Christmas News: The Angels
Posted by Isaac Butterworth | Filed under Christmas, Sermons
A Sermon on
Luke 1:5-20 (NRSV)
5 In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. 7 But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.
8 Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. 10 Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. 11 Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. 13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. 14 You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. 16 He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” 18 Zechariah said to the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” 19 The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. 20 But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.”
Angels have fallen on hard times these days. Hardly anyone thinks about them anymore…except at Christmas, of course. But even at that, people don’t much believe in them. Although…I knew a woman – a member of this church at one time: She told me that she had actually seen an angel. She was just a girl when it happened, but in her mind there could be no mistake. It was an angel all right. Me? I’ve never seen one, though I’m sure if I did, it would be a frightening encounter – at least, at first.
Some years ago, I read Madeleine L’Engle’s book, A Wind in the Door. It’s about a young girl named Meg and her brother Charles Wallace. One day, Charles Wallace tells Meg that he saw a drive of dragons in the broccoli patch. Meg goes with her brother to check it out, but all they find is a pile of odd-looking feathers. Later, Meg goes to the garden alone, and she has the terrifying experience of discovering that the feathers haven’t been left by a dragon at all. They belong to a cherub, of all things, an angel named Proginoskes. And there he is! Right in front of her. Now, this cherub is certainly no innocent looking, plump, little winged baby. Progo, as the children later come to call him, is huge, and he is all feathers and eyes and movement – frightening, unsettling even, in his appearance.
[See the engaging video by Exosius Woolley]
It is no wonder that, in the Bible, whenever an angel appears to someone, the first thing the angel has to say is, “Do not be afraid.” Those were the angel Gabriel’s very first words to Zechariah, weren’t they? Zechariah the old priest was going about his duties in the temple when “there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense.” And Luke tells us that, “when Zechariah saw him, he was terrified” – just like Meg in L’Engle’s novel was when she saw the angel. In fact, Luke says, “fear overwhelmed him.” But the angel said…what? “Do not be afraid, Zechariah….”
Still, as awe-struck as others may be by the appearance of angels, most moderns are unimpressed. And I think I know something of the reason why. Our lack of interest is symptomatic of something much larger. Not only do we fail to see the point with angels. For most people, there’s been a wholesale abandonment of anything that signals the celestial or the eternal. As Westerners, we have become skeptical of the supernatural. We just don’t see its practicality.
Now, this is a mindset, and it emerged full-force some three hundred years ago with a movement in Europe called the Enlightenment. You may have heard of some of the big names of that period, names like like John Locke, Voltaire, Rene Descartes, and others. No doubt, you have. They gave us many inestimable gifts. It is because of that era in the history of ideas that we have made so many great discoveries in nature. We have seen huge strides in science and technology. And we have come to value human rights and individuality.
But along with such a prized legacy, there have been other influences, changes in the way we think that have managed to shrink the human soul – and shrink it down to almost nothing. Just to give you one example, the seat of authority has shifted. Perry Huesmann in his book, Covenant as Ethical Commonwealth, writes about this. He says that, in Enlightenment modernity, “the autonomous individual is found to be at the center of reality and [the] rational determiner of it.” In other words, things are what we say they are. We used to look outside ourselves for the source of authority, but no more. Now, we look internally. We go inside. It’s no longer what God says that’s important; it’s what we think. The Enlightenment assigned ultimate authority not to God but to human reason. Although now – some three hundred years later – even reason doesn’t seem to carry the day. Most people don’t bother to think through anything anymore. Nowadays the final court of appeal is…what? It’s our feelings. We judge whether something’s right or wrong or good or bad or true or false – how? by how we feel about it.
In Enlightenment modernity “the autonomous individual is found to be at the center of reality and rational determiner of it. A sociological analysis of modernity revealed a conflict between authority and self due to the absolutizing dynamic of Enlightenment reason. Transcendent authority has diminished, because the individual conscience as the locus of authority has replaced that of a transcendent one. With this change came a diminishment of community. The self has also diminished, as there is no shared basis of recognition for an internally constituted self. The ‘autonomous and value-laden individual’ is no longer a moral evaluator in relation to what is sacred and ultimate. Finally, Enlightenment modernity offers little in terms of transcendent unconditionality, which is important in the formation of self and society.”
~ Perry Simpson Huesmann, Covenant as Ethical Commonwealth (IPOC Press, 2010), p. 141.
Even Zechariah, who lived in ancient times – not just hundreds of years ago but thousands of years ago – even he had a hard time with this. He was a priest, after all, “righteous before God,” according to Luke. But despite all that, he had difficulty entertaining the thought that there could actually be an authoritative revelation from beyond himself. Did you catch that? When the angel Gabriel told him that God was going to bless him and his wife, Elizabeth, and they were going to have a child in their old age, how did Zechariah receive the news? He didn’t believe it! “How will I know that this is so?” he asked. And then he rationalized the unlikelihood of it. “I am an old man,” he said, “and my wife is getting on in years.” It can’t be. You must be wrong. It’s outside the realm of possibility.
The angel was justifiably insulted. “I am Gabriel,” he said. “I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.” And you reject it because it doesn’t fit nicely into your limited understanding of what is and what is not possible? And to give Zechariah a chance to think about it, he told the old priest that he would be mute, that is, unable to speak, for nine months – until the baby was born. That would definitely humble you, wouldn’t it? And we need to be humbled.
In our pride, we are quick to shrink the eternal down to the temporal. We can manage it better that way. We have no room for mystery anymore, and we have lost the capacity for wonder. We are reluctant to give much credence at all to a whole host of realities that the Bible affirms.
Angels? We’re not afraid of angels. In fact, we’re not afraid of God! In our own minds, we’ve been pretty successful at domesticating him. The Scriptures speak often of the fear of the Lord, but we have no idea what is meant and no interest in finding out. The Bible tells us that there will be a day on which we have to give account of ourselves, when we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. But if you look at the choices we make every day, what do you see? We don’t put much stock in the notion, do we? We don’t live like people who one day are going to stand before the Lord of heaven and earth. Surely, we will not have to give answer for the words we speak or the actions we take – not to God, anyway.
The eternal simply doesn’t fit into our worldview – at least, not in such a way that it makes much difference. How long has it been since you heard anyone talk about the urgency of saving souls? Let me be clear: I am grateful for the ways in which our church reaches out to feed the hungry and provide shelter for the homeless and help for many in dire need, and that’s what we should be doing! Shame on us if we neglect such ministries of compassion! But to paraphrase Jesus, “This we ought to have done and not left the other undone!” (Luke 11:42). Tell me the truth: Haven’t we become so focused on the temporal needs of people that we have forgotten their eternal needs? If we really believed in a hell, wouldn’t we find it a pressing and weighty duty – not to mention an effort of compassion in the highest degree – actually to try to divert people from it?
I’m not saying that we need an angelic visitation. Perhaps you will see an angel in your lifetime, and perhaps you won’t. I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t. But I am saying this: I am saying that we need to be seized once more by heavenly realities – just as Zechariah was. We need to experience something like a shock to our smug certainties that whittle God down to a manageable size and leave us underwhelmed by the mysteries of eternity. In the words of one poet,[1] we need “a rebirth of wonder.”
I wonder if that’s on anyone’s Christmas list.
[1] Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “I Am Waiting” in A Coney Island of the Mind, published by New Directions, 1958
Photo credit: Proginoskes by Exosius Woolley
