The Religion of Angels
Martin closed the vestry door behind him and let out a long breath. He enjoyed seeing everyone out of the chapel after the service - the handshakes and quiet words, the small talk and brave smiles, but Mrs Langford appeared to need neither encouragement nor oxygen and he now knew more than he had ever wanted to know about ginger preserves, yeast infections and drywall problems. A disturbing combination.
He dropped his sermon notes into his overflowing in-tray and sank heavily on to the desk. Fifteen minutes to finish up here, then the dedication service at Central Mission followed by an Austerity Lunch, three home visits and the long drive out to deliver the evening service at Elmwood. At least, he grinned at his favourite in-joke, you only work one day a week.
A quiet tap at the door announced a further blow to the receding possibility of a coffee, probably the sidesman of the week, Elizabeth Maynard, with an urgent report on the deposition of unreturned service sheets, a pressing update on the state of the floor tiles in the loo and perhaps a little something to feed him up a bit. Your'e a cynical bugger for a man of the cloth, Marty. He invited his unwelcome guest in cheerily, but stayed seated in the slim hope of appearing too busy to be bothered with trifles, figurative or literal.
"Sorry to bother you, er...". Lauren Mitchell was one of the three teenagers of the parish who didn't feel they had outgrown the church yet. Three years worth of Bible study evenings and church fetes left her far too familiar to call him 'Mr Beaumont', but perhaps a little young to address him as 'Martin'. 'Er' was the traditional compromise. He tacked on a smile and ushered her in warmly.
"I wondered if I could have a word?" Seats were hastily cleared, proffered and settled upon.
"What can I do for you?"
"It's about your sermon. This morning." Aha. Lauren was the life and soul of the confirmation class, regularly keeping them all up far too late with more searching questions than he was used to from 16-year-olds and regularly making him reach for his Cruden's concordance. Martin felt a sudden need for a secretary, so that he could tersely instruct her to 'cancel his 12 o'clock '. Or just the power to cancel it, that would be nice.
Martin realised she was looking at him expectantly. " Yes, great, this morning's little pearls. Of wisdom. As it were." He added a little forced chuckle in a vain attempt to appear casual yet encouraging. As usual he instead managed to sound twice his actual age.
"I got the idea you weren't too keen on angels. Not a fan?"
Diplomacy, Marty. "Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that. In fact, I believe I stressed the important role angels played in both Testaments, as God's messengers, not just to Mary but to Abraham and Sarah, Lot and so on."
"And you said we should look for them today?" He blinked at her.
Oh dear, got you too, have they Lauren? "Absolutely, we should always look out for messages which tell us how God wants us to lead our lives."
"But angels, you believe they really exist, right?"
"Well yes, yes I do." He felt the need to add "As you heard this morning."
"And they don't have to be all white robes and trumpets and Spielberg lighting, right?"
"No indeed." He allowed himself a chuckle, "'His ministers a flaming fire' - 'Spielberg lighting'. I like that. No, we read they are sometimes invisible or taken for ordinary men. I believe some even eat. But just like the reading said: 'entertain strangers, for thereby, some have entertained angels unawares.' My point was: perhaps ordinary people like ourselves can really be God's messengers." Lauren, like, he suspected, most of the congregation, did not appear to have registered this little theological proposition of his. He had been so proud of it.
"But they are not just, like, messengers? They do stuff too? Like Paul, they got Paul out of prison." He had to raise his eyebrows at that one.
"You've been doing your reading. Ah, yes, we read in the Acts..."
"So, they aren't just messengers are they? They help people."
"Lauren, the, ah, ' New Age' movement has certainly popularised angels, particularly 'guardian angels', for example..."
"'To keep thee, in all thy ways'."
"Ah, yes." Martin felt, somewhat unreasonably, a little defensive whenever people started quoting Scripture to him. "But, you know, I worry about people placing too much importance on the idea of angels, until they end up praying to them and forgetting God in the end."
"I met one." She had something close to desperation in her eyes.
His face didn't change. He was quite proud of that.
"Go on."
"It was the night of the explosion up at the lab." Two months of the Mayor's 'top priority investigation' had done little to explain how the town's prestigious new biotech facility had been razed in a matter of minutes, the week before it was scheduled to open. The buildings were left as hollow shells, filled with the jumble of unrecognisable debris, twisted and torn apart with great force or randomly melted into slag. Despite no explosion having been heard, it appeared to be the only reasonable explanation. The parent company had apparently collapsed - certainly no- one was available to answer questions.
Lauren flicked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "We all heard the sirens, but they blocked the road, so I was cutting round behind Carter Street to get a better look. He was in the alley, just lying there. Dazed or stunned or whatever."
"An angel?"
"Yes."
" And you knew this because...?"
"He told me." Martin was suddenly very concerned.
"Lauren, did this character, um, touch you?" She rolled her eyes
"Oh please..."
"Lauren, are you sure?"
"Wings. I swear. He had great, big, white wings, like in the pictures. Big clue." He mustn't have hidden his expression this time.
"And I hadn't y'know, 'taken anything' or 'touched a drop' or whatever." She made a face as she used the phrases. "I wasn't dreaming."
"A man. With wings."
"Look, this probably wasn't a good idea." She withdrew suddenly "I just thought, you of all people..." Martin mentally slapped his own wrist. Restore some trust before you lose her. He gave her his most disarming grin.
"...Being in the trade, so to speak." he finished. She glared at him. Keep plugging, Marty. "Translation please: 'you must make some allowances for me, this is all rather like discovering one has blundered through the Looking Glass'."
She smiled grudgingly in response to this familiar game he played with younger parishioners. "I believe you said: 'Cut me some slack, you've gone all X-Files on me'. Yeah, so... if you can't handle it, I could always talk to that chanting group down at the 'Y'. Or maybe the Rosicrucians..."
"Look Lauren, why did you think this was more than a practical joke?"
"No, they were real wings, I saw how they went into his body. He was hurt, one wing was damaged. It was bleeding." She looked quite serious.
"So what happened?" This part of the story had obviously been gone over so many times, it seemed rehearsed. But no less sincere for that.
"He came to. He was confused, called out to me 'Jubilation' like a street preacher and asked me for help. I was just freaking. I mean, he was real, with blood and coughing and sweat. And no, like armour or robes or stuff, he was totally modern, more like a, y'know, speed skater? I think he'd gone through the yard wall, there was bits of it all over. His legs were all caught up in this thick wire - I couldn't even bend it - and I don't think he could see properly. I talked to him, asked what I could do, but I was just losing it. He said he was an angel and he kept repeating 'get me out of here'."
She took a deep breath.
"I went to go get some help, just turned away for a few seconds. And he was gone."
" So he..." Steady Marty, she might be in real need here. "He flew off?"
"No way. I mean I couldn't get him up. He wasn't going anywhere. The wire was just left behind. He just disappeared. But there was this terrible smell. Rotten eggs. Sulphur. I looked it up"
There was a wretched silence as she worked on a loose thread from her jeans.
"Lauren, I see two possibilities: either this was some kind of, ah, illusion, or some sort of... mistake, a trick, the misunderstanding. Some asinine TV show like Candid Camera or what have you. If we look carefully..."
"No." The vehemence in her voice stopped him. "No, I didn't come to ask if it was real. I know it was real. He was an angel and he was fighting over the lab. What I wanted to know is, which side was he on?"
Martin was dumbfounded. She pressed on.
"He was taken, right? And sulphur - as in brimstone? I want to know could he have been, well, killed? Come on, stop doing to Guppy impression, suspend disbelief for me, right? Did they get him?"
Indeed, come on Marty. The astonishing nature of the question only underlined her vulnerability, her need for a genuine answer.
"Um, well... angels are described as mighty, but not infallible: there are things they don't know." Not doing too well. "Wait a minute" he flicked through the New Testament. "Um... Luke talks about the resurrected... here: 'neither can they die anymore: for they are equal to the angels.' So, um, I don't think they could die."
"And they couldn't get, like, captured? "
"We are a little off the beaten track here, Lauren, but if you ask me, which, of course , you just have done, no, I'm pretty sure only Job was, ... temporarily put in the power of, ah, ' the enemy'. I have to point out the whole 'war between good and evil', 'armies of warrior angels battling demons' image is more ' Dead Sea Scrolls' than actually biblical."
She nodded as if he was only confirming what she already knew. "But, there are evil angels, right? Angels that sinned and were cast down?'"
"Yes, but..."
"That's okay." She appeared to have made her decision and stood up. "I figured anyone that pretty couldn't be all good."
"Excuse me?"
"Look, thanks for talking this through with me. You won't say anything, will you?" She was so positive, it almost sounded like an order. He was lost.
"Well, ah, the seal of confession and so on are the other branch really, so to speak, but..." he looked her in the eye. "No."
"And you're not going to give me any crap about getting 'help' or some such?"
He could only stare at her as she waved cheerily, already on her way out. "Thanks Martin, see you on Tuesday for study? James, Chapter five? Should be fun."
"Yes, indeed. Right-oh."
Martin listened to the vestry door close, then the chapel door and finally the porch. He tried to make sense of his morning's work. Half of him was coughing politely and pointing out that this little interview was completely wrong on a number of levels. The other half glanced at his watch and estimated that he would be a good ten minutes late for the service. And he couldn't even say why.
He reached the chapel door at a run, kicking it shut behind him, still struggling into his topcoat. And the porch can, well, bang in the wind. As he jogged away from the chapel he swore, at some length and with considerable feeling. Softly, just in case.
Arnheim
X-Men fan fiction. Angel & the X-men are the property of Marvel Comics.
Martin closed the vestry door behind him and let out a long breath. He enjoyed seeing everyone out of the chapel after the service - the handshakes and quiet words, the small talk and brave smiles, but Mrs Langford appeared to need neither encouragement nor oxygen and he now knew more than he had ever wanted to know about ginger preserves, yeast infections and drywall problems. A disturbing combination.
He dropped his sermon notes into his overflowing in-tray and sank heavily on to the desk. Fifteen minutes to finish up here, then the dedication service at Central Mission followed by an Austerity Lunch, three home visits and the long drive out to deliver the evening service at Elmwood. At least, he grinned at his favourite in-joke, you only work one day a week.
A quiet tap at the door announced a further blow to the receding possibility of a coffee, probably the sidesman of the week, Elizabeth Maynard, with an urgent report on the deposition of unreturned service sheets, a pressing update on the state of the floor tiles in the loo and perhaps a little something to feed him up a bit. Your'e a cynical bugger for a man of the cloth, Marty. He invited his unwelcome guest in cheerily, but stayed seated in the slim hope of appearing too busy to be bothered with trifles, figurative or literal.
"Sorry to bother you, er...". Lauren Mitchell was one of the three teenagers of the parish who didn't feel they had outgrown the church yet. Three years worth of Bible study evenings and church fetes left her far too familiar to call him 'Mr Beaumont', but perhaps a little young to address him as 'Martin'. 'Er' was the traditional compromise. He tacked on a smile and ushered her in warmly.
"I wondered if I could have a word?" Seats were hastily cleared, proffered and settled upon.
"What can I do for you?"
"It's about your sermon. This morning." Aha. Lauren was the life and soul of the confirmation class, regularly keeping them all up far too late with more searching questions than he was used to from 16-year-olds and regularly making him reach for his Cruden's concordance. Martin felt a sudden need for a secretary, so that he could tersely instruct her to 'cancel his 12 o'clock '. Or just the power to cancel it, that would be nice.
Martin realised she was looking at him expectantly. " Yes, great, this morning's little pearls. Of wisdom. As it were." He added a little forced chuckle in a vain attempt to appear casual yet encouraging. As usual he instead managed to sound twice his actual age.
"I got the idea you weren't too keen on angels. Not a fan?"
Diplomacy, Marty. "Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that. In fact, I believe I stressed the important role angels played in both Testaments, as God's messengers, not just to Mary but to Abraham and Sarah, Lot and so on."
"And you said we should look for them today?" He blinked at her.
Oh dear, got you too, have they Lauren? "Absolutely, we should always look out for messages which tell us how God wants us to lead our lives."
"But angels, you believe they really exist, right?"
"Well yes, yes I do." He felt the need to add "As you heard this morning."
"And they don't have to be all white robes and trumpets and Spielberg lighting, right?"
"No indeed." He allowed himself a chuckle, "'His ministers a flaming fire' - 'Spielberg lighting'. I like that. No, we read they are sometimes invisible or taken for ordinary men. I believe some even eat. But just like the reading said: 'entertain strangers, for thereby, some have entertained angels unawares.' My point was: perhaps ordinary people like ourselves can really be God's messengers." Lauren, like, he suspected, most of the congregation, did not appear to have registered this little theological proposition of his. He had been so proud of it.
"But they are not just, like, messengers? They do stuff too? Like Paul, they got Paul out of prison." He had to raise his eyebrows at that one.
"You've been doing your reading. Ah, yes, we read in the Acts..."
"So, they aren't just messengers are they? They help people."
"Lauren, the, ah, ' New Age' movement has certainly popularised angels, particularly 'guardian angels', for example..."
"'To keep thee, in all thy ways'."
"Ah, yes." Martin felt, somewhat unreasonably, a little defensive whenever people started quoting Scripture to him. "But, you know, I worry about people placing too much importance on the idea of angels, until they end up praying to them and forgetting God in the end."
"I met one." She had something close to desperation in her eyes.
His face didn't change. He was quite proud of that.
"Go on."
"It was the night of the explosion up at the lab." Two months of the Mayor's 'top priority investigation' had done little to explain how the town's prestigious new biotech facility had been razed in a matter of minutes, the week before it was scheduled to open. The buildings were left as hollow shells, filled with the jumble of unrecognisable debris, twisted and torn apart with great force or randomly melted into slag. Despite no explosion having been heard, it appeared to be the only reasonable explanation. The parent company had apparently collapsed - certainly no- one was available to answer questions.
Lauren flicked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "We all heard the sirens, but they blocked the road, so I was cutting round behind Carter Street to get a better look. He was in the alley, just lying there. Dazed or stunned or whatever."
"An angel?"
"Yes."
" And you knew this because...?"
"He told me." Martin was suddenly very concerned.
"Lauren, did this character, um, touch you?" She rolled her eyes
"Oh please..."
"Lauren, are you sure?"
"Wings. I swear. He had great, big, white wings, like in the pictures. Big clue." He mustn't have hidden his expression this time.
"And I hadn't y'know, 'taken anything' or 'touched a drop' or whatever." She made a face as she used the phrases. "I wasn't dreaming."
"A man. With wings."
"Look, this probably wasn't a good idea." She withdrew suddenly "I just thought, you of all people..." Martin mentally slapped his own wrist. Restore some trust before you lose her. He gave her his most disarming grin.
"...Being in the trade, so to speak." he finished. She glared at him. Keep plugging, Marty. "Translation please: 'you must make some allowances for me, this is all rather like discovering one has blundered through the Looking Glass'."
She smiled grudgingly in response to this familiar game he played with younger parishioners. "I believe you said: 'Cut me some slack, you've gone all X-Files on me'. Yeah, so... if you can't handle it, I could always talk to that chanting group down at the 'Y'. Or maybe the Rosicrucians..."
"Look Lauren, why did you think this was more than a practical joke?"
"No, they were real wings, I saw how they went into his body. He was hurt, one wing was damaged. It was bleeding." She looked quite serious.
"So what happened?" This part of the story had obviously been gone over so many times, it seemed rehearsed. But no less sincere for that.
"He came to. He was confused, called out to me 'Jubilation' like a street preacher and asked me for help. I was just freaking. I mean, he was real, with blood and coughing and sweat. And no, like armour or robes or stuff, he was totally modern, more like a, y'know, speed skater? I think he'd gone through the yard wall, there was bits of it all over. His legs were all caught up in this thick wire - I couldn't even bend it - and I don't think he could see properly. I talked to him, asked what I could do, but I was just losing it. He said he was an angel and he kept repeating 'get me out of here'."
She took a deep breath.
"I went to go get some help, just turned away for a few seconds. And he was gone."
" So he..." Steady Marty, she might be in real need here. "He flew off?"
"No way. I mean I couldn't get him up. He wasn't going anywhere. The wire was just left behind. He just disappeared. But there was this terrible smell. Rotten eggs. Sulphur. I looked it up"
There was a wretched silence as she worked on a loose thread from her jeans.
"Lauren, I see two possibilities: either this was some kind of, ah, illusion, or some sort of... mistake, a trick, the misunderstanding. Some asinine TV show like Candid Camera or what have you. If we look carefully..."
"No." The vehemence in her voice stopped him. "No, I didn't come to ask if it was real. I know it was real. He was an angel and he was fighting over the lab. What I wanted to know is, which side was he on?"
Martin was dumbfounded. She pressed on.
"He was taken, right? And sulphur - as in brimstone? I want to know could he have been, well, killed? Come on, stop doing to Guppy impression, suspend disbelief for me, right? Did they get him?"
Indeed, come on Marty. The astonishing nature of the question only underlined her vulnerability, her need for a genuine answer.
"Um, well... angels are described as mighty, but not infallible: there are things they don't know." Not doing too well. "Wait a minute" he flicked through the New Testament. "Um... Luke talks about the resurrected... here: 'neither can they die anymore: for they are equal to the angels.' So, um, I don't think they could die."
"And they couldn't get, like, captured? "
"We are a little off the beaten track here, Lauren, but if you ask me, which, of course , you just have done, no, I'm pretty sure only Job was, ... temporarily put in the power of, ah, ' the enemy'. I have to point out the whole 'war between good and evil', 'armies of warrior angels battling demons' image is more ' Dead Sea Scrolls' than actually biblical."
She nodded as if he was only confirming what she already knew. "But, there are evil angels, right? Angels that sinned and were cast down?'"
"Yes, but..."
"That's okay." She appeared to have made her decision and stood up. "I figured anyone that pretty couldn't be all good."
"Excuse me?"
"Look, thanks for talking this through with me. You won't say anything, will you?" She was so positive, it almost sounded like an order. He was lost.
"Well, ah, the seal of confession and so on are the other branch really, so to speak, but..." he looked her in the eye. "No."
"And you're not going to give me any crap about getting 'help' or some such?"
He could only stare at her as she waved cheerily, already on her way out. "Thanks Martin, see you on Tuesday for study? James, Chapter five? Should be fun."
"Yes, indeed. Right-oh."
Martin listened to the vestry door close, then the chapel door and finally the porch. He tried to make sense of his morning's work. Half of him was coughing politely and pointing out that this little interview was completely wrong on a number of levels. The other half glanced at his watch and estimated that he would be a good ten minutes late for the service. And he couldn't even say why.
He reached the chapel door at a run, kicking it shut behind him, still struggling into his topcoat. And the porch can, well, bang in the wind. As he jogged away from the chapel he swore, at some length and with considerable feeling. Softly, just in case.
Arnheim
X-Men fan fiction. Angel & the X-men are the property of Marvel Comics.