The Night The Angels Sang
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”
“The Night The Angels Sang”
(Luke 2:1-20)
INTRODUCTION:
In the midst of practicing Christmas carols for her Sunday school program, a 4-year-old seriously noted, “I don’t know where we’re going to PARK all those herald angels!” (1)
Have you noticed? Angels are everywhere. It seems like everybody is talking about angels. Everybody has angel story, either one they’ve experienced or one they’ve heard. According to the cover story in TIME magazine about this time last year, angels are hot. There are angel boutiques, angel newsletters, and angel seminars. Harvard Divinity School offers a course on angels. Boston College has two. Bookstores have had to establish angel sections. There have been a host of films and TV specials recently about angels. We currently have a TV series about encounters with angels. (2) In December of 1992, five of the 10 paperback books on the religious best-seller list were about angels. (3)
So what is all this stuff about angels anyway? Why are we so interested in angels? Are they real? And if so, what message do they have for us?
1. DON’T BE AFRAID:
A. Why are we so interested in angels? For the same reason people have always been interested in angels, because they are so different, so other worldly. AND because they remind us that God is bigger than all of our problems, all of our struggles, all of our concerns and worries. I also think we’re interested in angels because there is within each of us a desire to sense God’s presence in the world. That’s supposed to be the work of the Church. We are supposed to be pointing out God’s presence and living it. But many folks haven’t felt that in the Church. The tide of fallen TV Evangelists and fallen preachers has taken its toll on the Church’s credibility. So has the fact that many people no longer see Christianity as a lifestyle because they don’t see that lifestyle being lived out by the Church’s members. So they’ve begun looking somewhere else for that sense of the Holy, that sense of God’s presence in the world. They’ve begun looking to angels.
But are they real? According to Scripture, angels are VERY real. They are the messengers of God. There are over 655 direct and indirect references to Angels in the Bible. If they are real, then what’s their purpose and what message do they have for us today?
B. In this always changing, fast paced world of ours, sometimes we feel like the angel Gabriel in the play GREEN PASTURES. Returning to heaven after being sent to earth to investigate the havoc of Noah’s flood, Gabriel replied, “Lord, there ain’t nothin’ fastened down there anymore. Everythin’ nailed down is comin’ loose.”
We know just how he felt. Haven't you felt like that? Everything is changing. Nothing is the same. Everything WE thought was nailed down is coming loose. We don’t know what the future holds or even if there will be a future. We go through life feeling like Dorothy, Scarecrow and the Tinman tramping through the deep dark forest saying, “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh MY!” We go through life filled with fear, expecting something to jump out and devour us. That feeling can overwhelm us. That fear can neutralize us and stop us dead in our tracks. That fear can steal our joy of faith and our joy of living.
But the message of the Angels is very clear. The first words to the Shepherds are: “Do NOT be afraid!” Those are the first words the angels usually speak. Check it out. When Gabriel visited Mary with the announcement that she would bear the Christ Child and when Joseph was struggling with what to do when he found out Mary was pregnant, angels visited them and one of the first words spoken were, “Do NOT be afraid!”
What a wonderful message for them to hear in their time of stress and doubt. What wonderful message for us to hear. The very Angels who sang at Jesus’ birth remind us that God is still in charge. “Do NOT be afraid!” God is still God. We are not alone, God is with us. “Do NOT be afraid!” In the midst of all of our worldly celebrations of Christmas and in all of our attempts to hide our fear, comes a message of comfort; the Angelic chorus sings: “Do NOT be afraid!”
II. THEY BRING PEACE AND GLORIFY GOD:
A. Their message brings peace to our souls. It’s not the kind of peace the world longs for, peace between countries, peace between religious groups, peace between the races; BUT it is the inner peace which can lead US to the kind of peace the world longs for. And that’s also part of the work of the Angels. They bring peace through their message of hope and faith. They bring peace in the midst of doubt and turmoil. They bring peace in the midst of fear.
And through their message and through their ministrations, they Glorify God. They simply rejoice in God. They are filled with joy. And I really think that maybe it is that joy or the search for the peace and the joy which the angels possess that has infected so many folks in their search for and their study of angels.
B. A six-year-old little girl was frustrated and disappointed that she had to be “one of the kids in the manger scene” at her church’s Christmas program. Her mother asked her what she wanted to be and she replied, “I want to be an angel. They’re the ones who sing the song of rejoicing!” And then she summed up her feelings by saying, “I can’t rejoice unless I’m and angel!” (4)
The angels glorify God by bringing a message of peace and joy. Unfortunately, we’re a lot like that little girl. We suffer from the misconception that only angels rejoice. If so, then it’s only because the non-angelic don’t know the Good News.
III. THEY BRING GOOD NEWS:
A. And that’s the other thing the angels bring, the message the angels gave to the shepherds was Good News! We like good news. Nobody likes bad news. A father came home from a horrible day at work and told to his wife, “Look, honey, I’ve had a rotten day. Please! If you have any bad news tonight, just keep it to yourself, I only want to hear good news.” And she replied, “O.K. No bad news, only Good news. Remember our four children? Well, the good news is that three of them didn’t break an arm today.”
B. WE don’t like bad news. We like Good News. And the message of the angels IS Good News. It’s God’s Good News.
The coming of the Christ child is for those who KNOW they haven’t been all they ought to have been.
The coming of the Christ child is for those who sincerely regret their misspent time,
their misplaced values,
and their misguided actions.
The coming of the Christ child is for those who are sorry for words shouted in anger that they can’t take back; for broken relationships which they didn’t mean to break; for actions both done and undone.
The birth of the Christ child is for those who are longing for a new beginning; for those who wish to go back to that age of innocence. The Chrrist Child offers that second chance.
That’s what the birth of the Savior is all about. The Good News is that this innocent child, this infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger offers that innocence through his innocence because he offers forgiveness and a new beginning for all.
CONCLUSION:
The angels came to bring comfort and relieve our fears. They came to glorify God and bring peace. And they came to proclaim the Good News of our Savior’s birth.
The joy of Christmas comes from hearing the angels sing, from accepting their message and knowing the Good News as OUR Good News. The joy of Christmas comes from knowing that the Christ child brings hope and peace through forgiveness and that WE have been forgiven.
This is the Word of the Lord for this day.
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1. Marilyn VanderPloeg, New Dundee, Ontario
2. Nancy Gibbs, “Angels Among Us,” TIME, Dec. 1993
3. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
4. Adapted from a sermon in Preaching Magazine, November - December 1994, (Preaching Resources, Inc., Louisville, KY, 1994) p. 66.
5. Adapted from a sermon in, The Giant Book of Sunday Sermons (Voicings Publications, Pleasantville, New Jersey, 1984), page 508.