Guardian Angels: Julian Assange, like the prophets of the Old Testament, has called the powerful to account. It is to be hoped that he is afforded the same divine protection."HE’S NOT at all like him. How can you even think that?" Gabriel’s pinions flutter with indignation, casting off tiny splinters of golden light into the frigid evening air.
"Oh, I don’t know," replies Raphael, brushing Gabriel’s still glowing sparks from his robes. "If you cast your mind back, you’ll recall that He wasn’t everybody’s favourite activist either. In fact, didn’t just about everyone in high places call him a trouble-maker? A terrorist even?"
"Not the same thing at all – He was a prophet."
"Oh, come on, Gabriel. You know as well as I do that ‘prophet’ is just another name for troublemaker. How do you think the kings of Israel responded to being called to account by the likes of Isaiah and Amos? Do you think they liked having their misdeeds discussed openly in the marketplace? Do you think they appreciated those bearded vagabonds striding into their palaces, pointing their fingers, laying bare their sins? I don’t think so!"
"They were speaking for God, Raphael – that’s what makes the difference. They were His mouthpieces. Their mission was divine."
Gabriel spreads his wings, and with an upward beat brings himself to a position just above a pair of forbidding wrought-iron gates. Gathered in a noisy semicircle around the gateway are the outside-broadcast vehicles and satellite dishes of the world’s media. He counts at least a hundred journalists stamping their frozen feet in the snow-shrouded Suffolk countryside.
"Do they look like God’s mouthpieces to you, Raphael?"
"As individuals? No, not really. But then they are mortals, Gabriel. Sinners, every one. Just like Isaiah. Just like Amos. Just like all the human bearers of God’s word. He fashioned them, Gabriel. Endowing them with the wit and skill to subdue the whole earth: root and branch; fish and fowl. This is how they speak to one another nowadays – twittering and tweeting. Voices in the air, Gabriel. Hasn’t God always spoken thus?"
"And the man they seek, Raphael? He’s no stranger to the sins of the flesh. Does it seem likely that God would place his word in so flawed a vessel?"
Now it was Raphael’s turn to send indignant sparks into the wintry air.
"But isn’t that the point!" With a mighty beat of his wings he propels himself several thousand feet higher into the darkening sky. "Look about you! Look at what they have done to the garden we made for them to dwell in! They are fallen, Gabriel! Fallen! They should be left to freeze – or to burn. And yet here we are – just as we were that night on the hillside above Bethlehem, when we spoke to the shepherds, and just for a moment let them see the splendour of our wings. Because he loves them Gabriel – he loves them. Flawed though they be. Sinners though they are. He would not have them fall."
"But where were the signs? The wonders? Where was the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh? Where were we thirty-nine years ago when this fellow came into the world? I have no memory of a maternity ward in Townsville."
"I don’t think it works like that any more, Gabriel. That first time, remember, they called him Emanuel – "God is with us". And I don’t think he ever left. He remains with them, don’t you see? To be born again in every generation. The same story, Gabriel, told over and over and over again. What was it that Paul said: ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places’."
"That certainly sounds like our friends in Washington", chuckled Gabriel, as the two archangels descended slowly towards the English country house.
I think I understand you now, Raphael", Gabriel smiles, "We’re here to bear witness. From the first betrayal to the final crucifixion. To the whole tragic passion play which, for twenty centuries, these doomed mortals have prepared for anyone who dares bid them be free."
"But we’re not the only witnesses," Raphael replies, spreading his wings protectively around half the house. "For each time the drama is played out there are always more who grasp its meaning. Who hear, as if for the first time, the words we heard Him speak to Pontius Pilate all those centuries ago: "For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice."
"And is set free!", Gabriel laughs, wrapping his own wings around the other half.
A great rush of air sends snow flurries whirling among the waiting journalists.
"Christ!", mutters a reporter from The Sun. "Freezing me effing bollocks off for Julian bloody Assange. What a way to spend Christmas!"
This short story was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 21 December 2010.
