Last week I encouraged people to send in questions that might “stump the pastor” in the “Question of the Week” portion of the newsletter. I got, well, actually nothing. But someone did send in a question on the Sunday connection card, and that question was “What are cherubim and seraphim?” Connecting this with last week’s newsletter article, these names for angels show up in the proper preface during the season of Easter. So what are they?

So both the Cherubim and Seraphim seem to be….either ranks or types (or ranked types) of angels. Scripture never really presents a sort of neat outline of the organizational structure of angelic hosts (which is frustrating for organizational types like myself), but these are definitely two. So, the question comes up – is Michael mentioned in Scripture a Cherubim or a Seraphim? We don’t know. He could be one of the two, but he could also be something totally different, but if you were able to ask him about a Cherubim, he could name a few for sure.

So Cherubim – first of all, get that baby “Cherub” picture from Raphael out of your mind. The Cherubim are likely “guards”. The word Cherubim is used for the angel who stood guard with the flaming sword outside of the garden of Eden. The Cherubim are also the angels are that depicted in the temple guarding the Ark of the Covenant. Since they are normally seen near to things that are important to God (Ark, Eden, His throne room), there developed a sort of idea that they were also like “buddy buddy” with God sort of because they were near Him. This is likely silly, but the nearness thing does seem to be a hallmark of what it means to be a Cherubim.

Seraphim – The Hebrew word here means “fiery” and is in the same semantic range as the “fiery” serpents who bit the people of Israel in the wilderness. If you take that to the nth degree, some people have postulated that possibly Satan was a “seraphim” before falling. That’s going too far to be reliable, but hey, kind of interesting. Mostly the Seraphim are shown in Isaiah 6 – there they have 6 wings, are shouting about God’s holiness, and are searing Isaiah’s mouth with hot coals. Because of that, they generally are said to have roles of purification and proclamation, and are also near God’s throne…but maybe not as near as the Cherubim…

So in the proper preface, when we are talking about these two angel classes during communion time, the sense is that we’re saying that these angels are “witnesses to the Resurrection” along with “all the company of heaven,” and the rest of creation in a very Psalm 148 kind of way. I think the inclusion of the Hebrew names is probably more poetic than being real specific about the kinds of angels since it also includes “angels” (a word that just means messenger, by the way) and “archangels” (the word only shows up in Jude and 1 Thessalonians and means “chief” angel).

So now when you’re at church this Sunday, you can have a little better picture of what you’re saying when you say those names as a part of God’s creation that witnessed and celebrated Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead.