“…the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life…” — 1 John 1:2
“God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does.” — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“The God of the philosopher is a concept derived from abstract ideas; the God of the prophets is derived from acts and events…to believe is to remember.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man
It seems that during the Christmas season we have become a little too familiar with angels. They appear all over our nativity scenes, they decorate the tops of trees, and we will perhaps find ourselves singing about those that “we have heard on high” or those that sing “Glory to the newborn king!”
These references, of course, have their genesis in the Scripture accounts of the birth of Jesus. There are five appearances of angels to four different groups in just the nativity narratives of Matthew and Luke. An angel appears to Joseph to inform him about Jesus (Matthew 1:20), another appears to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist (Luke 1:11), then another, of course, to Mary (Luke 1:26), and two collections (“an angel” and then “multitudes”) to different groups of shepherds to make the famous proclamation that a child has been born in Bethlehem (Luke 2:9, 13).
That’s a lot of angels.
We do not have the same attention given to angels during any other season both in the church and in the general culture. And yet, while they seem to saturate our collective subconscious in Advent, we rarely take into account just how strange these beings are — or if we believe they exist in the first place. We treat them like any other fantasy creature: with a kind of distant interest and vague understanding. I don’t have the space or energy or desire to write a reflection defending the existence of angels (I’d much rather go to the DMV on a Friday), but I’d like to talk about their importance, their meaning.
Many are quick to assume these visions of angels were easily accepted by such an archaic audience. “Of course they believed these were angels,” we say with what C.S. Lewis called, “chronological snobbery.” Somehow, some think, these ancient people naïvely nodded their heads as heavenly beings came to them with strange messages.
Not so.
One of my favorite lines in Luke 1–2 (the birth narrative of Jesus) comes directly after the angel Gabriel greets the virgin Mary.
“But she [Mary] was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.” — Luke 1:29
Mary did not blindly accept a vision of a heavenly being, but instead “tried to discern” what she was seeing and hearing. The Greek term here is διαλογίζομαι (dielogizomai), which in ancient literature refers to a rigorous debate of reason, and was also used to refer to auditing finances. Plato and Aristotle used this term frequently to underscore the importance of finding the λόγος (logos), the ultimate source of meaning. This term was about reasoning together in conversation and detailed auditing in order to find the truth. Mary, then, “debated” within herself, reasoning back-and-forth as she saw this heavenly being. She did not blindly accept—might we do the same? Let’s reason together…
We see in these five occurrences of angels what we see throughout Scripture: angels have a particular role, a particular office, and a particular owner. They’re seen as the extension of God’s power, his enforcement, his workers, and they require a kind of attention we often do not give them. Each characteristic comes with important Christian implications.
First, angels are messengers. Most always when angels arrive on a biblical scene, the bring a heavenly message. Like a mail carrier, the angel may not know the meaning of the message, nor the process by which the message will “come to pass,” they just know they must say it and to whom they must say it.
Perhaps this is why angels play a big role in the Christmas story. The arrival of Jesus on earth, the gospel of the incarnation, is primarily news. This is why we use the terms “gospel” and “good news” interchangeably. The Christian message is not advice to be given, but news to be heralded. The message of Advent is not “Merry Christmas,” as our culture warriors would like it to be, but “Christ has come!” In Advent, we remember the message spoken by these heavenly messengers: “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11). The gospel of Jesus is not about “how to ________,” that’s advice. The gospel is instead a headline, an announcement, an event that must be broadcast.
Second, angels serve as a protective infantry. They are God’s army, those who battle on our behalf and protect us in a spiritual realm. So why send the army out before the arrival of baby Jesus? Because the coming of the Son of God was an act of war. For how beautiful the song is, it was not a “Silent Night.” The light was shattering the darkness, the logos was arriving in flesh, breaking in (John 1:1–14). The ideal had become real, the supernatural was now natural. War has been waged and there will be a victor.
This is what leads Paul to tell the Ephesians: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God…” (Ephesians 6:12–13a). Christmas does not mean we are to “sleep in heavenly peace,” but “put on the full armor.”
Third, angels are “of the Lord.” Often attached to descriptions of heavenly beings in Scripture is the caveat that they are angels “of the Lord.” The Bible is well aware of something the Western world would like to forget: that we live in a spiritual world. The material world is not all there is, unfortunately. Two-thirds of our population would receive this without question, but we stuffy Westerners scoff. Nevertheless, the Bible readily acknowledges that there are spiritual beings who belong to the One True God.
Which leads us to see another reason God sent angels ahead of him: not only was the message important and an act of war, but it was an act of him. God did this — and how shall we know? The angels.
After Mary had “tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29), and after she asked some thoughtful and wise questions (“How will this be, since I am a virgin?” — Luke 1:34), she receives with faith as she becomes certain this is from God himself: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord…” A servant of the Lord says to an angel of the Lord: we’re in this together, obeying the same God.
When angels show up, we know there is an important message and we know war is being waged on a spiritual level, but we can also be certain and comforted because we also know God is at work.
The Christmas story is powerful not because it is nostalgic for us or comforting to us — it is powerful because it is the story of God’s action. It is the great intervention: God writing himself in to the story of humanity, stepping into history through his humility. The angels just go first to give us the news.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. — John 1:14
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched — this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. — 1 John 1:1–4
