Fall Feasting: St. Michael (September 29)

Happy fall feasting!

There are feasts all throughout the church year. This week's blog post will be published on a feast day that has become more special to me over the last few years: the Feast of St. Michael, celebrated on or around September 29 (here's a general perspective and here's an LCMS perspective). So, I want to reflect on my experiences with the feast from a conservative Anglican (ACNA) perspective.

Recap on Feasts and Festivals

As explained in my blog post lined above, a liturgical feast or festival is simply a regularly recurring occasion on which believers can reflect on and celebrate the lives of certain past saints. The major feasts tend to mark divisions of the church year (requiring a liturgical church/tradition for the most benefit): Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The lesser feasts are generally about individual saints or small groups of saints. Celebration of a feast or festival may include food, but even if it doesn't, there are set lectionary pericopes for the day, guiding liturgical colors and sermon theme.

Celebrating St. Michael

My reflections come at a congregational level and at a larger denominational level. Helpful background in this section is the episcopal model of church governance.

At St. Michael's

St. Michael is the archangel after whom the church I attend was named. As such, the rector obtained permission from the bishop (per Episcopal regulation which the ACNA follows) to make Michaelmas a movable feast rather than an immovable one. Therefore, we celebrate it on the Sunday nearest to the actual date of September 29.

What do we do to celebrate?

• Potluck!
• Regular Eucharistic service with red vestments for the celebrant
• Annual congregational meeting to vote on vestry membership, budget, and miscellaneous needs. I was extremely pleasantly surprised at the first one I attended to find that it was (1) short and (2) fun!

In the ACNA

In the introduction paragraph, I linked an ACNA lectionary page that guides celebration of this feast day. Normally, feasts are distinguished as movable (to the nearest Sunday) or non-movable (celebrated on the calendar day unless the bishop directly permits moving to a Sunday). So, congregations will ordinarily celebrate the Feast of St. Michael on Friday this year, the date of September 29, with a small eucharistic service.

There are six specific liturgical pieces that are part of this day: acclamation, collect, lessons, Morning Prayer readings, Evening Prayer readings, and Eucharistic preface.

• The acclamation occurs at the beginning of the service. The call: "Worthy is the Lord our God." The congregational response: "To receive glory and honor and power." This reflects other texts in Revelation, where the activity of the archangel Michael is described.
• The collect occurs to "collect" the prayers of those gathered around a common theme, after the acclamation and before the musical/pericope pieces of the liturgy. For this feast day, the collect focuses on the ministry of angels:
• Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
• The lessons for the day are in Year A of the 3-year lectionary. Due to my congregation having moved the feast from its day to the Sunday, only the Revelation text was used.
• Genesis 28:10-17 - Jacob's dream about the stairway to heaven
• Psalm 103 - first line "Bless the LORD, O my soul" followed by reasons why
• Revelation 12:7-12 - account of Satan being cast out of heaven and defeated by Michael and other angels he was leading in battle
• John 1:47-51 - Jesus' words to Nathanael about angels ascending and descending related to the Son of Man (Himself)
• Morning prayer readings are part of daily Morning Prayer (20-30 minutes) expected of all clergy and those laity who have time to complete it. These progress through (almost) the entire Bible over each year.
• Psalms 75 and 76
• Revelation 12:7-12
• James 3
• Evening prayer, likewise, takes about 20-30 minutes. Between Morning and Evening Prayer, one can read through the Psalms six times per year.
• Psalms 79 and 82
• Zechariah 9
• Matthew 21:1-22
• The preface before the Eucharist, also, focuses on the glory of the Triune God:
• Who, with your co-eternal Son and Holy Spirit, are one God, one Lord, in Trinity of Persons and in Unity of Substance. For that which we believe of your glory, O Father, we believe the same of your Son, and of the Holy Spirit, without any difference or inequality.

Sermon Reflections: Revelation Revelation

The sermon focused on the Epistle (Revelation 12 text above), as is proper when focusing on the subject of a feast day. Given the difficulty many people have understanding Revelation, a few points are in order that were also highlighted at the start of the sermon.

• Historical context of each Scriptural text and book is critical to understand.
• Historical criticism  as a method is not the same as historical context as a necessity. Unfortunately, many conservative Christians conflate the two, leading to terrible exegesis from reading the text through one's own lens of cultural presuppositions, at face value. 
• For the text in question, here's a bit of the historical context of Revelation.
• John was the last surviving apostle (directly set apart by Jesus).
• His audience was not us. It was rather persecuted Christians shortly after Christianity had been made illegal in the Roman empire.
• The style he wrote in was apocalyptic literature, which was popular at the time. Marks of this type of writing include a story form, a "right-now" view of events that could take place long into the future, and esoteric (specialized "in-group") language.
• Thus, John's audience would have understood the infant being born as the Christian church (corpus of believers) and the dragon as their persecutors (Roman soldiers who would kill or torture them for their allegiance to Jesus as lord).

What have you learned about a biblical genre or book that you didn't know before? Feel free to share in the comments!