy approximation of the Star-Spangled Banner.

The Church’s observance of Independence Day is a little different. It doesn’t quite contradict the patriotic celebrations; but you might say that at the very least, it complements them.

The Church is, after all, not an American church. Americans make up just a small minority of the global Body of Christ. But even our Episcopal Church isn’t an entirely-American institution: the Diocese of Haiti, after all, is our largest diocese, and the Episcopal Church includes dioceses and parishes in Cuba and Taiwan, Latin America and even Europe.

And so the Church’s readings and prayers for Independence Day carefully remind us that our nation is not the only community to which we belong; and patriotism is not the ultimate value in Christian ethics. “You have heard that it was said,” Jesus reminds us in the Gospel appointed or the day, “‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?” (Matthew 5:44-46) The ancient author Ben Sira adds a reminder of the impermanence of national life in the first reading for Morning Prayer: “Sovereignty passes from nation to nation on account of injustice and insolence and wealth… The Lord overthrows the thrones of rulers, and enthrones the lowly in their place. The Lord plucks up the roots of the nations, and plants the humble in their place.” (Ecclus. 10:8, 14-15)

The Bible, it turns out, is a bit skeptical about patriotism.

Or rather, the Bible is skeptical of patriotism that’s not tempered by love; of national pride that’s not tempered by humility. A love of country that manifests as love of the neighbor is good. A love of country that manifests as hatred of the enemy is not. A love of country that leads us to seek justice, so that the nation might become a more perfect union, is good; a love of country that leads to the arrogant boast that we are already perfect? Not so much.

No human institution is perfect—no church or country or family is unaffected by the deep imperfection of human nature—but imperfection and love, thank God, can coexist. So I’ll be eating my flag cake, this Fourth of July, and I’ll be praying that we may love our enemies, care for our neighbors, and give thanks for all the nations of the world and of our Church.

* It’s Thanksgiving Day! (To be fair, Labor Day also gets a prayer, but not an entry on the calendar or special readings.)

The story of our Eucharistic Prayer begins with the blessing of creation. It continues with the messiness of the Fall. And it culminates in the ongoing story of redemption. But there’s just one problem: the story it tells isn’t really our story at all.

Eucharistic Prayer 1 from Enriching Our Worship, the prayer we’ve been using for the last few weeks, reminds us of a millennia-long series of acts in which God rescues the people again and again.

It begins with Abraham, with whose family the narrative arc of the whole Bible really begins:

Through Abraham and Sarah
you called us into covenant with you.

It continues with the Exodus, the people’s years of wandering in the wilderness, and the generations of prophets who reminded recalled people’s attention to the need to love God and their neighbor:

You delivered us from slavery,
sustained us in the wilderness,
and raised up prophets
to renew your promise of salvation.

The prayer finally culminates in the life and death of Jesus:

Then, in the fullness of time,
you sent your eternal Word,
made mortal flesh in Jesus.
Born into the human family,
and dwelling among us,
he revealed your glory.
Giving himself freely to death on the cross,
he triumphed over evil,
opening the way of freedom and life.

What I notice in this prayer is that it’s not about us, but it is for us. We are not the characters of the story, but we have been invited to make it our own story. God didn’t actually call “us” into covenant; God called Abraham and his descendants, the people who would become known as Israel. God didn’t deliver “us” from slavery or sustain “us” in the wilderness; God rescued the descendants of those Israelites and guided them through the wilderness. God didn’t send prophets to “us,” but to the people who lived around them, with very concrete messages for their own days and times. The eternal Word of God became flesh in Jesus and dwelt among “us,” but only in the broadest, human sense.

The Bible is not a set of rules or laws to apply to our lives. It’s not a compendium of thoughtful sayings about the nature of the universe. If it were, it would be easy to understand its relevance for us. Universal truths, after all, are universal truths. But the Bible is not a rulebook. It’s not an abstract philosophy. It contains these things, at points. But mostly it’s a series of stories about other people, written in a language we don’t speak by people we don’t know in places most of us have never been and will never go.

But this strange old story has a mysterious power: it invites us into itself. When we say that Jesus “opened the way of freedom and life,” we mean many things. But one thing that we mean is that Jesus opens the way for all people to join the people of God. Jesus invites us to make their story our own. Jesus invites us to walk in their way of love, and to become part of the story ourselves, and the promises God made to those ancient, far-off figures become promises God makes to us.

Every week, our Eucharistic Prayer—whichever words—retells this whole story, giving thanks to God for things done long ago and far away. It reminds us of the good things God has done for God’s people in the past, and then, in Communion, it unites us to the Body of Christ, to the whole body of God’s faithful people before us, and sends us out to continuing living the story of God’s love, for generations to come.