“Behold I will send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee unto the place which I have prepared.”

(Exodus 23:20)

“ . . the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it.”

(Matthew 28:2)

Suppose you found a strange man on his hands and knees at midnight crawling around on the sidewalk in front of your house?  Suppose you asked him, “What are you doing?” and he replies: “I’m looking for my car keys.”  Suppose you, with sudden Samaritan compassion dropped on your knees beside him and joined in the search for his lost car keys, asking: “Are you sure you lost them here?”  Suppose this imaginary midnight crawler said to you: “Oh, no.  I lost them on the parking lot at Seessels on Raleigh, but it is so much easier and closer and safer for me at this time of night to look for them here.”

This unlikely story is the best illustration I know of the way a great many of us are treating our most grievous and pressing personal and corporate problems at this very late hour.  For, as James Stewart once observed, “on this strange journey of life that we are all traveling from the cradle to the grave, the most crucial question that concerns every one of us is our resources for the road.  Are we properly equipped for such an incalculable journey?  Can we be sure we can hold out to the end?  Have we the survival kit ready that we really need?”

Sometimes some of us find ourselves looking for something more vital to our continued journey than lost car keys.  Is it a dear companion we have lost, or a business, or a fortune?  Or a crop of cotton or soy beans?  Or, is it something more valuable: a lost reputation, or lost self-esteem, or a lost confidence in the institutions of society, or lost confidence in our nation’s future?

Well, are we looking for what we’ve lost, the resources we think we need to carry on in life, just where the light is better and the situation is more safe and pleasant, or are we looking where there is the most realistic hope we shall find what we need?

See some of the popular places people are now picking, the brighter and safer places, to look for their resources for the road.  How many there are who have traveled on with the bland assurance: “Don’t worry about anything.  Uncle will take care of you.  Old age assistance, Medicare, crop insurance, social security – we’ve got it all.  Through the omni-competent state we will be taken care of in all our emergencies.  Indeed the government has turned our emergencies into mere contingencies.”  But confidence in “Uncle” has recently been breaking down.  All social systems, we are discovering, are fallible.  Human need is insatiable, especially when greed runs wild.  “Uncle” grows more feeble by the minute.  So that place which used to seem so bright and fair a spot to look for the needed resources for life’s pilgrimage becomes less and less likely a place to find what we need.

So also is that highly respected place honored by educated, cultured modern people – the inner resources of natural man.  “Don’t worry about the road ahead – the unexpected emergencies, the trials and opportunities, the things that beat you down or demand super-human, superlative spurts of speed and stamina.  Don’t worry, you’ll get your second wind when you need it.  It will come automatically.  Human beings are by nature remarkably resilient.”

Of course, there’s great truth here, but also diabolical deception.  No doubt there are these psychic energies in every one of us.  But there are also, as Karl Menninger, the celebrated Kansas psychiatrist, pointed out, these two precariously balanced drives in each one of us: the will to death and the will to survive.  And the increasing rate of suicides among us, especially among the young, ought to alert us to the danger of confining our search for the resources we need for traveling the road of our pilgrimage to the locale of our pitiful, frail, inner strength of the human psyche.

Need I say to you, who have come to this place on Easter Sunday, that the message of the Christian faith is that the spot for every one of us to look for the resources we really need to see us through to the end of this precarious journey is not the hidden treasure of personal power, nor even the humanized institutions of society?  The Christian faith does not deny the amazing untapped resources of the human body, mind and psyche.  The Christian faith does not despise or demean the powerful protection and support of social institutions.  The Christian faith simply says that you can do, and must do something far better than trust in your own natural resources and inner light.

As James Stewart puts it: “Natural resources, why man, the Christian faith assures you that you can be super naturalized, and it is no inner light you are left to walk by, but an outer light, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, glorious as an army with banners.”

John Baillie carried through life, as his earliest recollection, the memory of sitting on his father’s knee in their Scottish Highland day-nursery, and responding to his father’s question for the Shorter Catechism, “What is man’s chief end?”  by giving the Catechism’s answer to that question, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

“So”, said John Baillie, “I grew up understanding and believing that only in the everlasting enjoyment of God’s presence could my life ever reach its proper and divinely appointed fulfillment.”

This is what the Biblical doctrine of angels mean:  that God makes it possible for people to live their lives in the presence of God – enjoying God forever.  The word “angel” means “messenger,” or “envoy”, a “messenger from God;” help from beyond; a visitation from the supernatural world. . . that world which is never far away, but always pressing in upon us.” (J. Stewart – The Wind of the Spirit)

In the Book of Exodus, after God has called his covenant people unto Himself and given them through Moses the terms for keeping a covenant relationship with Him, God nerves them for the hazardous journey ahead by promising: “Behold, I will send an angel before you, to keep you in the way, and to bring you into the place I have prepared for you.”

After Jesus had fasted and been tempted in the wilderness, weak in body and troubled in soul, the gospel narrative states that: “then the devil left him and angels appeared and waited on him.” (Matthew 4:11 N.E.B.)

And again, the gospel records that on the night in the Garden, when Jesus struggled in prayer on the eve of his crucifixion, “there appeared an angel from heaven, strengthening him.” (Luke 22:43)

And this morning we read from the Resurrection narrative that when the first disciples arrived at the tomb, they discovered “that an angel of the Lord had descended from heaven and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it and said: “I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; he has been raised again.” (Matthew 28:3, 5, 6)

The angel of the Lord is the Biblical expression or symbol for that reality of human experience known as encountering the Presence of God along the journey of life and finding in that encounter the resources of wisdom and strength and comfort and encouragement – whatever we need – to see us through.

But in our time, in our kind of a world, what is an angel of the Lord, and where do we find them?  Well, for one thing, the angel of the Lord is often a shining word out of the Book of God.  Do you remember a day when you were down in the depths because life had been so difficult, and you could not keep going much longer but would just have to give in, and suddenly there came to you like the trumpets of heaven, Paul’s cry, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!”  (James Stewart – Ibid.)  Or, Isaiah’s strong word: “They that wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

“This Bible we too often ignore is really help from beyond.  It is not a dull man-made compendium of religious ideas and theories.  It is the real eternal world impinging on this world of sense and time.  It is super-nature breaking into nature.  It is a new dimension.  It is a revelation.  It is the strengthening angel. . .  A generation that forsakes its Bible is shutting itself off from the eternal world and depriving itself of indispensable resources for the battle.” (Stewart – Ibid.)

And yet again, the angel of the Lord appears in our time in the Church of God. Yes, however funny, old fashioned, and ineffectual they may appear, the covenant people of God are those peculiar folk who are traveling that route through the world described in the Exodus text: “Behold I will send an angel before you, to keep you in the way, and to bring you into the place I have prepared for you.”  They are the ones motivated by the Baillie nursery principle, feeding on the Word of God and depending on the support and encouragement of their Christian friends through the fellowship of the saints.

But most important and powerful of all, sometimes the angel of the Lord, who even in our time visits and strengthens and transforms his dispirited race, is the resurrected Christ Himself.  It is God’s will that all of us who live this side of Easter have this experience in common.  Our choir was singing it triumphantly in the anthem: “He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today!”

“Indeed, in a sense, it is always the Christ who comes to us and strengthens us.  When some word from the Bible lays hold on us, it is not just a word out of a book – it is Christ acting on me through the word.  When some friendship reinforces me, it is not just a touch of human kindness; I feel that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” (Stewart)  When the Church truly serves human need at its deepest physical and spiritual despair and brings life and hope and faith and love, it is Christ who is moving in His Body the Church.  When we gather about the Lord ’s Table to celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion and receive the material symbols of Jesus’ broken body and shed blood for our sakes, it is the Living Christ who is present to strengthen us in our inmost spiritual beings.

Where are we looking, this Easter Sunday, really looking, for the resources we need to carry us through and complete, with honor and satisfaction, our pilgrimage through this world from the cradle to the grave?  Are we looking just where the lights are brightest and the situation most pleasant and secure, or where there is the best prospect for us to find the richest and most satisfying supplies for our survival kit?

            “The angels keep their appointed places;

              Turn but a stone and start a wing!

            Tis ye, ‘tis your estranged faces,

              That miss the many splendored thing!”