The word “angel” can evoke a wide range of responses. For some folks, the visits of angels, exactly as described in the Bible align nicely with their experiences and beliefs, of angels or guardian angels, giving them specific guidance and safety at key points in their lives. For others, all this talk of angels is the stuff of fantasy, literary devices invented by ancient authors to make sense of stories that otherwise would not make sense at all. I think many of us end up somewhere in between: perhaps no visions of Angels, but we can name one or more times when we received specific saving kindness from another person that was unmistakably “angelic.”
The Concise Oxford Dictionary
of the Christian Church says that Angels played a “comparatively peripheral
role” in most people’s devotional practices in the earliest days of
Christianity, but by 500 years later there came to be a structured, even
bureaucratic understanding of nine categories of angels and archangels, three
hierarchies of three, some closer to God, some closer to earth.
To me, the presence of angels
brings to mind the notion within Celtic spirituality of “thin places.” Irish
travel blogger Mindi Burgoyne writes, “Thin places are places of energy, a place
where the veil between this world and the eternal world is thin. A thin place
is where one can walk in [these] two worlds – the worlds are fused together,
knitted loosely where the differences can be discerned or tightly where the two
worlds become one”. She continues,
writing “Truth abides in thin places; naked, raw, hard to face truth… [a place
where] the human spirit is awakened, we gain connection and become part of
something larger than we can perceive.”
When I read a scriptural encounter between a person and an angel, I envision the two of them inhabiting a thin place. Whether you believe in angels as heavenly messengers who span that distance between heaven and earth to deliver a word of wisdom or safety from God, or see them as a metaphor for the way that God guides us away from things that would place us in great peril, is up to you – and it’s also okay if the whole notion of angels is outside your beliefs. As for me, my personal theology would not change a whole lot if one were able to prove either the existence or non-existence of angels, yet this I do believe: I believe that there is a God, who is personally linked to us by the transformative power of everlasting, boundless and unconditional love, and I believe that God uses various ways and means to speak to us and listen to us. Prayer, meditation, dreams, writings and songs and poems and visions, can convey the urgings of our loving God. So can acts of kindness by complete strangers…new revelations sometimes gentle, sometimes courageous, seemingly coming from nowhere…moments in which the presence of the risen Christ feels especially real.
In the presence of angels, however understood, abides a sense deep in your bones that you matter, that you have a place in this big,
amazing universe. All of these are, to
me, what I would call the work of angels, pathways by God communicates with us
(and vice versa). And when we are in
times and places where the separation between us and heaven feels particularly
thin, the language of angels, physical or metaphorical, can help us feel God’s
holy embrace.
Our gospel reading this
morning from Luke described a very thin-place encounter between Mary and the angel
Gabriel in which Mary is presented with an outrageous and impossible plan for
her life: she is to bear, nurse and nurture the Messiah. In a beautiful piece of prose, there is a rhythmic
and dynamic exchange between Mary and this old Angel, who seemingly had been
active since at least the time of the prophet Daniel, some 600 years earlier. The Angel is polite yet insistent, while Mary
is troubled, then curious, then open to whatever it is that God has in mind.
No fewer than five times,
Angels make an appearance in the nativity stories.
1. In addition to Mary’s encounter with Gabriel,
2. In the first chapter of Luke, fifteen verses and six
months earlier, the angel Gabriel, makes another appearance. This encounter was with a priest named
Zechariah, with the angel informing the priest that his wife Elisabeth will
give birth to a child, and they are to name him John. As Shannon mentioned last Sunday, we then see
what happens when Zechariah tries to mansplain to the Angel that this couldn’t possibly
happen: the Angel pauses, looks at Zechariah, and takes away his voice until
the baby is safely born and dedicated!
3. In a scene well-known to us from the 2nd
chapter of Luke, on the night of Jesus’ birth an angel appears to the shepherds. In the words of the King James Version, even
though the angel is telling them to be not afraid, “they were sore afraid” and
in most modern translations this gets rendered, “they were terrified!” When the angel was joined by “a multitude of
the heavenly host” the shepherds may have initially become even more afraid,
but eventually their sense of awe in the moment and their trust in these
thin-space messengers urged them to go to the manger, and from there to become
the first heralds of the good news of the birth of a special child in
Bethlehem.
4. In Matthew 1, an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph,
informing him that Mary is pregnant, and urging Joseph to remain in
relationship with her and be a father to the child.
5. And one chapter later, once Jesus is born, this Angel
of the Lord appears to Joseph once more, warning him that the child is at risk
due to the murderous rage of King Herod, and Mary and Jesus are to be taken to
safety in Egypt. Marcus Borg and John
Dominic Crossan, in their wonderful little book about the First Christmas,
describe this as Matthew’s literary attempt to align the life and purpose of
Jesus with the life and purpose of Moses: both needed to be hidden from the
rage of the King, both would bring deliverance to their people.
In all of these stories, the
presence of the angel ensures that the characters in the story understand the
unusual and specific ways that God’s immense love will touch their lives. Elisabeth had given up on ever having a
child, yet here was John, born to herald the Messiah. Mary, from the eyes of Luke’s gospel, did not
yet have any reason to think about having a child, and yet here was Jesus. Shepherds were appointed to be witnesses and
messengers, Joseph the builder was appointed to help shape the life of the
Christ child, the holy family was sent to safety: all of these were indicators
of God’s involvement in their lives.
And what about in your
life? Are there holy moments you can
recall when God, directly or indirectly, showed evidence of how deeply loved
and cared for you are? Are there
unexplained moments, when an act of grace or kindness by a stranger or
acquaintance has overwhelmed you? In
your life’s story, are there thin space encounters, when your course of action
became clear, when things suddenly made sense, when you knew that you were in
the presence of the holy? These big
stories of angels in the gospel stories can potentially help us recognize times
in our lives when God has reached in: to bless us with wisdom, to steer us with
guidance, to lift us out of prolonged sorrow, to touch us with love.
In a few minutes, we will engage
angels in a different and very physical manner, as we place angel ornaments on
the tree in honour of loved ones we miss at Christmas. I suspect that this, too, will be a time when
the distance between us and God is very, very thin, and the love that God
shines on us is very, very bright. Just
as the angels in the Bible stories carried love messages from God to humans, so
the angels we place on the tree will speak of love experienced and gratefully
remembered.
May the wonders of these
stories, and God’s great desire to be in relationship with you and with all the
world, bless you this day and always.
Amen.
References cited and consulted:
Borg,
Marcus J. and Crossan, John Dominic. The First Christmas: what the gospels
really teach about Jesus’ birth.
NYC: HarperOne, 2007.
Burgoyne,
Mindy. https://thinplacestour.com/what-are-thin-places/
Hallowell,
Billy. https://www.pureflix.com/insider/christmas-angels-the-powerful-role-of-angels-in-the-nativity-story
Livingstone,
E.A. (editor) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977.
O’Donohue,
John. To Bless the space between us: a book of blessings. NYC:
Doubleday, 2008.
Schmidt,
Donald. Birth of Jesus for Progressive Christians. Kelowna: Wood Lake, 2019.
©
2024 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge
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