Billy Graham remarked once that he had never heard a sermon on angels. Think back. Have you ever heard one?

While we have not had much to say about angels in the churches, the world at large is getting quite interested in them. The philosopher, Mortimer Adler, announced "angels" as his subject at a gathering of intellectuals in Aspen, Colorado a few years ago and a crowd filled the auditorium! On the popular level, A Book of Angels, by Sophy Burnham was a recent best-seller. What do we make of all this?

Why have angels been ignored in the past in both our churches and in the wider society? Surely one explanation is the times we live in, influenced as they are by "the Enlightenment." About 200 years ago, leading thinkers began to insist that we rely only on our reason and not the church's teachings. Science and technology came to shape our thinking about how the world works. Before long, angels began to disappear from peoples' consciousness.

Another reason for this loss of conviction about angels is the way they are regularly portrayed. "Cherubic" winged infants flitting about puts them in the category of fairies and fantasy. No wonder they seem unbelievable.

But things are changing. For one, we are not so sure anymore that science, technology and human reason can solve all our problems. The world seems to be in terrible shape in spite of all our enlightenment. Therefore, many who are disillusioned with a secular modern world are turning to the supernatural -- and that includes an interest in angels. Hence Sophy Burnham's book with its stories of presumed angel encounters. Indeed, New Age devotees sometimes speak of the angel of a tree or a flower and have long conversations with them!

As the limits of human reason begin to dawn upon us, however, we have to be careful not to go to the other extreme -- irrationalism. Truth may be beyond the reach of reason -- from revelation, not against reason.

To live by Scripture rather than the rationalism or irrationalism of the day, means that we have our own way of thinking about angels. The fact that we have neglected them, or been taken in by the movie, TV, greeting card or New Age version of them, tells us we had better get back to those basics.

I want you to suspend, for a bit, your skepticism and see if you can get into that "strange new world of the Bible," as the great theologian Karl Barth called it. Here we can call, as well, upon C.S. Lewis as a good guide. One road into that new land is charted by our hymn book. It's full of angels! Remember your own words as you sang "about the cherubim and seraphim falling down" before God. Or, in Spirit of God, Descend upon my Heart, how you asked God to "teach me to love thee as the angels love." Well, how do the angels love?

For one, angels praise God! So we sing in our doxology, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow ... Praise God above ye heavenly hosts" The heavenly hosts are the angels. In the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy, the reference to the cherubim and seraphim is from the 6th chapter of Isaiah: