C
Christmas Eve BFC 2015
December
24, 2015
In each age, it would appear, God appears as Divine Judge who, not
unlike Santa Claus, is keeping a list and checking it twice. Though I had wonderfully loving parents who never time taught me to fear God, a wonderfully loving pastor who taught and
modeled love and compassion, what came through to me about God was a cultural
message that had me riddled with anxiety, fearful of what God might do to me if
I messed up my adolescent life. And boy
did I mess up my adolescent life at times.
Somehow I got the message that
God was necessarily obsessed with my shortcomings, my failures, and my
inadequacies. So down the line, so I thought, as I
got older and more mature in my faith (somebody should share with me when that maturity might
happen) I could shore all those
failings up, and I would be
presentable to the Almighty and my faith would blossom. But until that time, I best keep a safe
distance.
I prayed for angel visitations . . . but not so scary ones.
My job in Junior High was to make sure all the offering envelopes,
pencils, and hymnals were straightened and in full supply in every pew at
Christian Union Church. And I dreaded
the idea that God might come to me while I was all alone in the darkened
sanctuary. I would hum a little. I kept a watchful eye on the eternal flame
candle located just above the altar and dedicated to the life of Mr.
Malone. I liked Mr. Malone. They dedicated the football field to him in
my hometown, and he would take me to Illini games, so I always hoped Mr. Malone
might put in a good word for me, something like, “He’s basically a good
kid. Just a little clumsy with about
everything.” But I was afraid that some
angel might show up and ask something of me, something I thought impossible
like, “Hail, Mike, O troubled teenager.
I am here to tell you that God wants a relationship with you once you
clean yourself of every sexual impure thought, once you become the student your
mother wants you to be, once you become the athlete your father wants you to
be, once you lose every depressed thought that addles your brain, and once you
balance all of those out!” Certainly
then, once I got my act together like that, the angel would appear.
Because I still had that superstitious faith which thought that, until
I believed myself good enough, God did not have my best interests at heart. I really did not get the message, laced throughout the Christmas story, that angels were indeed appearing to people who, themselves, would not be good enough by the world’s standards. Maybe it was not so much whether I thought
myself good. Maybe it was because I
wasn’t so sure about the goodness of God.
In the New Testament, angels appear infrequently, announcing the birth
of Christ and sharing the good news of his resurrection. We have so “Christianized” the arrival of
angels as these gentle and
resplendent creatures that
we sometimes forget their arrival is greeted with terror and fear. People wonder, “What does God want of
us? Is it a good thing that God has come
to us?” For there is a sense that angels
are protectors and conveyors of God’s holiness, transcendence, and mystical
otherness.[1] The appearance of angels conveys
that something is going on two somethings deeper than what we might see or
hear, know or understand.
One could look at how angels are understood in Jewish story and
mythology and see them as constant messengers, portents of evil. Angels forewarn God’s wrath, announce
disaster, alert the faithful of oncoming persecution. The popularity of angels with the faithful
rises and falls, usually increasing in times of war, persecution, and natural
disaster.[2] In this context, we might
better understand why angels are greeted with terror and fear in both the birth
and resurrection stories. Have these
angels come, frightened shepherds must wonder, to tell us of approaching doom? Does God intend good for us?
In the progressive
Christian tradition we might understand
angels as manifestations of God forever seeking to connect with humankind and God
while yet
seeking to remain apart, transcendent, and other. Or we might know of
people who have truly had experiences of angel visitation and so it all makes sense to us.
But it would seem the love of angels and the
portrayal of them in our day and age has
made them readily
accessible and visions of tender beauty.
God is good but in a picture postcard, milquetoast kind of way. In this picture postcard are pastoral scenes
of freshly fallen snow with the cherubic faces of angels
reaching down into the world to spread peace, goodwill, and perfectly tuned
harmonies.
This picture, this image of heavenly beings seems to be in contrast
with Scripture. Angels are not so easily
domesticated. The literal meaning of the
angel Gabriel’s name in Hebrew is, “God is my warrior.”[3] In Hebrew Scripture and in the Gospel of Luke, Gabriel is the angel who shows up to interpret the difficult times
ahead and
God’s role in those difficult times, those times of great evil.[4] And it says that when the
angels appeared to the shepherds, the angels showed up as “a whole troop of the heavenly army praising God.”[5] So . . . before we invoke the presence of angels, we would do well to
make sure that we want that kind of power showing up in our manger scenes,
garages, or in the back alley of downtown Billings.
I believe what those Scriptures are meant to convey is that in the face
of incredible earthly power stacked against those who might seek
transformation, God brings the requisite strength and power behind the scenes
to complete the transformation. “Do not
fear!” Yes, we might say, the angels want to make it clear that they are not
seeking to bring harm to pregnant peasant women or lowly shepherds, but the
story is also trying to say that God brings the requisite power and fortification to
complete the transformation of the earth.
It is a hard time, a difficult time, perhaps even an evil time, filled
with suffering and violence, but God will not leave the earth alone. The music sounds more like a bruised and
battered Hank Williams tune, a bittersweet melody that conveys both pain and resilience, not naïve or unaware of what is going on in
the world.
The other time angels appear in the Bible is when the earthly messenger
of God is on their last leg, exhausted from the struggle, and the angels show
up to minister to them. Once again, the
story says, do not believe that God sits back on a throne as the faithful slog
it out in their struggles. Rather, God
is actively connecting heaven with earth.
God comes.
When that whole troop of army angels shows up to affirm the message of
the child born in Bethlehem, they sing, “Glory to God; in the highest heaven; and
on earth peace; among those of God’s favor.”
This is parallel poetic discourse indicating that glory to God is found
when human peace is found on earth. One
does not happen without the other. Not
either but both or neither.[6] Human peace and God’s glory are
two sides of the same coin.
This is the good news we celebrate on this and every Christmas
Eve. These broad, sweeping stories show
us where God’s face turns and where the heart of God is invested. God’s is not wringing hands over the minutiae
of our shortcomings, failures, and inadequacies. This story is told in every age so that we
might know Gabriel still comes to lowly peasants and refugee women interpreting
the times and speaking of a day when every mountain shall be made low and every
valley shall be lifted up and every crooked path be made straight. This story is told in every age so that we
might know the power of God’s army still comes and is amassed on behalf of
poor, pregnant refugee women, those who have no land and forced to migrate, those without capital and tending to someone else’s sheep. This
story is told in every age so that we might not confuse Rome’s violent,
dominating, imperial peace with God’s peace that comes fully and transcendently
into the world. The story is told in
every age so that, finally, humankind might show God’s favor by joining hands
with God to build the peace which will bring God glory.
Tonight we will sit in the darkness, the deep womb of it, knowing that
it is night in many places in the world.
As with the gospel story, we do not romance that violence, suffering,
and pain. We do not minimize it. But it can be a hopeless world without
stories that let us know that God comes.
God comes and seeks to make heaven on earth. And so we light these candles as a form of
resistance. The night remains. But the light, the light shall not be overcome.
The great African-American poet, Howard Thurman wrote:
I will
light Candles this Christmas,
Candles of
joy despite all the sadness,
Candles of
hope where despair keeps watch,
Candles of
courage for fears ever present,
Candles of
peace for tempest-tossed days,
Candles of
grace to ease heavy burdens,
Candles of
love to inspire all my living,
Candles
that will burn all year long.[7]
Gabriel
still comes. An army of angels still
come. In gritty, long-suffering, bruised
goodness, God still comes. And the first
thing they say is, “Do not be afraid.”
And God’s hand is extended. And
so we leave our shortcomings, failures, and inadequacies to join hands with God
to build peace with our Jewish sisters and brothers, with our Muslim sisters
and brothers and thereby give God glory.
And the Christmas story once told at a time of terror and violence is
once again told at night, candles are lit, and the night does not overcome
it.
And what
we should hear is that God’s goodness is such that the small light we hold is
enough. You are enough. What God wants,
what God most strongly desires, are people willing to look into each other’s
eyes and say, “Don’t be afraid”, and begin the journey of God’s peace in a
violent and war-torn world. We affirm that night is here. But we also affirm that in every age, Gabriel
comes. A whole host of angels come. God
comes. And as certainly as the night is
long, the transformation of the earth is taking place, and dawn . . . dawn comes. Amen.
[1] Isaiah 6?
Are these winged creatures an allusion to angels?
[2] “Monster,” Millenium,
October 17, 1997. Transcript found
here: http://millennium-thisiswhoweare.net/cmeacg/episode_transcript.php?mlm_code=204.
[3] Richard A. Horsley, The Liberation of Christmas: The
Infancy Narratives in Social Context (New York: Crossroad, 1989), p. 24.
[4] See the book of Daniel, Chapters 8 and 9.
[5]Luke 2:13;
Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
1993), p. 274.
[6] John Dominic Crossan, “The Challenge of Christmas,”
HuffPost Religion, December 12, 2011.
[7]
Howard Thurman, “Candles for Christmas,” Meditations
of the Heart (Boston: Beacon Press,
1953), pp. 152-153.
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