Scary Angels
As a priest, I have acquired quite a few
angels over the years…not real angels, angel figurines and ornaments. There was a woman in my last parish who would
give me a different one every year. With
those and all my other Christmas angels, my house is overwrought with angels at
this time of year. They come in all
shapes and sizes. Some of them are
playing instruments, some are singing and some are even in the shape of
instruments. Of course there are a couple of things they all have in
common. They are all women, which is
kind of odd when you think about it. The
angels in the Bible are usually men. They
are all pleasant looking with flowing robes. None of them look scary at
all. There are no zombie angels, no
angels with limbs missing (unless you count the one with the missing foot---but
that just fell off at some point when I was unpacking decorations). None of them have their faces contorted as if
they are screaming.
Of course angels aren’t supposed to
be scary. They are supposed to be
comforting like those people in Touched
by an Angel, Michael Landon on Highway
to Heaven or Clarence on It’s a
Wonderful Life. Those are the kind
of people who you would want to have on hand if you were in a sticky
situation. Yet I am pretty sure that the
angels of the Bible looked nothing like the angels we see on TV. Usually, especially in the Gospels, the first
thing that the angels would say was, “Do not be afraid.” They would not have had to say that if the
people weren’t. And if people were
responding with fear consistently, there must have been something about angels
that scared people.
So were they scary looking? Did they come with weapons and armed guards,
or was there something else going on?
Let’s consider the story we heard tonight from the Gospel of Luke. There were shepherds watching over their
flock at night. This was before
electricity, so this must have been pretty dark, probably completely dark. They were trying to stay awake, pacing a
little to keep warm and then suddenly, “An angel of the Lord stood before them,
and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”
Even if the angel looked friendly
and warm, it is understandable that they were terrified. They were surrounded by darkness and out of
nowhere, an angel appeared surrounded by what we can assume was a great
light. Often the glory of the Lord is
described as a great light, almost blinding.
And you know how it is when you are in the dark and all of a sudden
someone turns on a light. Even if it is
not a particularly bright light, it takes a while to adjust. You might even squint your eyes and ask the
person to turn it off. In that moment,
the light can feel unwelcome.
The people living at the time of
Jesus’s birth had gotten used to the dark.
It had been almost 500 years since the last great prophet preached to
the Hebrew people. For those years and
more, they had longed for this moment, this coming of the Messiah but that
longing had turned into something more like a fairy tale longing; a princess
waiting for her prince to come but with no real grasp of what that prince would
be like or what his coming would mean.
So yes, they were afraid. They were shepherds and they were used to
waiting and preparing. They were used to
a routine. While their lives were not
easy by any means, they knew what to expect.
They knew what was expected of them.
But with this angel who came with the light of the glory of God, they
knew in a moment that the world would never be the same. They were terrified and in some ways, they
were right to be terrified.
The angel told them not to be
afraid. He said, “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.” Surely these words must have
allayed their fears. We know these
words. Most of us hear them every
Christmas. A Savior and a Messiah…that has got to be good news. There is no reason to fear that.
Maybe
by then the shepherd’s eyes had adjusted to the light. Yet just as they were accustomed to that
light and the sound of that one angel, an entire army descended (that is what
host means…it means an army). This army
did not come brandishing swords. They
brought news of peace to all whom God favors.
Despite
the tidings of peace, my guess is that those shepherds were still a little
afraid. They had just seen something
extraordinary and they knew that their world would never be the same. The time of waiting was over. They had a choice. They could stay in that field and let their
eyes get used to the dark again. They
could remain there because that was their job. And if they did not stay, who
would care for the sheep? They could
have come up with 100 excuses to stay in that field instead of searching for a
nameless child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. But they didn’t.
They
had seen the light. They had heard the
good news of God almighty and they could not just sit there and pretend as if
their life had not changed. No matter
how scary that light was, they determined to find it again. They had to be near it. Not only that, but they had a message to
deliver. They did not know to whom they
were delivering the message or exactly why, but they knew they had a message
that was so important that an army of angels had come to them to bring it.
So
they went and they found Mary, Joseph and the child in a manger. They saw the light in the flesh. Maybe they
did not quite understand it, but they knew that what they witnessed was divine
and they shared what had brought them to this place. They shared the news from the angels with
Mary and Joseph and by doing so they helped the parents of Jesus understand
what had just happened. I bet that every
part of that journey (while exciting) was still terrifying.
Usually
when we think of angels, and even God to some extent, we think of protectors,
beings that will keep us safe. But in
the Bible, the angels challenged God’s people to discover a different part of
themselves. They were terrifying not
because they were scary to look at but because they moved people outside of
their own little worlds. They exposed
people to the light. Obviously that
light was more than just light. It was a
transformation of being and attitude. It
was a realization that they no longer lived only for themselves, but for the
Savior of the World.
Christmas
should be a warm and fuzzy time. The
Christmas story should make you feel good.
But let’s not get too comfortable with this story, because at the heart
of this story is disruption and discomfort.
It is risk. It is fear and yes it
is glory. You could go home, open some
presents, watch football and eat too much and call that Christmas. Or you take this time to look for God’s
angels in your own life. They might not glow softly in the night with long
flowing robes and wings. In fact, I can assure you they won’t. The angels that we Christians really need are
the angels whose wings cause a windstorm of change and whose light is not a
soft glow but a blaze of glory that wakes you up and inspires you to be a
better version of yourself. Merry
Christmas! May it be a gloriously transformational one.
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