[Sermon] Equal to Angels

Dr. Kempton Hewitt, guest preacher

November 9, 2025 + 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

In Luke’s telling, Jesus uses a rare word to describe the resurrected: isangeloi—“equal to angels.” Dr. Hewitt unpacks this image with wit and warmth, showing how Luke paints a vision of humanity made radiant by God’s love. To be equal to angels is to live as messengers, protectors, and watchers—announcing good news and embodying compassion in daily life. Like Job, who yearned to stand before God, we too are called to live worthily, reflecting divine grace in the world’s uncertainty. Resurrection, then, is not just a future event—it is a present calling.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Amen.

Well, what holds these two wonderful readings together? I was so enthralled by the Job reading that a couple of weeks ago I started working on the Hebrew, and then pulled in a colleague of mine who’s actually, um, a PhD specialist in Job. He and I together critiqued each other’s translation—and that’s what you have in your inner bulletin today.

But then the Luke story, uh, is absolutely, uh, a premium Jesus story as well. Well, what—what holds them together? And I’ll be very quick and easy about this. What holds them together is that, at the end, Job says, “Yes, I know there is a kinsman to speak my— I know there’s a redeemer. But what I have to wait for and long for is to stand myself, for myself, in the presence of the Almighty, and regard only the Almighty as I present who I am.”

And likewise, the story in Luke, which is about kinsmen—and, by the way, if you want to know more about that old tribal custom of protecting widowed, uh, mothers—uh, motherless, I should say—from despair by marrying them off to the next in line in the family, just go tonight and read the Book of Ruth, which describes exactly how that worked.

But once again, like Job, Jesus goes immediately to another place, which is: when my children stand before God. And by the way, it’s kind of like us theologians. I—I—I last night counted the number of words in the original text that it takes for the Sadducees to put the question. It’s over 70 words, but Jesus’ response is about 20, and it goes right to the point.

And Luke brings into play, in coming right to that point, in a way that absolutely drives professional theologians like myself wild. And the first point that Jesus makes in answering is this: he says—in fact, in the text he says—“Those who are considered worthy.”

Now, I want to tell you something. Mark and Matthew tell the same story. They don’t include that. That is the brilliance of Luke: “those who are worthy to become children in the resurrection world,” is the way he completes it.

Now, if you have been catechized in the Luther Catechism—or maybe you were raised with the Westminster Confession, or the Articles of Religion, or Wesley’s hymns and notes—then you know theologians have tried to tell the world what it takes to stand before God.

And if you go to one of my favorite places for the last couple of decades, Half Price Books—go to the very back, and on the left-hand side, the last cubicle is “Theology.” And if you take your measuring tape, just stand there, and you will find several volumes. And if you take out your measuring tape across the spine, you will see that some of them measure two, two and a half, even three inches—of knowledge about what God expects.

And of course, the fellow who has three inches of spine disagrees with the guy next to her who has two and a half inches of spine.

So, we’re supposed to believe that it doesn’t matter what you do in life for God, but rather whether you have been redeemed in this or that system.

The other night at the Bible study, led so ably by Mark, a lot of wonderful things were said—but Pastor Hector said something that just was so utterly profound. He said, “You know, sometimes we get into the weeds on what it is we are to believe, and how the church wants you to.” He said, “Sometimes I think it’s just a simple matter.”

You see, if you take one of these Gallup polls—where people don’t know the priest or the preacher or the imam or whoever it is is looking over your shoulder—you will find out that most people believe, whether they’re religious or not, that in the afterlife, how you have lived is important.

They don’t care about theologians. We all know that there is something about life that demands of us—if we expect to have a peaceful and accepting afterlife—we all know that being found worthy is important.

But then Luke does it a second time—uh, and I’ll take the first slide now, thank you. In the very next sentence he says, “Remember that those who are counted worthy and go into the world of the resurrection are equal to angels.”

Now, I will bet every single person in here did better at geometry than I did. I—I am so bad at math that, as my lovely wife sitting here will tell you, I’m not even allowed to carry folding money.

But I did—you see, the isosceles triangle—I did remember that an isosceles triangle is a triangle made up of two equal legs. And if you went to a really full American dictionary and looked up all of the scientific words that start with “is,” you would find two and three columns. It’s a very useful prefix. And the Greek up there is angeloi. And let’s go ahead and murder Greek the way we murder, in America, all other languages. You can call them—we are to be “is-angels.” Isn’t that great? Ice angels! Would you try it out—see how it comes on your tongue? “Ice—ice angels.”

Equal to angels—not angels, but equal. This is only in Luke. And by the way, he is the most masterful writer in the New Testament. I went to my four-inch-wide lexicon, and nobody else in the ancient world uses the word isangeloi, and nobody in the New Testament uses the word isangeloi. But it’s a perfectly good word, and a proper word—he’s not making it up. It’s just Luke trying to get exactly the right sense of who we are to become. We’re is-angels.

And to get there—to make his first point, to be considered worthy—our challenge is to act like we are angels. Now, that’s the other thing that drives theologians absolutely batty—they don’t like this angel stuff. “This is mythological; this is just on the fringes.”

But let me tell you—back to the Gallup poll stuff—well, you take a poll, and it’s been done, and you will find out that more people believe in angels than go to church.

And so, in spite of what us theologians think about the place of angels in our life, Luke is saying we are children of the resurrection already—if we adopt the discipline. We are already angels—equal to angels.

The next slide, please.

And so, I don’t know about you—I will speak only for myself this morning—I have lived a very long time, including memories of living in Everett at a time when we weren’t exactly sure whether or not the war being waged would come to our homes via the Puget Sound. And I remember the sense of uncertainty, and the sense of a certain powerlessness.

And I want to tell you that—this is speaking for me today, and if you want to say “yes” inside yourself, you can—I want to tell you that today, more than that time in 1942, I am feeling uncertain and also powerless.

And so now we’re getting serious—and what I have to say to you today is that the ancient scriptures that we live by still provide us guidance. And Luke and Job can provide us guidance in what I think are uncertain and powerless times.

And it is to live as Easter children—as children of the resurrection—as those who already are is-angels, “ice angels.” And we know a lot about what it would be to act like an angel.

Uh—here is the announcement: what angels do is they announce good news. And by the way, often that good news is bad news for some.

And what we can do as is-angels is to speak truth to power, and to announce good news to those who see nothing but bad news. And we are surrounded by those who live in the midst of bad news. And we can say to them, “There is good news.”

Let me give you an example. Addiction and alcoholism has run right through my family. And from time to time—thank God—some person bearing good news about recovery has gone to someone addicted and has said, “There is life beyond this. Grasp it, and I will stand beside you as you grasp it.”

Does that—does that echo with anybody here? An is-angel speaks hope, and we do it in whatever location and circumstance God gives us. In that circumstance, we are not powerless.

The next slide, please.

What angels also do—they protect the innocent. And there are, in our world now, innocents by the numbers. Does anybody disagree?

And so, as is-angels, we in our own way, wherever we are, seek to protect the innocent.

For 15 years after my retirement, I served as a guardian ad litem, and I can tell you that one of the most joyful periods of my life was when I was given a case with a court order from a judge to act in every way for that damaged child—to step in and to say something: that this child is now protected, this child is now under my care, and you will do what the state has ordered.

That can be done in other circumstances.

Give me the next slide, please.

And the angels are also watchers. They are those who do not live in the small bubble of their lives, but cast their eyes on the circumference of their lives, and watch over what is happening—and be prepared to warn where necessary.

Down on the Oregon coast, where we hang out some of the time, we serve on Saturday at a food pantry. It’s a very humble one. And when I first began serving, I realized that by the time families came with their boxes to the end and were getting ready to leave, there was no one to help them. And I said—I volunteered—I said, “Can I be the box boy?”

And so I stand at the end, and with the box of groceries—there’s a little wobbly kitchen cart with, you know, the kind of wheels that go like this—and I put them on there. And the person said, “No, I can—” I said, “No, let me help you.”

And I carry those groceries out to the little wagon they’ve got, or the bicycle, or the broken-down car. And then they open the door and say, “Well, just—just push the pit bull back a little bit.”

And why? I asked for the job because, as I walk them out and load the car, and stand with one hand on the rusty roof and talk to them, it allows me to give them a moment to know they’re watched—to watch.

And this wonderful little group of renegades that do this breakfast—we stand in a circle, and they pray. And thank goodness it’s a laywoman—and her prayers are entirely unschooled—and she makes me cry, because she says, “Lord, give us warm smiles and welcoming hearts. Help us to see the dignity of these people, and to make them feel their dignity.”

And at the end we stand there, we’re weeping, and as people come in we say, “Oh, it’s just so good to see you again. Is your recovery still going well?” That’s watching. That’s watching.

We can all be is-angels. We don’t have to feel uncertain. We don’t have to feel powerless. We have a circle we all live in. If it’s a narrow circle, that’s okay. If it’s a bigger circle, that’s even better.

We can act in these ways that the blessed St. Luke has helped us. God help us. God help us to take up our role in the world as is-angels.

Amen.