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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Imagine for a moment: there was Satan, by some mysterious urge—by the original, original sin—vying to take God’s place. What was it like that evening in the heavenly throne room? Maybe little Lucifer had stayed up an especially long time, displaying unusual delight and care in dusting off his lampstand after everyone else had gone to bed. Then, when he was sure he was alone at last, he thought he might reach out and try—just try and ~touch~ the lovely throne, the heavenly mercy seat. He reached out to touch it, alright…only to wake up groggy—a little shaken—and a bit ruddy, wedged in the crook of a charred tree somewhere. Bit of a tingling sensation in the fingertips.

We don’t know the details of the real story. Although I think I wouldn’t be surmising too much if I said we’re all a little fascinated by the hint at some kind of showdown in heaven, culminating with a banished Satan in dramatic freefall amid the thunder and lightning of God’s wrath. Jesus is content to be cryptic about that particular episode in today’s text.

And when Jesus is cryptic, it’s probably best to let the mystery stand. Contrary to our typical inclinations, when something in Scripture seems to be left half-spoken or unspoken, we are not usually encouraged to act on our intrigue. These things aren’t written that we may fill in the blanks. They are written that we may believe. Why then—must Jesus so often say things that are so stimulating to our imaginations, only to quickly reign in our distracted spirits?

If the seventy-two had had their way, the text appointed for the feast of St. Michael and All Angels would be about all about their power over Satan, his minions, snakes, and scorpions. And Satan’s fall from heaven would of course feature a little more prominently. But Jesus warns that we ought not pay too much mind to such things.

Yes, today, Jesus insists that however useful and, frankly, enjoyable their special powers may be, however encouraging it is to stamp out Satan’s spirits, ultimate trust is not to be placed in such things. The seventy-two were given Jesus’ authority to perform all kinds of wonders. Yet the seventy-two, the apostles, were all eventually done in by something or other. All of them paid sin its wages, as all of us will do. “Nothing shall hurt you,” Jesus says. Yet he knows what lies between his words and their fulfillment. He knows what must be endured before the end of all hurting comes to pass. He knows that there are terms and conditions under the promise that “nothing shall hurt you.” He knows what he must do, what he must endure, in order to spare us from ultimate harm.

Nothing shall hurt you? How can this be? It’s all too clear that, whatever the details of Satan’s fall, you and I live in the aftermath of it—each of us born under the affliction of his perverse desires, his wishes that are anything but harmless. The same power that set itself against God in heaven is working here on earth, now, to set you and I against God. Satan would like us to share his envy, his destructive desire. He would like us to set ourselves against God in the same way that he is set against God. This is what hurts us.

Whenever we are preserved from harm—it is because Jesus has sent his angels concerning us. It has been because Jesus, in his infinite wisdom, preserves us. Jesus desires that we all see the day when every kind of hurt that Satan could throw at us…is at last vanquished. That day is indeed coming to us, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In that day, we will return to Jesus with the exuberance of the seventy-two, rejoicing not over what we have been able to accomplish throughout the cross and trial of this life, but instead rejoicing over the union with him that has been fractured ever since he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. That future day is food for the imagination. That day is the stuff of dreams and visions. Every time that we are preserved, we are given a hazy glimpse of the ultimate and everlasting preservation that is to come. It isn’t quite clear. There are blanks to be filled in. Each time the old Adam is replaced by the new, we get some idea.

We see glimmers of it in baptism. It is what we hear in Absolution. It is what we eat and drink in the Lord’s Supper. Each time we are preserved in these ways, we are shown a type, a little resurrection, that looks forward to our ultimate resurrection at Jesus’ cry of command, on the last day.

In the resurrection, nothing will hurt us. Yet only suffering and death can bring us to the resurrection. Only Jesus’ suffering and death, only his cross and his passion, could turn our death into the kind that is met with resurrection. Only Jesus could open to us the way of everlasting life.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.