ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD NEARBY LUKE 1__26—38
Allan Gurganus told the story of an old woman, a widow whose sons now live far away She was standing at the sink early one morning dressed in a tatty robe, doing the dishes and gazinig out the window looking everywhere and nowhere. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something fall to the ground in her backyard. There out near the picnic table lay something white, with wings, shivering as though it were cold, but it wasn’t a cold day.
“No way” she said. But when she looked again, there it was, plain as day, laying on its side resting on its own wings. It looked hurt.
Though her arthritis slowed her a bit, she hurried outside to investigate. She stooped a young unconscious angel. She touched the white forehead and received a mild electric shock. Then noticed her arthritic finger joints stop aching.
A practical person, she quickly cured her other hand. The angel grunted but sounded pleased. Poor thing,” she said, and carefully pulled his heavy curly head into her lap. The head hummed like a phone knocked off its cradle.
As her courage grew, she touched his skin. She also notices that with every touch thirty-year-old pains left her. Emboldened, she whispered to him her private woes: the Medicare cuts, the sons too busy to come by, the daughters-in-law not bad, but not so great either. Those emotional hurts seemed to go away just by the telling. And with every pain healed, with every heartache canceled, the angel seemed rejuvenated too. “Her griefs seem to fatten him like vitamins,” Gurganus wrote.
Regaining consciousness, the angel whispered to her, “We’re just another army. We all look alike—we didn’t before. It’s not what you expect. We miss the other. Don’t count so much on the next. Notice things here.”
We’re just another army?” Oh,” she said, like she understood. She didn’t.
Then, struggling to his feet and stretching his wings, with one solemn grunt, the angel heaved himself upward, just missing the phone lines.
“Go, go,” the old woman, grinning, pointed the way. He signaled back at her. At first the angel was a glinting man-shaped kite. Then as it receded, it was
an oblong of aluminum in the sun, a new moon shrunk to the size of a decent sized star, a final fleck of light, and then only a memory.
What should she do? Who should she tell? Who’ll believe her? She can’t tell her neighbor, Lydia. She would phone her missing sons, “Come right home. Your Mom is inventing company!”
She hears the neighbor’s collie barking in the distance. (It saw!) Maybe other angels have dropped into other backyards, she wonders. Behind fences, did neighbors help earlier ones? Folks keep so much of the best stuff quiet, don’t they?
Regaining her aplomb, she bounced back inside to finish her dishes. Slowly, she noticed, her joints started to ache again. The age spots that had totally vanished only moments before start to darken again. Everything is as it was before. Well, not everything.
Standing there at the sink, she seemed to be expecting something. Look at her, crazy old woman, staring out at the backyard, nowhere, everywhere. She plunged her aching hands into the warm, soapy water and whispered, “I’m right here, ready; ready for more.”
An old woman, who seems to be washing dishes, but she’s not. She’s’ guarding the world. Only, nobody knows.
Seen any angels lately? We have seen a lot about angels lately on television specials as well as entertainment segments. There was the feature article in USA Today about guardian angels. The story was about the current practice, popular among many, of wearing little guardian angel pins on their lapels. Apparently many still believe that there’s more to life than meets the eye.
Time magazine devoted the cover of a recent issue to angels. Inside, the feature article, “Angels among Us,” trumpeted (sorry about that) the statistic that 69 percent of Americans polled said they believed in angels.
In a recent issue of Ladies Home Journal there was another article about guardian angels, stories about people who, they believed, were miraculously delivered from all kinds of difficulties, people who sincerely believe it was angels who made the difference.
In 1990 there were only five books in print on the subject of angels, according to Gannett News Service. Today there are over two hundred, many of which have become bestsellers!
Unless you’re hiding under a rock, you’ll hardly make it through the Christmas season without seeing yet again the marvelous, if not altogether competent, angel, Clarence, in Frank Capra’s classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life.
Frederick Buechner says of angels,
"Sleight-of-hand magic is based on the demonstrable fact that as a rule people see only what they expect to see. Angels are powerful spirits whom God sends into the world to wish us well. Since we don’t expect to see them, we don’t. An angel spreads his glittering wings over us, and we say things like “It was one of those days that made you feed good just to be alive” or “1 had a hunch everything was going to turn out all right” or “I don’t know where I ever found the courage.” (2)
Seen any angels lately? People in the Bible have. Apparently without even the decency to be embarrassed, the Bible speaks of a world populated with angels. Abraham and his aging wife, Sarah, entertain three visitors among the oaks of Mamre who reveal to them that they will have a son. When the bewildered old couple protests that this sounds too good to be true, the “visitors,” angels unawares, say, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Gen. 18:14, Rsv). Jacob wrestles by the brook Jabbok with an angel in human disguise. Samson’s father, Manoah, carried on a coriver-sation with a messenger completely unaware that he was talking to an angel, until after the messenger had disappeared.
In the New Testament, angels accompany critical events in the life of Jesus. They announce his birth, minister to him after his temptation, announce his resurrection, and attend his ascension. They assist the fledgling church at crucial times, aiding the apostles under persecution, assisting the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles, rescuing PauLand Silas from a Philippian jail.
The word angel means “messenger.” It translates malach in Hebrew, angelos in Greek. More often than not, that’s how angels function in the Bible, as messengers of God. Angels were not a part of Jewish theology in its earliest development. Israel had thought of its God as being a very immanent, personal, even anthropomorphic God, walking and chatting with Adam in the garden in the cool of the day
Later on, this immanent concept of God gave way to a more transcendent idea of God, a God who was distant, unapproachable, removed from his creation. Probably under the influence of her neighbors, Israel’s theolo-gians posited angels as intermediary beings between God and his creation, facilitating communication between the Almighty and his creatures. They were conceived of as having special assignments as guides, messengers, or caretakers, and certain ones had names, such as Michael or Gabriel. In some ancient texts, angels were thought to be the personification of stars, the heavenly hosts of God, the “army of God” who accompanied him in battle against all the cosmic forces arrayed against the Almighty. In the Book of Judges the Song of Deborah celebrates Israel’s victory over Sisera, the commander of King Jabin’s Canaanite army, as a victory of Israel’s God Yawei over the cosmic forces arrayed against him.
From heaven angels fought the stars, from their courses they fought against Sisera (Judges 5:20, Rsv). (3) Coming out of late Judaism, Christianity was from the start influenced by the widespread belief in angels and demons. So, it’s not at all surprising that when Luke gets to the part of his story where the birth of the Messiah is to be announced to his nsuspecting mother, the “messenger” is an angel.
Across the galactic emptiness the angel flew to a particular province named Galilee, to a particular city named Nazareth, and then in that city to one particular house, to one particular woman in that house. Her name was Mary (4)
“Hail!” he said. He whispered it actually. But angels aren’t very good at whispering. Try though they may, their voices sound like thunder. Scared poor Mary nearly to death! I mean when an angel appears in the middle of the night in your bedroom and says “Hail!” it gets your heart going!
Realizing that Mary was frightened, Gabriel said what all angels say, “Fear not.” It’s sort of basic training for angels, you know. Before they’re
sent out “into the field,” they always receive from the DI. (Divine Instructor) these instructions, “Now look, don’t just land and start in with the ‘Thus saith the Lord’ stuff! Remember what we taught you here; it’s very important that you always begin with the words, ‘Fear not!”
One of the angels who slept through that lecture raised his wing and asked, “Well, why?” “Never mind why! You’ll understand when you get there! Just do it!”
With Mary somewhat composed, Gabriel did his job. He delivered his message. “Mary, you’ve been graced by God, and though you’re a virgin, you shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus; and he will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and of his kingdom there shall be no end!”
Still confused, however, Mary asked, “How can this be?”
The angel, just as he had said to Abraham and Sarah long ago, looked at Mary, smiled, and said, “With God nothing is impossible!”
Seen any angels lately? Don’t be too disappointed if you haven’t. Not everyone believes in angels.
Some biblical scholars disbelieve in angels, at least as spiritual beings.
They find it hard to buy into any mumbo jumbo about ghosts and spirits, which is where they put angels. I have to admit that there was a time when I disbelieved in a spiritual world. I thought it was an anachronistic residue of a more primitive age in which the world was populated with spiritual, incorporeal beings who could pass through solid objects and suddenly appear and disappear, as angels do throughout Scripture.
I thought such a world belonged to fairy tales and children’s books with. their trolls and enchanted creatures. But having read C. S. Lewis’s marvelous book The Great Divorce, I’m not so sure anymore. You see, he suggests that perhaps we’ve got it backwards. Rather than angels is insubstantial and translucent, able to pass through solid objects because they have no substance, what if it’s the reverse? What if it is we who are insubstantial and incorporeal relative to their world, and it is they, no we, who are so solid, so dense in fact that they pass through what we regard as solid objects as though they were merely a mist or a for. “Earth,” he says, “is the gray town with its continual hope of morning.
I don’t know.
The word angel simply means “messenger.” Some scholars believe that angels may not be spiritual beings at all, but anybody who brings a message from God. There is some precedence for this view. The Old Testament book of Malachi takes its title from the Hebrew word malachi, which can also be translated as angel. Was Malachi a prophet or an angel?
I don’t know And I don’t know who knows.
I know this. Sometimes God sends his messages to us in some pretty unusual packaging, and if we’re not attentive, if we’re not looking, if we’re not listening, we can miss it!
A minister was preaching a revival sometime ago, and because of some pressing business back at his office, he was traveling back and forth from his office to the church every evening for the services. By the end of the week he was tired.
One night as he was traveling home, he stopped at a convenience store to get a cup of coffee to steel him against the long drive ahead. It was late, and he was tired as he came out of the store. As he walked to his car, an old man came up to him and asked if he had any spare change he could give him. Well. . it was late and my friend was tired and wanted to get home. Besides, you can’t be too careful, can you? Can you? My friend said, “No,” with his hand on some quarters in his pocket.
The next night at the church, a lady came up to him and told him that as a result of his moving sermon on grace which he had preached the night before, she had been moved to give a homeless man some spare change from her purse. She said, “You never know. . . maybe God sent him my way!”
Do you think. . maybe. . .he was...? Nah.
Even so, I can’t help remembering what the writer of Hebrews says,~Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Heb. 13:2, Rsv).
Have you seen any angels lately?
John Duckworth did. He tells a story about Pastor Torgenson who stood before his congregation as they gathered one cold Christmas Eve for a testimony service. (6) It was their custom in that little church every Christmas Eve to share with each other how God had blessed them dur-ing the previous year.
As the people gathered, Pastor Torgenson began, “Before the choir sings our anthem, ‘Angels We Have Heard on High,’ let me remind you of a Scripture passage about angels. Turn with me to Hebrews 13:2.”
A tissue-thin shuffle of Bible pages went through the sanctuary and then was rudely interrupted as a haggard couple entered the back. The man had a bushy beard and old, faded clothes. She was pregnant and wore a tattered dress. “Wonder if they’re even married?” someone murmured. “Well, I never said another.
Pastor Torgenson smiled and invited them to find a seat. It wasn’t easy The church was full, it being Christmas Eve. They had to make their way all the way down front.
Then, Pastor Torgenson read those verses, you know, about entertaining angels unawares. He was surprised himself at the timing of it all, this young couple showing up unexpectedly like that.
Then, the haggard young man rose. “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout talkin’ in church,” he began, “but me and my old lady uh.. .my wife, ‘ really need a place to stay I ain’t got no job.
When he finished, Pastor Torgenson commented, “We appreciate your sharing with us. I think we can help. By the way, what is your name?
“I’m Joe. She’s Mary”
You could see the wheels turning—Joseph and Mary? C’mon now!
Yeah, I know how it sounds. Really though.
In the fellowship time later, a good number of folks talked with the young couple while nibbling on cookies. Several offered places to stay and one of the men talked to Joe about a job.
How’s that go again? “Angels We Have Heard Nearby?” Who knows?
Is there anything too hard for God?
Seen any angels lately? Are you.. .are you sure?
Notes
Outline and illustrations from REV. DR. R. WAYNE STACY
1. Allan Gurganus, “It Had Wings,” in White People: Stories and Novellas (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1992), Pp. 162—66.
2. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (New York: Harper Collins,
Publishers, 1973), pp. 1—2.
3. For a bnef, but excellent treatment of the function of angels in the Bible, see Dale C.
Allison, Jr., “What Was the Star that Guided the Magi?” Bible Review, vol. IX, no. 6 (December 1993), pp. 20—24, 64.
4. Adapted from Walter Wangerin, Jr., “The Christmas Story” in The Manger is Empty:
Stones in Time (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989), pp. 29—32.
5. C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, reprint edition (New York: Macmillan, 1979), p. 38.
6. John Duckworth, “Angels We Have Heard on High,” Stories That Sneak Up on You
(Grand Rapids: Fleming H. ReveIl, 1987), pp. 154—58.
Charles Scott
Church of the Good Shepherd
Indianapolis, Indiana
crscott@email.com
