In this era of dismal and dispiriting news, the message of the angels has a particular resonance: “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.” (Luke 2:10).
Angels are given a particular prominence in the accounts of Jesus’ nativity. But they also appear during his temptation and in particular, at his resurrection. They are key players in God’s economy. Jesus often refers to them, especially in his teaching on God’s righteous judgement at the end of the age.
So who are angels?
You may recall that Abba believe in angels, “something good in everything I see.” As do about one in three people in the UK, according to a recent poll by the Bible society. In fact, another study by Theos found that even one in five people (21 per cent) who never attend a religious service believe in angels.
Which just goes to show that writer, G.K. Chesterton, was spot on when he said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
The first thing to say about angels, and here I helpfully quote Joseph Smith, “an angel of God never has wings.”
Angels appear repeatedly in the Bible, and not once is any reference made to their having wings. They are normally described by the whiteness of their clothing. As in Mark, describing the empty gave of Jesus: “(the women) saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side.” (Mark 8:5).
Even more so in the letter to the Hebrews, in an epistle which has no less than 13 references to angels, we read: “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2)
The chances are that if you invited a couple of angels into your house, like the two who visited Lot in Sodom, you would notice if they were bearing wings!
I’m not sure where the idea of wings originated. Possible Isaiah’s vision in the temple but they were not angels but “seraphim, each with six wings” – and remember, it was a vision. It may well have been all in his head.
It was only in the fourth century that the familiar image of the winged angel emerged, in the Roman church of Santa Pudenziana. Scholars think that the winged angel was derived from the winged Victories popular in this period.
And never, ever confuse angels with fairies, who invariably gate-crash every school nativity to the misguided delight of countless parents.
Essentially angels are God’s messengers – that’s what the original word in both Hebrew and Greek means. In the Old Testament they regularly convey warnings and calls for repentance.
And more, they have a military wing (forgive the pun!). The shepherds witnessed “a great company of the heavenly host.” (Luke 2:13). The NRSV gives a footnote to show the Greek word for host usually means army.
And again, as Jesus is about to be seized he tells the arresting party: “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:52)
You don’t mess with angels, as Zechariah discovered. (Luke 1:20)
To quote my daughter’s neighbour, Isabelle Hamley, the theological advisor to the House of Bishops (and soon to become principal at Ridley Hall college, Cambridge): “The angels of scripture are not the fluffy, benign figures of popular imagination. They can be fearsome and do not bend to human designs: they are messengers of God himself and will only partake in the purposes of God.”
The point is that angels give a clear pointer to a reality far beyond our own. The very existence shows that there is more, far more, than meets the eye. But like us, they have their limitations. To put it bluntly, they are not God.
Only this morning in my Bible reading, as often happens, I came across a familiar verse whose implications had never registered. The apostle Peter is describing how the Hebrew prophets were anticipating God’s Messiah. And then he writes, almost as a throw-away: “Even angels long to look into these things.” (1 Peter 1:12).
Angels may be an important, even an intrinsic, part of the nativity of Jesus and yet even they cannot grasp the enormity of what is happening. What God did at Bethlehem was beyond what both heaven and earth could comprehend. To quote Hamley again: “This God, who holds immensity and eternity in his hand, is now held within one single cell, then two, then four, and so on.”
That the Word became flesh may be well beyond our understanding – but what we do know is awe-inspiring and breath-taking. This is the God of all creation, willing to enter into his creatures’ reality, to experience the same constraints, fears and dangers which we encounter. Such love.
To finish where we started with the message of the angels: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:10)
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