“How to Talk to an Angel”
December 24, 2017
Luke 1:26-38
As Luke tells the story of the birth of Jesus—and he tells it very well; join us tonight at 5:30 to hear even more of it—in the months before the birth of Jesus, the angel, Gabriel, was very busy.
The Gospel of Luke begins, not with Mary and Joseph, but with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Zechariah is a priest and Elizabeth, too, is a descendant of priests. Like their ancestors Abraham and Sarah, they are “righteous before God.” They are also like Abraham and Sarah in that they are childless and, as Luke delicately puts it, “both were getting on in years.”
It happens that Zechariah is chosen to enter the sanctuary of God in the Temple to offer incense. While he is going about this task, the angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah, causing the reaction that we might expect. As Luke says, “When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him.”
If you’ve read even a little of the stories in the Bible that involve appearances of angels, if you’ve listened on Christmas Eve or Easter morning, you might also expect the response of Gabriel. He tells Zechariah: “Do not be afraid.” He has some good news. Elizabeth will have a son and they are to call him John, a name that means “God is gracious”—and indeed God is. Zechariah is told that there will be joy and gladness and rejoicing at John’s birth—and John will prepare the way of the Lord.
Do not be afraid.
A message of joy.
You might be thinking: “Who wouldn’t want to hear this?”
But Zechariah will have none of it. “I’m an old man,” he says, setting the angel straight. “And my wife is getting on in years.”
So that you know, in case anything remotely like this ever happens to you: this is not the right way to respond to an angel.
The incensed angel replies: “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. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become unable to speak, until the day these things occur.”
But God is gracious. The angel is angry. Her spouse is silent. Still Elizabeth conceives. For five months she secludes herself.
Then, as we heard this morning, in the sixth month, Gabriel comes to Mary.
“Perhaps,” as the folksy New Testament scholar and preacher, Fred Craddock, says in reflecting on this story, “Perhaps we should pause to say a word about angels.”
Perhaps so, especially with Christmas at our doorstep.
A word about angels: set aside those images both popular and classical of halos and wings and trumpets. As I’ve said many times, the word “angel” is simply the English transliteration of the Greek word, aggelos—messenger.
Angels didn’t have much of a place in early Judaism. But when the book of Daniel was written, some 150 years before the birth of Jesus, it is Gabriel himself who enters the story to help Daniel understand his visions of judgment. By the time of Jesus the belief in angels was more common. Pharisees, for example, thought of angels as mediators between God and human beings.
And yet angels were understood as only one of many ways in which the Creator communicates with this little corner of creation.
In the twentieth century there was something of a revival of angels among theologians. Karl Barth spent 200 pages considering angels in his Church Dogmatics. Paul Tillich used fewer pages, but still felt it necessary to try to make sense of these “divine messengers” and their place in our modern world. The Canadian theologian, Douglas Hall, concludes, however, that Protestants generally have maintained a “rather consistent agnosticism” regarding angels.
Perhaps that is best.
Some time ago, the United Church of Christ took as its unofficial motto the words: “God is still speaking.” And if we accept the truth of that, then, perhaps, we can still speak of something like angels—messengers—of God.
Sometimes God will speak through the encouragement or challenge of a spouse or a friend— or a stranger or, if we’re really listening, even an enemy. Sometimes God will speak through that inner voice that seems to come from nowhere, suggesting a course of action to be taken or to be avoided. Sometimes God speaks through the creative impulse or the “aha!” moment when a light suddenly comes on, illuminating a long perplexing problem. Sometimes God will speak through the scriptures or the hymns or the prayers of worship.
And yes, sometimes, it can seem that the God who is still speaking is incredibly silent, when we must strain to hear anything like the word of God for us today.
Mary is listening that day in the sixth month when Gabriel comes to her.
As angels so often do, Gabriel says to Mary what he said to Zechariah: “Do not be afraid.”
But Mary is not afraid. She is, Luke says, “perplexed.” Perhaps a little confused, she tries to puzzle out what is happening. She seeks more information. As she does this, Mary holds her own in the presence of this being who claims to stand in the presence of God.
In doing so, Mary gives us a good model of how to talk to an angel.
After a short conversation in which Gabriel tells Mary the most unlikely things about herself and about her relative, Elizabeth, Mary says: “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
These are words that we can barely comprehend. They speak of an active human acceptance of God’s promise to be with us. They remind us, Madeleine L’Engle once said, that “We are all asked to do more than we can do.”[i]
To say “Let it be” suggests an acceptance of what is. But this is not to be confused with a resigned passivity. This acceptance will lead to confrontation with the world.
This morning we heard Mary sing of the disturbing ways of God, of radical changes:
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
This is the same God who Hannah said “raises up the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” This is the God whose very coming as Emmanuel, God with us, upsets the standing social order and replaces it with something more like what could be called the realm of God.
When God’s messengers speak we might tremble at what we hear, for even when the way ahead is filled with light and certainty, the path can be leading us to something new and unknown.
From Mary we learn at least a few things about how to talk to an angel.
We hear an openness to the message, a desire to know more, to “ponder what sort of greeting this might be.” Don’t dismiss those angelic voices—in these days or any days.
Find out what they are saying, what they might mean.
Be open to what God is doing in the world, in your life.
Be open to the creative impulse, to the urge to give and be more generous than you would expect to be.
Be open to the good, the just, the kind. Be open to being the sort of person who is good and just and kind.
Yes, we will often respond less like Mary and more like Zechariah instead: incredulous, dismissing what we hear.
But this is the good news: even in such times, God is still doing a new thing. Even if doubt and dismissal might rile up an angel, they will not deter God. For nothing—and this has been called “the creed behind all creeds”—nothing will be impossible with God.
When God chooses the least likely—people like Mary or you or me—and we agree to be a part of what God is doing, nothing stays the same. The weak become strong; the hungry are filled with good things. What seems absolutely impossible is presented to the world as a sign of God's love.
Friends, this is the good news of these days—and really of all days. God is with us.
We can move forward in the faith and the hope that even in all our trouble, even with all the trouble confronting this world, the God of love, whose incarnation we announce, is with us. And nothing can separate us from that love. God still enters into the silent and lonely and fearful nights of our lives, our world, sharing our sorrow, comforting us with joy.
Let us, then, listen when we hear the messengers of God.
Let us ponder what we hear to learn its meaning.
Let us be open to the ways of God in our lives and in our world, so that with God we might shape our world into a place of love and mercy.
In the coming year, let us allow God to work among us in surprising and unexpected ways.
Rejoice. Along with all of creation, you are loved by God, whose mercy is great, whose compassion is eternal.
[i] Madeleine L’Engle, Miracle on 10th St., pg. 71.