Feast of Michael and All Angels: Reflections from the Dean on Rev. 12 and the Cover of Her Latest Book

In a sculpture I came across at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Satan sits with his chin in his hand, staring into the distance. His wings are folded behind him. He looks less like a fearsome dragon than someone trying to understand how he came to fall. I found the sculpture in 2022, while writing a book about the devil in fourth-century Christian thought. I stood before it for a long time. The artist had imagined a moment after Satan’s expulsion from heaven: not a battle, but its aftermath. The image stayed with me, and it became the cover of my book, The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought.

Today’s reading from Revelation gives us the battle itself: “War broke out in heaven.” Michael and his angels fight the dragon, and the dragon is thrown down. The sculpture invites us to wonder about the fallen angel. Revelation asks us to look at what he does. He is named and known in several ways: the ancient serpent, the Devil, Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He is “the accuser of our comrades,” the one who accuses them day and night before God.

Accusation can be a quiet weapon. It says, “You know what you did. You know what you are. You’ve really messed up.” Sometimes an accusation begins with something true: a wrong we have done, a promise we have broken. Then it tells a lie about what that truth means. It insists that our failure is the whole of us, that forgiveness is impossible, that we have no place among the people of God. Sometimes that voice comes from within and at other times it comes from without, in communities that have turned toxic.

The good news in this morning’s reading is this: the voice from heaven announces that the accuser has been thrown down. Notice what the voice says next: “They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” The victory belongs to Christ, the Lamb who has been killed. And those whom the accuser called his comrades bear witness to that victory, even when doing so costs them their lives. That does not mean they had no sins to confess, or that their courage never faltered. Their testimony is that the Lamb’s blood speaks more decisively than the accuser does. They can tell the truth about themselves because the accuser no longer gets to pronounce the final word.

The Letter does not let us mistake this announcement for an easy ending. “Woe to the earth and the sea,” says the voice. The devil has come down in wrath, and the people of God must still live where he is. But he is angry “because he knows that his time is short.” His fury is real; it is not a sign that he is winning. That matters when accusation seems to fill the whole of our hearing, or when cruelty looks more effective than faithfulness.

What is heaven is saying? the accuser has been thrown down. And if we are tempted to hear Satan’s accusations as God’s own judgment, we are given a word to answer him. The Lamb has been slain. His people have not been abandoned. The devil’s time is short. May we live as though this were so.