Yes, each one of us is accompanied through life by an army of angels. They watch over us, protect us, shelter us from harm.
I want to take you back to the 9th century, BCE. The rising empire of Aram is at war with the Northern Kingdom of Israel. But the Arameans cannot make any headway in the war because it seems that no matter what their army does, Israel somehow knows its plan in advance and is able to thwart it. The King of Aram assumes this is because Israel has a spy. But there is no spy. God has been speaking to the prophet Elisha, who in turn has been counseling Israel’s king, telling him the enemy’s every step before it happens.
When the King of Aram learns of the prophet Elisha, he sends his army out to capture him. One morning Elisha’s servant draws back the curtains on their windows and discovers that their house is completely surrounded by Aram’s army. He calls out to his master Elisha in a great panic: “Oh no, my Lord, what shall we do?”
What does Elisha do? Does he plan and execute a cunning escape? Does he turn himself over to the enemy? No. Elisha calmly tells his servant, “Do not be afraid. We have more forces on our side than they have on theirs.”
Elisha’s servant looks out the window at the massive army that is surrounding their home. He looks back at his master. It is just the two of them. Elisha’s words perplex him. What on earth could Elisha mean?
Then Elisha prays: “O Lord, open his eyes and let him see!”
God answers Elisha’s prayer. Elisha’s servant once again looks out the window. This time, he can see that the entire hillside is covered with horses and chariots of fire. (2 Kings 6:8-17)
In the book of Psalms, King David wrote: “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who are in awe of God, and God delivers them.” (Psalms 34:7) That is just what Elisha’s servant saw when he peered out the window. God lifted the veil between the earthly and spiritual realms and allowed him to see what a moment before he could not see: an army of angels riding fiery chariots encamped around the unwitting enemy army, offering the two of them God’s protection.
I have been thinking a lot about this story during this coronavirus pandemic. You know, the scariest thing about this pandemic is that we cannot see it. Oh, we have all seen those cool colorized magnifications of SARS-CoV-2 – the actual virus – that look like some harmless odd shaped stuffed toy from a preschool, or a spiked ball for some newly invented sport. But we cannot see the real thing. All that we know is that it could be anywhere — in the air that we breathe, on things we touch — and that it is very easily transmitted. One small opportunity – a mask that is not on or fitted right, the one time we touch something and we do not wash our hands carefully after – we can pick it up, we can become ill, or worse: we can stay well and transmit it to others who become ill or God forbid, die.
We can never be sure if we washed our hands well enough, or if our mask was sealed, or if a room had sufficient air circulation. We cannot even be sure that someone who feels well and has no symptoms is not an asymptomatic carrier being used by the virus like some trojan horse to attack us or our loved ones.
This sense of the virus’s pervasive invisible presence is a major cause of our underlying anxiety. When we look out our window, or walk down our street, all we can see is a splendid autumn day. The sun is shining. The air is crisp. The leaves are starting to change. Yet any joy or satisfaction we might find in that beauty is undermined by the knowledge that the virus is lurking out there, like the army of Aram. So, we lock ourselves in our homes. We mask up, wash up, glove up. We avoid the very people we so long to see, to touch, to hug.
There are also other demons we fight during this pandemic that also cannot be seen, like the feeling of isolation and loneliness that comes from never having physical contact. The burn-out, headaches and eye strain that come from too much Zoom. Frustration and depression. The fear over actual or potential loss of savings or our business or livelihood. The toll of systemic racism so built into our culture that we do not see it and yet we feel its effects.
All around us, invisible enemies threaten us. They threaten our families, our communities, our way of life. We cannot see exactly when these threats will end. When they do end, we will never be able to go back. After the pandemic, there will be a new normal. But no one can say with any surety what that new normal will be. And if they tell you they can, you are better off to not believe them, unless maybe they are the prophet Elisha!
How on earth do we cope with so many unseen threats? How can we find any sense of stability and security in our lives with so much unknown? How can we find a sense of peace? How can we find wholeness?
Elisha provides us the answer. We may feel encircled by this pandemic, trapped with no way out. But what we also cannot see is the army of angels that surrounds us as well. Yes, each one of us is accompanied through life by an army of angels. They watch over us, protect us, shelter us from harm.
The Bible is replete with examples of angels.
God sets two angels at the entrance of the Garden of Eden to guard it.
Today during the Torah reading we read that an angel – in the form of a messenger, foretells to Abraham and Sarah the birth of Isaac.
And tomorrow we will read that an angel stops Abraham from killing Isaac.
Angels ascend and descend Jacob’s ladder.
When Jacob is on his death bed, he blesses his grandsons with these words:
??????????? ???????? ????? ??????-???, ???????? ???-???????????
hamalaach ha-goel oti mi-kol ra yevarekh et ha-naarim
“May the angel who rescued me from all evil bless these boys…”
The midrash of the Rabbis teaches that every person is assigned a guardian angel. In fact, sometimes we have more than one guardian angel.
A traditional bedtime prayer asks for God’s presence, along with the archangels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. The Talmud teaches that two angels follow us home from the Kabbalat Shabbat services each Friday night. If they see a table set with white linen, candlesticks, wine and challah, filled with love and joy and song, and there is peace in the home then one angel says, “So shall it be in this home every week.”
Our sages taught that a procession of angels walks before a person wherever he goes, blowing the shofar and announcing, “Make way for the image of the Holy One!” Imagine that! You are escorted through the world like a King or Queen in a royal entourage. You are so important, so precious to God, that you are accompanied wherever you go and in all that you do.
One could also have different angels for different purposes. In a 17th century compilation of Tekhinos – women’s prayers – there is a prayer to be recited when you place challah in the oven. In it, the woman baking asks God to “send an angel to guard the baking, so that all will be well baked, will rise nicely, and will not burn!”
Not all rabbinic scholars through the ages have accepted the existence of angels. Maimonides, Abravanel and Rabbi Joseph Kimchi all opposed the idea. They worried that belief in angels would lead become idolatry.
Rabbi Joseph Kimchi writes in the 12th century: “true penitence does not stand in need of intervention by the saints; feigned penitence will not be helped by either the dead or the saints, by man or angel.”
Maimonides dealt with the angels found in the Bible by teaching that they always were experienced in dreams and not in waking life.
The kabbalists, in contrast, filled their literature with angelology, but the kabbalists do not see angels as independent beings. Instead, they see them – like the sefirot –as manifestations of different aspects of the Divine. To experience God’s angels is to experience God’s love and protective care wrapped around us, watching over us.
However you view them, angels are a reminder that even when facing invisible threats, there are also invisible forces at work that can bring healing to us and to our shattered world.
Adin Steinsaltz teaches the kabbalistic idea that every time we perform a mitzvah, do a good deed or an act of love, we create an angel in the world. We add to those positive forces that cannot be seen but can be felt.
Love is such a force. Love cannot be seen, but it is so powerful force that has the ability to transform the ordinary into the magical. It is as critical for our minds and bodies as oxygen. The more connected we are to each other, the healthier we are both physically and emotionally.
Love is so potent that when it takes hold of you, resistance is futile. It has the capacity to heal old wounds and to cleanse you of any negativity. If only we could learn to be more loving and accepting of others and ourselves.
I tell couples under the chuppah that love does not just happen, it is a choice that you make every day. That Is not just true regarding love of a spouse. It is also true of love of family, love of friends, love of community, even love of strangers and love of ourselves. In the words of psychologist Eric Fromm, love is “an act of will.” Call on your Angels of Love.
Compassion is another invisible force that transforms our world. Compassion requires that we have empathy. It means, to quote myself from a previous high holiday sermon, “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes,” being able to understand their hurts, fears, and frustrations. It means being able to identify with them and to feel their pain.
Compassion is not just about acknowledging other people’s pain and distress. It is about feeling as if that pain and distress is your own. It is about reaching out to offer comfort and support, and to provide uplift.
It also requires acceptance people for who they are. Compassion is not just about acknowledging other people’s pain and distress. It is about feeling their distress as our own. It is about reaching out to offer comfort and support. It is about providing uplift.
The Dalai Lama taught that Love and Compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive. Call upon your Angels of Compassion.
There are other invisible forces too. There is the power of acceptance: Accepting others and ourselves for who we are, embracing diversity, uplifting each other even when we have flaws.
Acceptance of ourselves does not mean that we do not repent of our wrongs or seek to improve. Acceptance means recognizing that our journey toward our better selves, with all the detours along the way, is itself sacred and beautiful.
Call upon your angels of you Angels of Acceptance.
There is also the power of repentance: the power we have to change. The power to transform ourselves, our communities, our futures.
Call upon your Angels of Repentance.
And there is the power of forgiveness. The power of forgiveness is the power we have to enable someone else to see the good inside themselves, to understand what they are capable of being, and to strive to raise themselves up because someone is willing to forgive them. Because someone sees the good in them.
Call upon your Angels of Forgiveness.
We need to call upon these powers now: Love and Compassion, Acceptance, Repentance and Forgiveness. They are there for us. They are all around us. They are waiting for us to open our eyes, like Elisha’s servant, and to see them.
There is a pop song you may know, entitled “Calling All Angels.” It was released by the band, Train, in 2003. The words are:
I need to know that things are going to look up
Because I feel us drowning in a sea spilled from a cup
When there is no safe place, and no safe place to put my head
When you feel the world shake from the words that are said
I’m calling all angels.
I’m calling all angels.
I won’t give up if you don’t give up
I won’t give up if you don’t give up
I need a hand to help build up
some kind of hope inside of me…
And I’m calling all angels.
This New Year, as we face the challenges that lie before us, let us each call upon our angels.
Shanah Tovah.