This time last year there was a three-fold increase in the number of visitors to Lichfield Cathedral.  They had come to see an Angel, 1200 hundred years old and 60 cm tall.

In the summer of 2003, an archaeological excavation in the Cathedral unearthed a fragmented Anglo-Saxon sculptured panel.  It depicts half an Annunciation scene: Gabriel, his right hand raised in blessing.  The panel is probably part of the original shrine of St Chad erected by Hedda in the early 8th century and described by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History.

This time last year, it was on show for a month.  After being taken away for research and conservation work, the Angel is expected to return home to the Cathedral within the next few weeks, for permanent display.  No-one will be surprised if visitor numbers again triple.

A few disheartening minutes spent browsing the ‘Body, Mind and Spirit’ section at a major bookstore demonstrates that there is an extraordinary interest in angels out there.  Books on angels abound.  Most offer either a saccharine mixture of positive thinking and pseudo-scientific spirituality (‘tune in to the higher vibrations of the Angels and… attract to yourself people and situations of a higher vibratory level and release old negative thought patterns’) or a nauseous blend of horoscopes and white magic.  On the web it is possible to buy ‘Pocket Angels’ – a term which neatly captures the sad limits of this whole genre.  The Angel in your Pocket is a good luck charm: 

I am a tiny angel, I'm smaller than your thumb:
I live in people’s pockets, that's where I have my fun.
Before I was an Angel... I was a fairy in a flower:
God, Himself, hand-picked me, and gave me Angel power.
And because God is so busy, with way too much to do;
He said that my assignment is to keep close watch on you.

Frankly, I’d rather be a Pocket Human carried about by an angel, than depend on the good offices of such a tame and domesticated being, substituting for a God too busy to look after me himself.

What a contrast with the angelic figures who populate the pages of the Bible.  They usually have to announce themselves with the words ‘Don’t be afraid’, because the poor humans to whom they have appeared are scared witless.  The angels at the Empty Tomb in the Gospel accounts of Easter are certainly of this kind.  In Matthew’s Gospel, the soldiers are so afraid, they shake for fear of him and become ‘like dead men’, and the women, sure enough, are told, ‘Don’t be afraid’.  In Mark, ‘the young man’ says to the women, ‘Don’t be alarmed’ – but the women leave in terror all the same.  In Luke, the women are terrified at the sight of the two men in dazzling clothes who confront them, and ‘bow their faces to the ground’.  It’s hard to imagine anyone being alarmed by a Pocket Angel, or shaking for fear of one – unless they accidentally swallowed it (the packaging of a Pocket Angel frequently notes it is a choking hazard).

The indications given by visitors to Lichfield Cathedral a year ago suggest that they came not looking for a Pocket Angel, but for something more spiritually demanding.  There wasn’t much bowing of the face to the ground – but would we want that in the presence of a limestone sculpture rather than the Thing Itself?  There was however a great reverence, as encouraging as spirituality section bookshelves are disheartening.

For many, the reverence was for history.  Antiquity bestows venerability, especially when the history is your own.  Some visitors were archaeological buffs, who came to indulge their passion.  But most were not historians or experts in Anglo Saxon culture.  For Lichfield residents and people of the West Midlands generally, there was a sense of being reunited with our own past.  It wasn’t just that this beautiful artifact, which had lain face down for a thousand years, was now recovered for our enjoyment; but that it connected us somehow with our roots.  Perhaps the Anglo Saxons are sufficiently like us to be ‘our people’, but sufficiently strange to inspire our awe.

And then there was for others a reverence, however vaguely articulated, for the Angel as a Christian artifact.  It is often said that we live in a post Christian age.  As a parish priest I was startled a few years ago to encounter a woman in her twenties who had not realized until she went to see Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, that the earthly ministry of Jesus ended in his death.  But for most white middle class adults at least (and most Cathedral visitors fall into that category, even when numbers are tripled), the basic story of the Christian faith and even Gabriel’s role within it are still known.  The sculpture seems to connect people with a faith that is still sufficiently familiar to be ‘ours’ and yet which has become sufficiently strange to inspire awe.

Cathedrals aspire to assist tourists to become pilgrims and pilgrims to become disciples.  For a month, the Lichfield Angel gave us a glimpse of what that transformation might be like.  In less spectacular ways, Cathedrals and parish churches and their liturgies up and down the country do this all the time – maybe especially at Easter.

An Angel like ours just does it dramatically.  Within the Christian tradition, Angels are messengers.  They speak for God.  The hush which characterized visitors in the presence of the Lichfield Angel suggested a real attention by those who came to see it, to hear what its message might be.