Loving Angels

Robbie Williams song Angels is perhaps his most popular song. It's anybody's guess what it is actually about. Mine, for what it is worth, is that the angel is a loved one who has died and who watches over the one left behind. When life gets tough, there is a guardian angel watching over him and Robbie "is loving angels instead". But it would be unfair to ask Robbie Williams to come up with a highly developed theology of angels, even if such a thing were possible. The song is popular because it taps into that longing in us to believe that we are and there is something more; that we are not just animated lumps of meat walking the earth until that point when the machinery of our bodies gives out and we die – end of rather prosaic story. There is a yearning in this song there for something, ill defined, but spiritual. Robbie William's Angels is a hymn.

There has been a resurgence in interest in angels is recent times. Google the word angels and you will get all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff and all of it reflecting this longing for a sense that there is more; the fancy word for which might be a sense of transcendence.

Angels in the Bible do not have a major role to play though they do appear from time to time like outcrops of the heavenly places into the earthly realm. They do however show up a lot in the gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus. In Matthew's gospel they appear in dreams, to Joseph to reassure him that he should indeed take Mary as his wife despite her disturbing pregnancy and to the wise men to warn them to steer clear of King Herod. In Luke's gospel, Zachariah the priest meets the angel Gabriel when on duty in the Temple, shepherds in the fields above Bethlehem are told of the special birth by an angel of the Lord and attendant angels and, most famously, the angel Gabriel appears to Mary in her home at Nazareth. So there is a high density of angel sightings around the time of Jesus' birth.

Now I don't really want to spend time now wondering whether angels really exist because if we get so sidetracked on that we may lose the meaning of the stories. If you put angels on a par with elves and fairies and UFOs then it may be all too easy to dismiss the whole thing as fantasy. Even if you are a signed up believer in angels you may still miss the message by getting fixated on angelogy, if there is such a thing. It is not the angels that matter here but the message they bring. The Greek word from which we get our word angel is angelos, and it means "messenger", Gabriel is a messenger of God. He brings a message. Without wishing to trivialise the story, he is the postman not the letter and it is the letter that matters here.

So a more fruitful way of reflecting on the Christmas story is to wonder what it is like to get a message from God, however it is delivered – by angel post or some other less spectacular means. So ask yourself this question: What does God want to say to me?

Because I notice this particularly in Luke's gospel: the angels appear to people in the very middle of their normal lives and routines. This should not come as a surprise. The Christmas story is, after all, the story of how God comes into the world in Jesus in a very particular place at a very particular time. God doesn't come to us in general. He always comes to us in particular. Zachariah is in the temple and I guess that's the sort of place you might most expect to see an angel – in a sacred space, in church, if you like. Well, it's true, you can meet God in sacred places – just read the comments in our visitors book to this church if you doubt it. But the point is this: Zachariah is in his place of work. He's a priest, doing whatever it is priests and vicars get up to (what do they do?!), and in the midst of his carefully organised religious routine God breaks in. The shepherds in Luke 2 aren't in church. In fact, they were considered a rather rum lot, shepherds, because their work made it very difficult for them to get to church and keep the religious laws. They are in their place of work when God breaks in. They are in the office, on the factory floor, in the milking parlour, in the stockroom, in the staffroom, when God breaks in. And Mary, she is at home in Nazareth. I don't know what she was doing but I like to think of her hoovering. She is both at home and in her place of work and God breaks in. So what are we waiting for? A special sign, a holy moment, a mysterious voice, an angel? Well, maybe, but let me tell you God is ready to break into your life now – in the detail of your life, work, home, this is where God wants to meet us, in the ordinary routines of life. There is, after all, nowhere else where he can meet us but here.

But when he speaks to us, and we are prepared to listen our lives will not be the same as they were. The universal reaction to the appearance of angels is at first, perhaps unsurprisingly, fear. Zachariah "was gripped with fear". The shepherds "were terrified" and Mary is "greatly troubled". Angels are not, it seems, cuddly little creatures sitting atop a Christmas tree. Their voice, their message, disrupts the ordinary and points to other dimensions, to that "more" we long for but also fear. To be spoken too by God is beautiful but it is disturbing. The voice of God is always a call to live life in its fullness; it is always good news but perhaps we are not always sure we can handle the gift because we cannot receive it and go unchanged. We may glimpse the glory but then settle back to lives that are flat and humdrum with only the virtue of being predictable, undisturbed by these strange gifts and intimations of the more that lies beyond. We can return the message to sender or we can open our hearts and take the gift that our hearts are given. Risky. Risky but life in all its fullness.

So here's the question: is God trying to tell you something? Has he been trying to tell you something? You may have been spared angels but have you ever sensed that call to live more fully, afresh, differently? Is there a nagging feeling that there is more? Has something happened that has made you wonder but you have put it to one side? God speaks to us in all kinds of ways – in the times of celebration when we feel the richness of life, but he just as often speaks to us in our suffering. He can speak through a bereavement or an illness. He can speak to us when things have got pretty low. He can speak a message of a hope and joy that we never thought could be possible. He can speak through other people, sometimes the strangest of people. They can be your angels. Watch out for God's angels, his message bearing moments in your life.

Christmas is a story of the coming into the world, into our world, your world, my world, of the One who has this capacity to both disrupt and fulfil our lives. In Jesus, God unites heaven and earth and calls us to live in both. God dispenses with the need for angels and, in Jesus, becomes both messenger and message. He is Good News, the fulfilment of our longings and our yearnings, proof positive that there is more:

Matthew Parker

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