My husband and I frequently visit cathedrals, churches, and chapels when we are overseas.
This includes everywhere from St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, to any of a thousand unexpected haunts: what seemed like a thousand tiny roadside chapels in Italy, the Igreja de São Roque in Lisbon, the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal.
My favorite part of these visits is figuring out the regional “flavors” of each site. Some emphasize a particular saint, or one of the four Gospel writers. They all have versions of Christ, but the way Christ is portrayed varies, sometimes strikingly, from country to country.
So I was interested to see, on my recent trip to the Alentejo and Algarve in Portugal, statues and paintings of the archangel Michael everywhere. Everywhere!
To be clear, none of the churches, cathedrals, or chapels were dedicated to him—but there he was anyway, always wielding a sword, always stepping on the head of a demon or ready to slaughter some evil creature.
Now, you should know that I grew up during what I call The Great Angel backlash of the 90s and early aughts. For a time, angels became a profound pop culture fixation: romance and popular novels focused on them, movies featured them, Touched by An Angel was a whole thing. Only vaguely related to Scripture, angels became a secular vehicle for—well, all sorts of things.
A lot of Christians resisted these portrayals, pointing out how far they strayed from the Biblical account. Other Christians fretted that even a right-minded delight in angels could verge on idolatry, and so, at least in my experience, any reference to even “guardian angels” or angelic protection was stamped out of much of evangelical culture.
But then there’s Michael.
He appears in Jude, ceding authority to God during his dispute with Satan when he “did not dare bring an abusive condemnation against him but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you’!” (Jude 1:9).
When Daniel sees a vision of a heavenly being after three weeks of mourning, praying, and fasting, the newly-arrived messenger announces the cause for his delay: the prince of the kingdom of Persia had been standing in opposition to him for twenty-one days until Michael arrives to bring help (Daniel 10:10-21).
Finally, he makes an appearance in Revelation in a great cosmic battle: “Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back” (Rev. 12:7-10).
I emphasize mentions of Michael in Scripture because it’s easy to forget that Scripture contains these things. Tish Harrison Warren has written previously on how believers often tend to minimize the more supernatural aspects of Scripture beyond the virgin birth and Christ Himself: talking donkeys and angelic exchanges and cryptic references to all sorts of cosmic events occurring behind the scenes. And Philip Yancey and Richard Beck have written eloquently on what we lose by minimizing these things: the wonder, the richness, the significance of the battle for good and evil that undergirds our everyday lives.
When I saw those portraits and sculptures of Michael all over my travels, I smiled. I smiled because it is a reminder that God is mighty and commands the mighty: Psalm 91 reminds us that “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.” The images of Michael bring to mind that, as Philip Yancey puts it, my own small daily struggles of faith and hope are playing out on a cosmic background that somehow matters to God, one that I can’t comprehend or even fully see.
And that image of Michael with a sword in hand is a reminder that I don’t have to fight.
The thing is: when I think of swords in Scripture, I don’t think of Michael. I think of Peter lopping off a guard’s ear, and Christ mending what his misplaced zealousness destroyed. I think of Christ’s great submission to the wrongs done to him, and of His resistance to violence—His refusal to call down the very angels He commanded to right the wrongs He endured. And when I juxtapose that with Michael’s desire to leave the rebuking of Satan to God alone, it’s a reminder that the sword is not, and was not, ever mine to bear.
One of my favorite added scenes in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the arrival of the elven army to Helm’s Deep. In the movie, beleaguered men face the prospect of a losing battle with no allies and no hope. In the darkness, though, they hear the echo of a horn—and when they run to the ramparts, they stare in awe at an ethereal army of elves come to fight at their side: creatures so beautiful and graceful that the sight of them inspires wonder.
I think of the heavenly host that way, sometimes. And it makes me marvel at the God who commands them all, “the God of angel armies” as Chris Tomlin would have it—who Himself came to earth as a man, unarmed, and subject Himself to the greatest of violence. Who could have dreamed it?
Only God, of course. And the God of Michael the archangel is a God, I know, with vast wonders and great beauties and mysteries hidden in store for those who love Him.
I’m excited to see them all.
Samaritan's Song 