To whom am I speaking when I say, “Our father, who art in the heavens”? Many of us will have spoken these words often without spending much thought on whom we have been addressing. Perhaps a visual image may pass quickly by, such as Michelangelo’s representation of the Father God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But again the image is not often followed through to its consequences.

The first aspect of this question that must be considered is the word “Our”. Whom do I include when I say “Our father”? Again, we face a question that we do not often ask. What happens if I simply say the words without thinking on whose behalf I am saying them?

There are several possible answers to this question, and each of them may be the correct one at different times. The first is that I may be speaking for myself only. If this is true, then I can only reach that spiritual being who is specifically related to me. In traditional nomenclature, this is my angel, or, which comes to the same thing with slightly different emphasis, my guardian angel. It is a good thing to meet and address one’s guardian angel, but in a prayer with the scope of the Lord’s Prayer there is a great risk to us if we cannot reach further than to our angel. At this level we remain isolated in our relationship with the spiritual world and may develop a self-centered spiritual life. To be thus cut off would lead us to become less than human beings. We can therefore recognize the great wisdom in the fact that the Lord’s Prayer begins with the words “Our father”, and not “My father”. At least to a large extent we are protected from the first danger.

The second possibility is that I include into the word “Our” not just myself but all of the people with whom I associate myself. How far I reach depends on how large I can make the circle. It could be as narrow as my family, or it could reach out to include all the people with whom I regularly associate, be it in my place of work, my home town, or my local church. It can extend to people I have never met, most commonly to people who share my religion or nationality. Out of such an attitude I will be addressing that spiritual being who stands in relationship to the group of people whom I have included in the circle with me. These spiritual beings are the archangels, who according to their stature take responsibility for smaller or larger groups of people. Here also there is a risk. I cannot fall into the egotism of “My father”, but there is the very real danger of sectarianism or nationalism. It can be even more significant whom I do not include into “Our” as whom I do include. And from such an exclusion it is only a short step into a war where both sides use the prayer against each other.

The third possibility is that I include all of humanity on earth as I say “Our father”. Now I am addressing the spiritual being who is responsible for the guidance of humanity in the present time. This is the being we know by the name of Michael, one of the time spirits or archai. When we reach this level we can come into a relationship with the spiritual world which is much less likely to cause harm in the world. There does remain a small risk that we will not be able to find a right relationship to what comes before or after us.

This is overcome in the next possibility, which is to include into one’s circle also those human beings who are in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Now our prayer connects us beyond the spiritual beings of the third hierarchy to those of the second hierarchy, to begin with, with the exusiai or elohim. And a further step, including not only human beings but all of the created world when we say “Our father”, brings our prayer to the first hierarchy, to the thrones, cherubim and seraphim.

The image then is this: I speak the words “Our father who art n the heavens”. I speak from a point which I must imagine as the center of the world, but I include into the word “our” all of creation. I feel my kinship with all creation — we have the same father; we have come from the same creator. Through having thus overcome all egotism I can address the place where I may at last find my true I.

What it comes to in the end is this: grasp the power which streams to you in the experience of Christ in the soul and in the powerful regency of his pure spiritual strength.

Put on the power of God as one puts on full armor, so that you may stand against the well-aimed attacks of the adversary. For our struggle is not to fight against powers of flesh and blood, but against

spirit beings mighty in the stream of time,
against spirit beings powerful in the molding of earth substance,
against cosmic powers whose darkness rules the present time,
against spirits who carry evil into the realms of the spiritual world.

Therefore take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand your ground on the day when evil unfolds its greatest strength, and victoriously withstand it.

Stand firm, then, girded with the truth, like a warrior firmly girded. Connect yourself with all in the world as is justified in the spiritual world, and this connection with the spirit will protect you like a strong breastplate.

And may Peace stream through you, down to your feet, so that on your path you spread peace, as the message that comes from the realm of the angels.

In all your deeds have trust in God. This trust will be like a mighty shield; with it you can quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Take into your thinking the certainty of Christ’s healing deed. It will protect your head like a helmet.

And the spirit, which has become living in you, you shall grasp as one grasps a sharp sword. The sword of the spirit is the working of the Word of God.

May this armor clothe you in all your prayers and supplications, so that in the right moment you raise yourself in prayer to the spirit, and at the same time practice wakefulness in inner loyalty.

Feel yourself united in prayer with all other bearers of the spirit-also with me, Paul, so that the power of the word will be given to me when I am to courageously bring the knowledge of that holy mystery which lives in the message of the gospel.

“The Revelation to John”, as a book, has a clear structure. It has a clearly defined beginning and end, as last week we have seen.² John’s spiritual experiences, his visions told in this book, are the result of “being in the Spirit”. This happened to him four times.

“In the Spirit”

John first was “in the Spirit” on the Lord’s Day, the day of the Sunday Eucharist, hearing behind him a loud voice. Turning to see the voice speaking to him, in his first vision he perceives “seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man” (1:10-13). In the liturgical setting of the seven burning candles Christ who rose from the dead appears to him as “One like a Son of Man”, identifying himself as “the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (1:17-18). Having already been told to write to the seven churches, he then writes the words spoken to him, addressed to the angel of the church in Ephesus, in Smyrna, in Pergamum, in Thyatira, in Sardis, in Philadelphia and in Laodicea – seven churches in Asia Minor.

Later, maybe much later (as an “after this” indicates), John sees in heaven an open door (4:1). Perceiving this, he hears the voice which had already spoken to him, and is challenged to “Come up hither, and I will show you….” what is to take place “after this”. This is his second vision, beginning with what we will call the “First Throne Vision”. At once being “in the Spirit”, in heaven John sees a throne and one seated on the throne: a center of power and of movement, of various beings and of continuous glorification (4:2ff). But who is worthy to open the scroll in the right hand of him who is seated on the throne, or to look in it? No one is found to be worthy, neither in heaven nor on earth or under the earth (5:1ff). But now John is led to perceive “a Lamb standing” in the midst of the throne and its beings, “as if sacrificed” (5:5-6). This Lamb, quintessence of temple worship and sacrifice whom John the Baptist, personified in Jesus, had seen coming to him (Jn 1:29), indeed is able to open the scroll and break its seals. Now the apocalyptic process begins to unfold: by the opening of seven seals, the blowing of seven trumpets (but the sounding of seven thunders is sealed) and the pouring out of the seven bowls full of the wrath of God.

Twice more John is called with the words: “Come, I will show you…” by one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls. The first time he is “carried away in the Spirit” into a wilderness, to be shown the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet, Babylon the great – her doom and the doom of those over whom she had dominion (17:3ff); this happens between two Throne Visions. The second time he is called after the last Throne Vision, in the Final Vision, once more to be “carried away in the Spirit” unto a high mountain, to be shown “The Bride, the wife of the Lamb” – the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, from God (21:9ff). Both times, it seems, it needs an extra effort of spirit for him to perceive the results of the apocalyptic process in the destinies of these two “women”, so much each other’s opposite.

It’s somewhat misleading to speak of a “Second Coming” of Christ, of Christ “returning” or “coming again”. Such expressions go back to words of the two angels who appear when the disciples have seen Christ going into heaven, when he was “being lifted up”, a cloud taking him out of their sight. At this ascension, the angels become visible to them, standing by them and asking why they are standing there looking into heaven. “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

“He will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven.” You saw him going from you – you will see him coming to you. In essence, this Ascension experience has to do with their “seeing”, their ability to perceive; it doesn’t say anything about Christ departing and returning. Their eyes can’t follow him anymore now that he is carried up into heaven because “a distance” has grown between them, as Luke puts it in his gospel (Lk 24:51).² Once more, it will be a question of human perception when “a cloud will bring him into your sight” – as we might paraphrase and conclude what these angels say. He has not really gone away – he has been “seen to go”, and in the same way he will be “seen to come”. It’s a question of perception, of awareness even.

In the Gospels, in the words of Christ himself, in times of earthly and also of cosmic disturbances, there will “appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven”, and people on earth “will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven” (in Matthew’s version, 24:30). In this way, Christ answers a question about his parousia, which is Greek for his “presence”, his “arrival”, his “coming”, and about the close of the age (24:3). – Would it be possible that Christ speaks about the “coming of the Son of man” when he speaks about the way he himself will once more enter human perception, human awareness, as anyhow he is “with you always, to the close of the age” (28:20)? As “lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west”, as “were the days of Noah” when “the flood came and swept them all away”, so will be this presence, the awareness of the presence of the Son of man (24:27 and 37-39) by human beings able to see him.

The “Son of Man” in his coming: are these indeed the words Christ uses when He wants to signal that human beings are starting to become aware of His cosmic presence – of Him who had become the “God of man” through death and resurrection? For many of the apostles, his contemporaries, this coming was almost at hand, was “coming” soon”, in the near future; in line with the general apocalyptic mood of the century. Yes, soon indeed he will be with us again! – that’s what they felt.

This urgency was for instance felt by Paul when he invoked an encompassing apocalyptic picture: “We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord will himself descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord” (I Thess 4:15-17). Or by James, who uses an amazing picture of preparation: “Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receives the early and the late rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (5:7-8). “Establishing your hearts”: this would mean preparing your hearts by “strengthening”, by “buttressing”. The Greek word, for instance, is used about the way the abyss is there between the living and the dead, in the story of the rich man and poor Lazarus (Luke 16:26), or of the way Christ “set” his face to go steadfastly to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). – Let your hearts receive both the early and the late rain!

Our title has been taken from what even in The Christian Community we call “The Creed”, although we don’t use this specific word to introduce contents in which we would “believe” in the old-fashioned sense, the word “credo” (“I believe”) lacking at the very beginning. What we find in this modern version of the Christian “Creed” outlines in nine sentences, as simple matters of fact, our human spiritual and physical setting in the world. After the crucial middle sentence which describes the Resurrection, there follows the description of Christ’s activity in the world, ongoing since His resurrection, as “the Lord of the heavenly forces upon earth”, now that He “lives as the fulfiller of the fatherly deeds of the ground of the world”. The following sentence says that, “for the advancement of the world”, in time He will unite “with those whom, through their bearing, He can wrest from the death of matter”. Here we find the background for this Michaelmas talk.

In these words the future connection of Christ with human beings is being described. Such human beings for whom Christ has become an inner reality will, according to the beginning of the last sentence of the Creed, by virtue of their own present connection with Christ be able to do their part in preparing this future connection. This will happen in the setting of the one church “to which all belong who are aware of the health-bringing power of the Christ”. It’s this church in which communities may feel united whose members ”feel the Christ within themselves”. This inner connection with Christ constituting communities will be an expression of His “health-bringing power”, and eventually will help to overcome the death within our material world. To this end, these human beings will be able to overcome “the sickness of sin” which defines their physical being; they will receive (we might even say “achieve”, as their own activity plays a part herein) the “continuance” of their human being as well as “the preservation of their life, destined for eternity”.

Between those sentences in the Creed, speaking of Christ’s future connection with human beings, as well as of the future connection of human beings with Christ, we find a sentence which puts to rest a millennium-old problem in the church. This is the question whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father only (as the Eastern Churches say) or from Father and Son both (with the “and of the Son”, the “filioque” of the Western Churches). The modern Creed here modifies its earlier use of “holy Spirit” when speaking of the birth of Jesus, and now speaks of the healing Spirit – the healing Spirit which is working through Christ.

This means that, when thinking about the “advancement of the world”, we must think of human beings “wrested from the death of matter” by the Christ who himself rose from the dead. It’s through Him, the Lord of the heavenly forces on earth, the “healing Spirit” can work. Human beings, aware of the health-bringing power of Christ, united in one church, will also be able to hope for and work towards the renewal of their whole being.

During the last festival of the Christian year, the festival of Michael, what is expressed in these central statements of the Creed comes together. Now Michael, the Archangel, calls on us to become ever more conscious of this life bringing, life sustaining deed of Christ: that more and more we make it of our life – divining it in a higher way. Responding to his call, we human beings turn to him with our heart, in order that the healing Spirit may work in us.