Listening to Angels Sermon

First Sunday after Christmas
31 December 1989
Dad is 49 years old.
He preached this sermon to the congregation at Grace Lutheran Church, Ripon, WI.

"Listening to Angels"
Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

Preachers might have complained this year about Christmas Eve coinciding with a Sunday. From what I hear, many congregations experienced what we did her at Grace: attendance about average on Sunday morning and somewhat below average on Christmas Eve. The last time this occurred was in 1978...I'm not sure when we will encounter that calendar coincidence again.

But surely it is some significance, isn't it, that we end the year and the decade by gathering for worship as we are this morning and to receive what the Lord offers at His table. For me, it is an appropriate transition from what we recall from the past and what we hope for in the future. Maybe you have found fascinating, as I have, the number of articles and programs featuring all sorts of personalities pontificating about the special events of the past 10 years and what we might expect for the coming decade which will close out the millennium. Such forecasts and predictions cover the spectrum of human activity and call into question who we should listen to as we think about what might be facing us in the days ahead.

Certainly the credibility of such prognostications for the past year was diminished considerably by having no one in positions of power and influence anticipate what has now happened in a matter of a few months in the Eastern Bloc nations. Of course, there are always people like Jean Dixon who makes her living by coming up with all sorts of prophecies about the future. Why she gets paid for this and the people who do that same sort of thing down at Braun's Restaurant in the morning don't is one of those imponderable mysteries of life.

The texts presented to us on this Sunday after Christmas offer a variety of insights appropriate for this day and time. When Isaiah begins, "I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord," that in of itself is a worthy enterprise as we close out this year. Apart from all the change occurring around the globe, we lift up the constancy of a God whose love never changes...it is not just our witness, but one made by the people of Scriptures over the course of thousands of years.

When we read from Galatians that the time had fully come for God to send forth his Son to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons and daughters, we now have a new meaning to the word, "Father" to sustain us in our prayers...we talk to him not as outsiders, but as members of a family...as people given the inheritance of salvation by grace as received through faith.

But when reading the Gospel...Matthew's account of how Joseph and Mary had to flee from Bethlehem to a foreign country...the country of Egypt...in order to save the life of their infant son...that story and message seem to fly in the face of the wondrous message heard just a week ago. We now see a picture no longer of babies being born in mangers, but people in fear...fleeing for their lives...a picture of refugees...a picture all too familiar in our day. But so also do we see Joesph listening again...listening to angels. You recall, don't you, that it was an angel who prevented Joseph from divorcing Mary when he found out she was to give birth...and now we read of Joseph being instructed to flee to Egypt...to stay there until once more he listens to an angel telling him to return following the death of Herod.

Listening to angels...as far as I know, Donahue, Geraldo, and Oprah haven't had any of those on their shows in recent weeks, have they? As we listen these days to all sorts of voices and experts about the past and the future, does it not seem that we are out of touch as Christians to gather as we are this morning to hear stories about people listening to angels? I trust I'm not departing from the text into the realm of biblical trivia, but I don't think we should dismiss this detail about angels as just a biblical metaphor. In fact, the Bible mentions angels more than 300 tines. Jesus' life is connected intimately with the presence of angels...be that at his birth...or angels coming to tend to him following his struggle in the Wilderness or while he was in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. We read in the scriptures that angels announced Jesus' resurrection. As the New Testament story goes on in the book of Acts, we read of an angel releasing the Apostle Peter from prison...and Paul was firmly convinced of the reality of heavenly powers and principalities...his way of talking about angels.

What the Bible doesn't teach us about angels is that they were human beings who had died....nor do we receive from Scripture the popular image put forth by medieval artists or writers like Milton in his Paradise Lost that angels had wings, played harps, and looked like humans. Neither do we know whether angels were male or female...they do not marry or propagate on their own. Each was to be regarded as a separate creation by God.

Martin Luther was a firm believer in angels and defined them as "Spiritual creatures, a personal being without a body and appointed for service of the divine church...messengers who were to convey their message by word of mouth." Luther admitted the Scriptures didn't teach us much about angels other than to acknowledge their presence and the message which was theirs to deliver, but for reason of his own, Luther thought one of the special roles of angels was to watch over and care for children and he made reference to this in more than a few sermons.

So do you listen to angels? Have I? I can't answer for you...I can say that I have not heard an angel speak to me, but that does not mean I turn up my nose at the notion of angels and dismiss them as a quaint oddity from the past. I am open to the reality of angels simply because I refuse to define all of reality in terms of what I can see, touch, feel, taste, smell, or hear. I'm willing to admit that angels might well be seeking to convey messages to me or to you, but we have just not been willing to hear and listen. For it is not seeing an angel that is important...not even the Bible makes a big deal about that...it is the message they bear which is important to the drama of God's saving action within human history. And the curious thing about the messages of angels is that often as not they carry a sense of urgency...the messages are expressed in some form of the words, "Get up and hurry"...Joseph is told to go quickly...the same holds true for the shepherds...they also were instructed to go...and to do so immediately. Listening to angels obviously implied a willingness to act on the part of the hearer...to be led in a direction which would be in harmony with God's will.

Here again we are confronted with some different images of angels as thought of in our day....when we talk about a child acting as if a perfect angel, we really are saying the child is doing little of anything...and because of that the child becomes no nuisance or bother to adults around the child. To speak of angelic looks or angelic voices is to imply an unreal or unearthly quality to such things. While angels might not be like us, their message is very earthy...how earthy could it be than what we read about in Matthew's Gospel for today...the message the angel shared had to do with life and death...that's pretty basic, isn't it?

Jesus might have been born into this world as an act of the Holy Spirit...he might have been identified as the promised Messiah...the King of Kings...the Prince of Peace...but we quickly learn that Jesus was to be like us in every respect...and that his own life was threatened early on by a tyrant ruler who wanted to take no chances about someone unseating him from his rule and authority.

Might it not be feasible for us this morning as we enter into the year 1990 and beyond to think of listening to angels...listening in the sense of detecting the urgency we are to have as Christians in sharing the message of the Gospel...that God expects his people to be people involved in mission and not content with sitting back waiting for the Lord to do our work.

In the days ahead, there will be significant effort to gather up information about the life of this congregation and put it into a form whereby you, the members of this congregation might be aware and informed about what has been done in the past 12 months. There will be reports of committee activities, council actions, financial reports and membership changes...but that effort is done to help move us forward into the months and year ahead. You see the stewardship report as I do in the bulletin. Those are not just numbers....but represent a major movement forward in terms of commitment by more than a few people. We move into 1990 not in the red, but in a position of strength and with the ability to act.

But we need also be aware of those angel messages which might come from sources and places we least expect....to be aware and always seeking the voice of our Lord as to what He would have us do and where He would have us go. Granted, no political pundit or talk show host is going to focus on that theme these days...but peace, freedom, justice, compassion, stewardship of the earth's resources....those aren't political ideas dreamed up in the halls of Congress....they originate with God Himself....and as His children, we need to arise and remind all of the world of that, even as we commit ourselves to those endeavors which make real such goals.

God knows I'm no angel....so do you...and certainly my family. But that does not keep me from looking for a spiritual dimension to all of life and to realize God surrounds us as does the host of heaven in His endeavor to have us live as messengers in our own day....messengers who have heard from angels....this is Christ the Lord....this year past and for all the years to come.