Within the nativity story, angels play a critical role and a familiar part of the story, if nothing else than the angels appearing to the shepherds in the fields as we just heard, and as Linus reminds us every year as being part of the story of the meaning of Christmas. But the angels in the fields are even more than just this moment. Jesus’ birth story actually begins with angelic announcements, and that’s actually the angel Gabriel. He first appears to Zechariah in the temple telling him that his wife Elizabeth will give birth in her old age, although we’re never told that age, but Zechariah doesn’t believe him. and Gabriel begins that message by telling Zechariah, not to be afraid. Gabriel then appears to Mary to tell her that she too will become pregnant, and again begins with the injunction do not to be afraid. An angel also appears to Joseph, although this time in a dream, and we’re not told whom this angel is, but again the message begins “do not be afraid.” And of course, as we’re talking about angels in the Christmas story we cannot forget angel second class, Clarence Odbody, in Frank Capra’s classic It’s a Wonderful Life. I think my favorite portrayal of an angel is not in a Christmas story, but instead was done by John Travolta who portrayed that archangel Michael, in the movie of the same name. A smoking, hard drinking, hard living, slob, with a rather colorful vocabulary. Someone no one would ever believe was an angel if it weren’t for the two wings growing out of his back. And you know that John Travolta is a really good actor when he, a scientologist, can play the leading messenger for God.
We actually don’t know very much about angels from the Bible. Most of what people think about them, or think they know about them, comes from extra-biblical sources, some of them quite modern, and we could talk about them but then we’d have to end up talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But that is not to say that angels aren’t found in scripture because they are. The first time we hear of an angel is after Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden, the entrance is guarded by cherubim who has a flaming sword, think of it as the world’s first light saber. The cherubim are winged creatures who act sort of as guardians, and if you remember Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark correctly, they are the images formed onto the top of the ark of the covenant. Later we will also hear about seraphim, who are winged creatures said to be found guarding God’s seat inside the Temple in the Holy of Holies. If I remember correctly, it’s the cherubim that hang from the ceiling and the seraphim that come up from the floor, or maybe it’s reversed, I can never remember which is which. But while they are angelic like creatures, outside of the wings, these are not really angels as we typically understand them or think of them, or as they are found in the rest of scripture.
Angels in scripture not usually winged figures, but instead they are found in human form, if you remember the angels who appear to Abraham, or to lot, to name just a few, they are not identifiable. In Hebrew, the word used for angel is malak (mal luck) simply means messenger. In this sense, the angels can take on a much bigger characteristic than just heavenly creatures that come down from on high, because the word malak is also sometimes used to describe the prophets as well, since they are described as messengers of God. That is an important piece for us to remember about who and what are angels. In Greek, the word is angelos, (on-guh-loss) which is where we get the word angel directly, as well as Los Angeles, the city of angels, whose only angels I am aware of are the baseball team, who as a Yankees fan, I hardly find heavenly. But there is one other word that comes into play in this passage from Luke which also applies to our lives, because what we hear in Greek is that the angelos (on-guh-loss) come before the shepherds and say they are bringing good news of great joy. The word translated as good news in Greek is euangelion. You can see that it too contains the word angel, or messenger, it is also the word that you might also see from which we get the dreaded word evangelist, and even worse, evangelism. And I know that some of you are now thinking, “it’s a little dark, I think we can still sneak out without being noticed,” or maybe nudging the person next to you and saying “I thought this was supposed to be about Christmas, and he’s talking about evangelism, what’s up with that?”
But the angels who appear to the shepherds, and notice that nowhere did the passage say the angel has wings, are the earliest evangelists for Christ, that is proclaimers of the good news, the gospel (old English). They follow in the work of the angels who make the proclamation to Zechariah and Elizabeth and to Mary and Joseph, and the angel who brings the message to the shepherds also brings with them the heavenly host appears with them because heaven cannot contain itself and they begin to sing “Glory to God in the highest heaven. That phrase became one of the earliest Christian hymns, one we sang tonight it in its Latin version, “Gloria in excelsis deo…” “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom He favors.” But it’s also when the announcement is made to the shepherds that makes the message that the angels deliver significant, and that is that it is made at night. The light of the glory of the Lord shatters the darkness that surrounds the shepherds, and that too is part of the good news that the messengers of God bring.
We like to think of Christmas as being holly, jolly and merry, after all, as the song says, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. But we don’t have Christmas because everything is going great, it is not a celebration that the world is a lovely place and every gets along and we spend all our time singing kumbaya. We have Christmas because we don’t have those things. We light the four candles of Advent, representing the four themes, of hope, peace, joy and love, not because we have those things already, but because we desire those things, we need those things in our world, we need those things in our lives. We don’t actually know when Jesus was born, but one of the reasons why December 25th was chosen as the date on which the church celebrated his birth is because under the old Julian calendar, December 25th was the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. And so, every day that came after we welcomed Christ into the world would be a little longer, with a little more light, and the nights would get a little bit shorter, with just a little less darkness. “Those who have walked in the land of darkness, on them a light has shined,” Isaiah says, because to us a child has been born. Not a child born into the light, but a child born into the darkness, because it is the child that brings that light that pushes back at the darkness, that pushes the darkness away, that proclaims a new reality for the world, that the kingdom of God has come near, a child who brings the promise of hope, peace, joy and love.
But let’s think about these angels for a moment. Do you think they just simply appeared that night to begin to proclaim this message? Or did it only in this place? I don’t. I’m thinking that these angels, these messengers of God, were all over the place that night bringing good news to lots of people. We know about them here because the shepherds actually responded, and perhaps many others didn’t, they ignored the message. And I’m also guessing that they didn’t just show up for the first time to deliver this message without practice. I’m sure that they, like all choruses, had been preparing and prepping for this moment for a long time. They had practiced giving this good news that they were going to offer to the world. They were not just winging it, pun intended. Afterall, in the book of Revelation we get this vision of the heavenly realm, and what we are shown is all the nations gathered together singing God’s praises all the time. And so, these angels as part of the heavenly host appearing here can do this because it’s what they do all the time. It’s how they spend their time is by praising God. And in that I think there is a message for us as well. That as we seek to pass on the good news of Christmas, the good news of Christ, the good news of forgiveness, the good news of resurrection, the good news of the light coming into the world pushing back at the darkness, it should be easy for us because it’s something that we should be doing all the time, praising God in all that we do and with all that we are. And that happens in the good times and especially in the bad, to remember and know the light of God come into the world.
Another message of Christmas comes to us from the poet Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, who wrote a poem that begins “I heard the bells on Christmas Day, their old familiar carols plays, and wild and sweet the words repeat of peace on earth, good will to men.” Longfellow wrote the poem on Christmas Day in 1863. His wife had recently died, and the country was in the depths of the Civil War with Longfellow’s own son having recently returned from the war critically wounded. So, when he heard the bells ringing on that Christmas Day it wasn’t joy and peace that filled his heart, but instead pain and sorrow and despair, as his poem tells of the canons which boom over the cries of peace on earth. “And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said; "For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men!" Hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to all. That could certainly be a cry of our day as well and we can hear not only Longfellow’s cry of despair, but our own as well, or the cry of others. And we then have to ask ourselves, are we going to be lights to the world and push back at the darkness or are we going to allow the darkness to overwhelm us.
Last week was the tenth anniversary of the school shooting
at Sandy Hood Elementary school, and we should make special note of the
slaughter of the innocents also found in Matthew’s birth narrative with the
arrival of the magi, and again note that the cries of hate that mock the song
are just alive today as they have been. But with it also came remembrances, and
what has happened in the past ten years. Maryrose Kristopik, a music teacher at
Sandy Hook said she moved all her students, 20 of them, into the only place
readily accessible, which was a closet much too small for 20 students and a
teacher. But she got them in and closed
and locked the door and stood against the door to act as a human shield. She said the students were scared and some
were crying and so she tried to quiet them down. Not knowing what was going to happen, she
said she did not want images and thoughts and violence and hate to be the last
thing they saw, and so she held the kid’s hands, and hugged them, and she
looked the children and told them, I love you, know that I love you, I love
you. A messenger of God pushing back
against the darkness. And then there is Jenny Hubbard, whose daughter, Catherine,
was killed that day. Catherine wanted to be a vet, and had even created
business cards for herself that read “Catherine’s Animal Shelter,” and her
title was caretaker. And so, with the work of an animal group in Sandy Hook,
Jenny created an animal shelter in her daughter’s name, which has now been a
safe haven for more than 1000 animals, and they are about to break ground on a
$10 million facility to continue that work. The darkness is swarming in, but
the light pushes back, the angels, the messengers of God say “NO! You don’t get
to have a say here. Hate and pain and death do not win! God wins! Light wins!
Love wins!” As the darkness is shattered into a thousand pieces and light fills
the sky and the angels proclaim good news of great joy that shall be for all
people. Messengers of God pushing against the darkness.
That is the story of Christmas given to us, why? Because God so loved the world. Christmas comes because of the darkness, but it is not about the darkness. Christmas is about the light. Christmas is about hope. Christmas is about peace. Christmas is about joy. And Christmas is about love. And so, after his moment of despair, feeling that hate would rule, Longfellow concludes his poem by saying: “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: ‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; the Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail, with peace on earth, good-will to men." And the work is not just the work of the heavenly realm, that work is ours. In the letter to the Hebrews the author writes, thinking of Abraham, “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Heb 13:1-2) Angels don’t show up in white robes with wings, sometimes that look like ordinary people. They look like Maryrose and Jenny, they look just like you and me. When the angels appear they tell the shepherds, they tell us, to make their way to Bethlehem and make known what they had heard and seen, and the same message comes to us, and so the question is what are we going to do about it? Are we willing to be messengers of the good news? Are we going to be bearers of the light? Will we continue to push back against the darkness that so many want to offer and instead stand up for the light?
And in the fields were abiding shepherds watching their
flocks when suddenly their night was broken when an angel appeared and the
glory of the Lord surrounded them, and the angel, a messenger of God, said, “Do
not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the
people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the
Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child
wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was
with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and
saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among
those whom he favors!” The message of
good news is not a message from a long time ago that has ceased to be important,
the message is just as important for us here and now, because hate still wants
to mock the call of peace on earth and good will to all. So, we too are called to be angels,
messengers of God, to go out and to proclaim Jesus Christ the light of the
world, to be the light to the world, to push back at the darkness and to say to
the world once again that “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great
light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has
shined. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority
rests upon his shoulders; and he is named wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting
Father, Prince of Peace.” May we be the angels offer the light of Christ this
year. I pray that it will be so my
brothers and sisters. Amen.
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