Angels!
Everywhere you turn during the Christmas season, you bump into angels!
Angels show up on Christmas cards. And in Christmas carols – “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” “Angels We Have Heard on High.” “The First Noel, The Angel Did Say!” “Angels From The Realms of Glory!”
Angels are everywhere at Christmas!
Angels are in Nativity Pageants, often posing as little girls wearing white bathrobes with silver tinsel in their hair! At our house, an angel is the topmost decoration on the Christmas tree!
Christmas is full of angels!
An angel speaks to Zechariah, prior to the birth of John – the Baptist. An angel comes to Mary. An angel counsels Joseph. And while shepherds watched their flocks by night…”an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone all around them!”
And that wasn’t the end of it either because, “Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest! And on earth, peace, good will toward all!’”
Angels! Christmas is full of angels.
Do you believe in angels? I saw on the television the other day that 86% of the American public say they believe in angels.
I have to admit that the longer I live, the more I am convinced that there are dimensions to life that are deeper and more wonderful than I can possibly imagine. Mysterious visitations into our lives that bring us comfort and strength just seem to happen too often to be mere coincidence.
Disciples of Christ pastor Lea Slaton tells the story of her parishioner Cathy who died after a heroic struggle with cancer. Cathy’s obituary partly describes her this way:
“Cathy loved to travel and to share new experiences with her many friends and family. She traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and the Caribbean, with a special place in her heart for St. John in the US Virgin Islands. She dearly loved gardening, butterflies (purple ones were her favorite) and children, especially her seven grandchildren who fondly knew her as C.C.”
Before Cathy died, she and her pastor and some friends were planning a trip to St. Johns. She never made it. In fact, she died the very day they were to leave. Sometime later the friends took the trip to the island. Cathy was very much in their hearts and on their minds as they went. Then, one evening, as Cathy’s friends had dinner out on the balcony, overlooking the magnificent vista of ocean and island, a beautiful purple butterfly fluttered up to where they were and hovered among them for a long, long time before flying away.
Was it an angel sent to bring them comfort and assurance? Who can know?
You see, that’s the hard part about angels. Even though the Christmas story tells us that angels appeared to Zechariah, and to Mary, and Joseph, and the shepherds, never are we told what those angels looked like. I suppose angels can come in any form – even purple butterflies.
We are not told what the Christmas angels looked like, but more importantly, we are told what they said. And that’s the key, I think, to understanding angels. Hebrews 1:14 teaches that angels are ministering spirits sent into the world to serve God’s people. So the message the angels bring is far more important than the details of what they look like!
Do you know what the very first words were out of the mouth of the Christmas angels every time they appeared to people in the story?
“Don’t be afraid!”
Throughout the Bible, angels seem often to come to people who are facing frightening times in their lives. Certainly that was true for both Mary and Joseph. We cannot possibly appreciate their role in bringing about Christmas unless we understand how terribly scared they were. In the religious system of the day, a woman like Mary, found to be with a child that was not her husband’s, would be handed over to the authorities, taken outside the gates of the city and stoned to death. And Joseph – what would he do? Would he turn Mary in and watch her suffer certain death? Or should he just quietly divorce her and take the blame for the break-up himself? Or, maybe he should stick by Mary’s side and fulfill his own promises to her even though it seemed she had not kept her promises to him?
I think some of the hardest times in life are those that come when we just don’t know what the future will bring. The doctor says you have cancer. You’re laid off from a job you thought was secure. Your marriage crumbles. Your child makes a terrible mistake and faces uncertain consequences. Your spouse dies. The people who care about you the most say you shouldn’t be driving a car anymore and you are frightened about losing your independence.
All around the world, people face frightening things.
So in the Christmas story, angels come to people just like us. And what’s the first thing they say?
“Fear not!”
But this is not the message you may think it is. Fear, you know, is an important part of the human instinct. Fear alerts us to danger. Fear makes us vigilant. Fear tells us that things are not right and we need to be cautious.
So the message of the angels is not to set aside your fear, but rather to let God INTO your fear!
“Fear not, the Lord is with you!”
These words say to me that even though life may be too much for me right now, it is not too much for God. And God is making my problem His problem. And as our founding Pastor Carl Burke so often says, “There ain’t nothin’ gonna happen today that you and God together can’t handle!”
“Fear not!” the angels say.
Now, a second thing the Christmas angels say to the characters in the story is that God LIKES them! The way the message comes to Mary is with the words, “You have found favor with God!”
You know, we live in a world where religion – including Christianity – so often conveys the message that God doesn’t LIKE people. In fact, often the message is that God rejects you, and cannot accept you as the sinner you are. This is the heart of my argument with religious people whose faith begins with the sin of people. The awful sinfulness of people is the very foundation of their theology and what flows out of it is hateful, judgmental and demeaning words and actions. Christmas, on the other hand, begins with the love of God for people – the favor God bestows on ordinary sinful people like us not because we deserve it, but because God just LIKES us!! This is called GRACE!
Mary is not favored because she responded to any altar call, prayed the sinner’s prayer, and earned all the merit badges of righteousness, virtue and doctrinal purity! God favors Mary just because she’s one of God’s kids. Just like you love your children simply because they are your children, so God loves His children! And Joseph is no prize, you know! Neither is Zechariah. The shepherds are hardly examples of good churchmanship! And the wise men, you know, practice the religion of astrology.
But the angels say to the people in the Christmas story that they have found favor with God. God thinks they’re hot stuff! Good stuff! Worthwhile stuff! God LIKES them, and God likes YOU!
I think we need more angels bringing this message of grace to the people of the world!
You’ll notice that, so far as we know, Mary did not get any supportive love from her parents. Where were they when their little girl got pregnant without being married? They are nowhere to be found in the story – either before or after the birth of Jesus! And there’s nothing in the story to suggest Mary received any support from her friends – or her synagogue – or her religion. Her religion, in fact, called for Mary’s execution.
It seems to me that the only real affirming love Mary received in the midst of her fearful circumstances was the love that came from an angel.
“Mary, you have found favor with God!”
I wish every teenaged girl – or boy – rejected by their parents and spurned by those who are more mindful of the sin than they are of the person, could hear that angelic message. And I wish all us parents and citizens who find it easier to see the dirt than the dignity of human life would hear the angels, too!
If there is anyone here today who has been stripped of your dignity and made to feel as though you are not a good and worthy and beautiful person, I just pray that an angel in some form will come to you this Christmas, and that you will hear the message, “You are loved and favored by God.”
Then a third thing the Christmas angels do.
The angels help the characters discover what is the good and the right thing to do.
Do you remember those cartoons where an angel sits on one shoulder of a character and the devil sits on the other shoulder and both are alternately whispering into the character’s ear? The devil, of course, is suggesting all sorts of bad things. The angel, on the other hand, is urging good things.
I think angels do whisper in our ears! Their voice awakens the conscience, and helps us become aware of the right thing to do, the right thing to say, the right direction to go.
Because of the angels, Elizabeth knew what to say when Mary showed up on her doorstep, unmarried and pregnant, probably kicked out of her family’s home. She did not call Mary any of the names people often call girls in her situation. Instead, Elizabeth went out on a limb and told Mary she thought she was blessed, and that the baby she was carrying was special in the eyes of God! Can you imagine what those words meant to Mary?
Because of the angel, Joseph was guided into the right thing to do, and so he took Mary as his wife, and when the baby was born, he welcomed her child as his own.
And when you look back over your life, I’ll bet you can think of times when you faced a difficult decision, a confusing circumstance, and weren’t sure what to do. But there was a quiet voice – an inner voice – that whispered to you, and that voice led you to do what turned out to be the right thing.
Maybe it was the voice of an angel!
Christmas is full of angels!
And maybe Christmas is full of angels because what the Bible says is true in Psalm 91:11 – “(God) shall give his angels charge over you, to guard you in all your ways.” And Matthew 18:10 suggests that every person has a guardian angel!
If that’s true, the world must be overflowing with angels!
Why that would mean there are at least twice as many of us here today than what we can see! That would mean there are over 5,000 angels right here in our Village! And 340 million angels in the United States alone! And over 8 BILLION angels in the world today!
That’s a lot of angels!
So maybe you can imagine what it looked like that first Christmas Eve when, “…suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and singing, ‘Glory to God in the highest! And on earth, Peace, Good Will toward all!’”
Can you picture that?
Do you believe in angels? I do!
And so my prayer for you on this Fourth Sunday in Advent is this:
May the angels of Christmas lead you to the one who is born Savior of the world!
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