entering the thick of it all: a meditation on michael the archangel

Nearly sixty years ago, back when Isla Vista was a sleepy place with unpaved streets, inexpensive vacation cottages and ramshackle dwellings, a forward thinking priest from Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Santa Barbara challenged his parishioners during their annual meeting to think about the opportunities for mission that awaited them at the new UCSB campus in Isla Vista. Shortly after that meeting, the Methodist husband of one of the Trinity congregation members handed the priest a check for $5,000 to "see what could be done" in Isla Vista. And so, on December 11th, 1949 the rector of Trinity and a small group of parishioners erected a sign amidst the grass and eucalyptus trees announcing the future plans for this small piece of property that we now worship on. By 1954, the first chaplain had been called to the new university mission. A 34 year old former journalist and practicing physicist, he served part time in Isla Vista and part time on the staff of Trinity. He named this new church community "St. Michael's."

It is unclear exactly why the mission was named for Michael the archangel. One theory is that the new chaplain named it St. Michael's after a parish he had previously served before coming to Santa Barbara. The more interesteing and appropriate theory, of course, is that he chose the name of St. Michael & All Angels for this church, in honor of the saint whose feast day coincides with the start of the school year. In the calendar of saints, St. Michael's feast day is celebrated September 29 and known as Michaelmas Day, one of the four quarter days on which accounts were settled and, in England, when the terms began in universities.

Michael the Archangel

Regardless of the first chaplain's particular motivation to claim Michael as our church community's patron saint, Michael's link to the university calendar is certainly fitting. There is also a whole lot more to the legend of St. Michael that bears exploration and celebration. As I've commented before: "Thanks be to God, we certainly don't draw our identity from the lore of a lame saint!"  And just like we might draw inspiration and strength from the meaning of our own names and the stories of our own families and communities, so too can we be challenged and strengthened by knowing the story of the person for whom our church community is named and knowing our faith community’s own history.

There are many, many stories in many, many religious traditions about St. Michael. In Jewish tradition he is known as the protector of Israel. In Islam he is know as a good angel, bringing "peace and plenty." In Christian tradition, the Book of Revelation – the text we just read this morning -- tells the story of Michael's triumphant battle over evil. He is often depicted with sword in hand and known as the good angel of death and field commander of the Army of God. Popular Christian lore casts Michael as the patron saint of paratroopers, police officers, mariners, paramedics and grocers. His profile as a healer is especially well developed and legend has it that he even caused an outbreak of the plague to cease!

I think it's fair to say that Michael never shied from being in the "thick of it all."  Cosmic battles. Infectious disease. Warring nations. The magnitude of these forces never prevented Michael from being able to envision possibilities for a new, more peaceful, world order.

Having a tendency to be drawn into the thick of important questions and issues isn't bad DNA for a church! Over the course of its communal life, St. Michael's University Church – along with the students, faculty, staff and community members it serves -- has found itself drawn into precisely these sorts of conversations, ministries and work. In fact, the bell we ring every morning as the first act of communal worship, was christened "The Prophet Isaiah" – and is seen as a modern-day sword-being-turned-into-plowshare story. And so one could say that from the first ring of the bell each Sunday, we are drawn into professing and living out the sort of  radical transformation that both Isaiah and Michael engaged in.

In preparation for today, as I reviewed history the of St. Mike’s documented by one of its former vicars in a "paper" written in honor of the church’s 40^th anniversary in 1994 (thanks Mark Gardner!), I found story after story of transformation. Here are just some highlights: During the 1950s, “Teen Canteen,” an effort to diffuse Latino-Anglo racial tensions in Isla Vista brought high school youth together at the church for social events and mutual understanding. The police estimated that it cut delinquency rates by 50%! Around the same time, a group of students from the Devereux School for developmentally disabled kids began to attend the church on a regular basis -- for a while they constituted half the community members present at the service. By the end of the decade, this chapel in which we now sit had been constructed – the architecture meant to represent in modern design the simplicity of the Isrealites’ tent for God during their wilderness wanderings. In the 1960s a group of committed parishioners helped to establish a community nursery school on site. St. Michael’s also welcomed Bishop Pike – a restless and radical visionary who had been forbidden to preach or celebrate in this diocese; he “preached the announcements” on Easter Sunday at two services attended by over 550 people. In the 1970s, Bishop Barrett who in his retirement helped to “irregularly ordain” the first 11 women priests in the Episcopal Church known at the "Philadelphia Eleven", became a member at St. Michael’s. Following his participation in these ordinations, he and a well-known outspoken Catholic bishop, Daniel Corrigan, gave a forum at St. Mike’s to discuss their views on women’s ordination. Barrett remembers that the people of St. Michael’s were “quite receptive” to the idea of ordaining women, and a Roman Catholic official appeared to be implicitly sympathetic by attending the forum.” As community and student participation flourished at St. Mike’s, so did the nursery school. It soon gave birth to a secondary ministry called Operation Kids, which allowed disadvantaged children in IV to receive care and educational enrichment while their parents, mostly single mothers, worked. In the 1980s, St. Mike’s established Transition House (housed in the Little House)—a place where homeless people could make the transition back to mainstream life. The chaplain also led students in a series of humourous and dramatic gospel plays in place of the homily on Sundays. Students also developed an outreach to nearby Friendship Manor Retirement Community, regularly joining with residents there to say Evening Prayer. During the 1990s and early part of this century, St. Mike’s sold a part of its property to Hillel, engaged in a major renovation of its buildings and grounds and in its desire to become a spiritual oasis for the community, experimented with sober block parties for the neighborhood. Today we engage the student and neighborhood community through various spiritual formation, educational and activism opportunities. And of course, just as Michael would have it, our ministry continues to evolve and grow in new and perhaps unexpected ways in response to the people, issues and needs among and beyond our community. (If you'd like to read more about the history of St. Mike's in "Our First 40 Years" -- please speak to the chaplain!)

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Some of you know that I've in the middle of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon through my DVDs by mail program. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a television series about a high school student named Buffy who has been anointed as a slayer of vampires. She and her team -- which consists of school mates and her adult "watcher" who also serves as school librarian – make it their business to keep the forces evil at bay. And so, Buffy trolls graveyards armed with crosses, holy water and spikes to save the world from the encroaching forces of cosmic evil. These forces of evil, however, are resilient and stubborn things, however. They fester below ground in the underworld until they gain the strength to surge from the hell mouth to claim their next victims. Each kill, each act of evil, gives them the energy they need to continue the battle.

Despite the 90s clothing styles, suburban high school setting and sometimes cheesy vampire creatures, this television series is not what you might expect at first glance. Upon close examination in fact, Buffy is a sophisticated and relevant theological and progressive commentary on the battle between good and evil and other events we read about in the Bible. It's a modern take on the ministry and work of Jesus, St. Michael and a whole host of others – the ministry of imagining the possibility for a more peaceful world – and working to realize this vision. Flanked by ancient wisdom, imagination, adventure, desire and a moral compass, all of these figures challenge the society of their time and push their communities to explore previously unknown territory.

I'm currently at a point in the seven season series where Buffy is struggling with identity as a slayer. Many days, she just wants to be a normal high school student at Sunnydale High, yet she is anointed and called to be the slayer. In this identity crisis she is forced to confront questions like: How will she find a balance between her vocation and her life as a high school student? How will she come to terms with her relationship to an immortal "good vampire" named Angel who is a vampire cursed with a soul?

I raise this topic of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not to digress or to grace you with more pop culture knowledge – but because 1) I think that like the TV series Buffy, there is a lot about St. Mike’s – especially to our neighbors – that may not be apparent at first glace. 2) These questions that Buffy struggles with about her own vocation may also be relevant to us at St. Mike’s. Being a vampire slayer is no easy vocation, nor is it easy to follow in the footsteps and tradition of our patron saint Michael! Yet this is precisely our call – to be a community that works to bring about justice, encourages conversation about big questions and cares about the physical, psychic and spiritual needs of our neighbors. It may be of surprise to your average Isla Vistan, perhaps knowing nothing about St. Mike’s or never having thought about church in an expansive way, to hear that this is the vocational DNA of our church community.

So our challenge this morning is to go out and tell and live the story that is a part of our DNA! To seize the invitation to enter the “thick of it all.” To think about how we wish to shape the future! And as we celebrate the life of this congregation and the feast day of our patron saint, may our guiding light Michael the Archangel continue to be a constant source of challenge and strength to us all, inspiring us –individually and collectively-- to explore new realms and possibilities within our often fractured, anxious and hurting world.