Namaste. Christmas wonder in me greets Christmas wonder in you. Something precious and wondrous is waiting to be born in your life and in the world. It may require labor pains as the waters of new consciousness burst forth, but do not shrink back. It is beckoning you forward. Do you hear it? Love filling the earth. Justice rising. Hope and history rhyming. Memory and imagination harmonizing. Do you hear it? Faint whispers speak to you. Ideas of God, the voice of God heard through nature and through the fragile and angelic tones of human life………………………

Today I want to speak about angels. Have you ever wondered why we place angels on top of Christmas trees? Apparently, one Christmas Santa was particularly stressed. He asked Mrs. Claus to wake him at 5 a.m. and to have his breakfast ready with a packed lunch. He then went to his workshop and told the elves to have all the gifts packed in the sleigh and the reindeer harnessed at 5:30 a.m.

At 5:30 the following morning he awoke and jumped out of bed, furious with Mrs. Claus for not awakening him on time. His mood got worse when he realized she had fixed neither his breakfast nor his lunch. Then he ran out to his sleigh only to find that the elves, hung over from partying all night, had no gifts packed and the reindeer were running loose in the field.

About this time a little angel walked by, dragging a large Christmas tree. Santa tried to ignore her since his mood was so foul but the angel spoke up and said, "Santa what should I do with this Christmas tree?" Santa looked daggers at her, “Ill tell you what you can do with that Christmas tree……”

And that is why there is an angel on the top of the Christmas tree.

Different Ideas about Angels

There are many diverse ideas about angels. What is your understanding and experience of angels? Do you think they are literal beings of some sort? Or do you think they are part of myth and metaphor, designed as an ideal of human service to aspire to? A new study was conducted in September of this year by Baylor University. The results were interesting. Half of all Americans believe they are protected by guardian angels. One-fifth of Americans say they've heard God speak to them in a very specific way.

In a progressive community such as this, I imagine we include a wide range of perspectives on angels. Some are no doubt very skeptical. Maybe you feel like George Carlin, who said this about the large number of Americans who claim to believe in angels-

“Has everybody lost their mind? You know what I think it is? I think it's a massive, collective, psychotic chemical flashback for all the drugs smoked, swallowed, shot, and absorbed by Americans from 1960 to 1990. Thirty years of street drugs will get you some angels, my friend!”

Or else maybe you have had some sort of mystical experience, or an emotional sense of companionship. Maybe you had an experience something like this- Diane, a university student, was home for the summer. One evening she returned late from a visit to her friends. She walked alone through an alley. Halfway down the alley she noticed a man, looking like he was waiting for her. She felt afraid and vulnerable. She prayed for protection and instantly a comfortable feeling of quietness and security surrounded her, as if someone was walking with her. She walked right past the man and arrived home safely. The following day she read in the paper that a young girl had been raped in the same alley, just twenty minutes after she had been there. She decided to go down to the police station. She identified the man in a line-up. The man was arrested. She asked the police-man if he would ask the man why he had not attacked her. His answer was surprising: “Because she wasn’t alone. She had two burly men walking on either side of her.”

Interestingly, there are stories similar to that one in most cultures and mythology. The story seems to be tapping into a universal longing to feel apart of something grand and nurturing. I feel no need to take that experience away from anyone. Your experience is your experience and noone can take it away from you. You are also entitled to interpret your experience in whatever way makes most sense to you. Maybe you feel like the 8 year old girl who said, “I hear funny angels all the time in my dreams. And I'm sticking with that no matter how many people tell me I'm crazy.”

Angels in History

I want to affirm those who believe in angels as beings, or a sense of presence. I also want to affirm those who have never had such an experience, or feel skeptical about angels. But I don’t want to feed your skepticism. I want to feed your appetite for wonder and a larger perspective. You can indulge this appetite without believing that angels are literal beings.

Johannes Kepler, the 16th century astronomer, was the first to document the Copernican revolution. When he began to question why the planets move as they do, he wondered if they were pushed by angels. This was a common view for his day. At this time, they believed that angels held up the corners of a giant canopy that sheltered the flat earth. (Psalm 104;2- You stretch out the heavens like a tent) But Kepler wanted to know more about how the process worked, and finally concluded that angels were not involved. Newton then showed that nothing moves the planets. They were slowly stripping away the supernatural assumptions of the day.

In his autobiography, Kepler said, “A benevolent demon took me to the moon and showed me the laws of the universe.” He was grasping for language to feed his appetite for wonder.

Towards the end of his life, Kepler said this- "I give myself over to my rapture. I tremble; my blood leaps. God has waited 6000 years for an looker."

We can forgive him for not knowing the age of the universe. He didn’t have access to information we have access to. But think about the way he describes his wonder, even without angels. "I give myself over to my rapture. I tremble; my blood leaps.”

The description of angels in the Bible has the same purpose. In both Greek and Hebrew, the word angel means “messenger”. Angels are messengers of wonder. Angels are described with a mixture of imagery, some of it very human and ordinary and some of it quite otherworldly. The purpose is to whet your appetite for wonder and transform this wonder into passionate service of humanity.

Two angels described in the Hebrew Scriptures are the Chayot and Ophanim. The Chayot are, in Hebrew, “living beings”, but with wings and four faces resembling a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle. The Ophanim are the winged “wheels” of the chariot. Next is the Erelim, the courageous or valiant ones. The description of angels augments the impossible vision of an indescribable God in Isaiah’s prophecy.

          "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and His train filled the sanctuary. Above Him stood the Seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew."  Isaiah 6;1-7.

The 12th century Rabbi Maimonides, near the end of the Dark Ages, took a rationalist view of angels. He said angels were metaphors for the laws of the nature. He wrote a famous work called The Guide For The Perplexed. What a great title? So often in life, we are perplexed by events that feel miraculous, and our enquiring minds seek to make meaning of them. We want to believe that the world operates according to trustworthy laws, but we can’t always explain events adequately.

Angels are a metaphor for this intersection between laws of nature and mystery. Angels evoke a sense of wonder and imagination, the sort of wonder and imagination that inspires us to “be” angels for others.

We are each other’s angels

A nine year old girl described angels like this- “My angel is my grandma who died last year. She got a big head start on helping me while she was still down here on earth.”

We are each other’s angels
And we meet when it is time
We give each other messages
And show each other signs.

I saw an angel last week. Actually, I heard it first. It was the sound of a snow blower. It had snowed what felt like ten feet over night, and there was my 84 year old neighbor plowing our driveway. He didn’t say a word about it. He just did it. He was a messenger of wonder. He was reminding me to be generous, to get outside of my own perspective and imagine a world of service.

You are the presence of what is divine and sacred and wondrous in this world. You are on fire with it, when you are close to it. When you give yourself over to its rapture, it emboldens you and makes your blood leap. You are angels for each other. 

Christmas Angels

The angels in the Christmas story are messengers of wonder and hope. The problem in the story, is that no one seems to hear them. The inn keeper felt too pressured. Joseph felt too helpless. Mary felt too insecure. The wise ones were in too much of a hurry.

Here’s a Christmas idea for you. You are angels for each other. Angels surround you on every side if you will only listen more intently to the sounds. You are an angel for others.

Rob Bell, the Grand Rapids preacher and author of Velvet Elvis, used the phrase “blessing machines”. I leave you with that image. You are a blessing machine. Your every thought, word and action is an opportunity to bless another person with your presence and encouragement.

Do you believe that God blesses the world? Or do you believe that the world is full of blessings?

Either way, we can all agree. You are the way God blesses the world. You are the way that the world blesses itself. You are a blessing machine. You are an angel when your blessings surprise you and others into a wider perspective, that you are here to live and love, give and remind, poke and provoke, here to make the world a more wondrous and gentle place. You are an angel, a messenger of wonder.