Advent/Angels

This Christmas week I am thinking about angels. The amazing Christmas story is the work of angels communicating with humans to announce the arrival of God on earth as foreseen by the prophets centuries earlier. Angels first visit barren Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah to inform them of a child in the offing they are to name John. Then six months later the same angel visits Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary, a virgin betrothed to Joseph, to inform her that she too will bear a child created in her by the Holy Spirit. When Joseph discovers Mary is pregnant, an angel visits him in a dream to inform him that the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. The angel commands Joseph to accept Mary, welcome the son and name him Jesus (“Yahweh saves”). The angel arrives in the vicinity of Bethlehem at Jesus’ birth to announce to the shepherds in the fields that a savior has been born. This bit of awe is accompanied by whole slew of angels proclaiming Glory to God.

The birth process is reported only in Matthew and Luke, and each writer has a different agenda. Matthew focuses on Joseph, wise men visiting from the east, and the cruelty of Herod. Luke’s focus is on Zechariah, Elizabeth and Mary. Yet both agree that these events were the work of God through God’s Holy Spirit taking the form of an angel. Luke names the angel as Gabriel, perhaps in reference to the prophet Daniel’s experience, or perhaps at some point during his early research he learns that Zechariah told his family the angel announced himself as Gabriel. Matthew does not name the angels in his story.

So what are we to make of these angels appearing on the scene? Are they simply literary devices; ie., fictional characters created to advance the narrative? Prominent commentaries on Matthew and Luke immerse their discussion in biblical tradition of divine revelation in dreams. Angels arrive to make announcements and give direction. The birth story, they argue, had to be consistent with the resurrection story. The early church needed to understand God’s mission for Jesus from the very beginning. Without the resurrection we would not be singing “Angels We Have Heard on High.” With the resurrection, we can deduce that God was active from the very beginning, as foreseen in Isaiah’s prophesy. If this is really God’s story with Jesus as God’s actor, then Luke’s and Matthew’s accounts are effective storytelling consistent with biblical tradition.

But suppose we look at things differently. Luke set out to write the “truth” of what had occurred. (Lk 1:4). It seems improbable that he would then immediately launch into a literary fabrication consistent with biblical tradition. His considerable reporting of the women in Jesus’ life and ministry would indicate that his research included interaction with Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary and Martha, and perhaps even Elizabeth or her family. Luke was present in Jerusalem and with disciples on the road with Paul within 20 years of Jesus’ death. If the women would have interacted with anyone other than John, it would logically be Luke. Matthew was a publican tax collector in Galilee near Capernaum and not far from Nazareth. He would have had access to Joseph and Jesus’ brothers. He was a contemporary of Jesus and John the Baptist, but he would have had oral testimony of older Jewish citizens of Herod’s behavior 30 years previous at the time of Jesus’ birth. Even though Matthew’s notes in Aramaic were later crafted into Greek by some unknown scribe, and even though Luke enjoyed his literary skills to the point of hyperbole and style, the events they each recorded smack of real testimony by real participants and witnesses.

My take is that the Holy Spirit did indeed come in the form of angels to inform and instruct the participants in what God was doing with them and the world they inhabited. From my point of view, this story recounts what occurred here on earth 2,000 some years ago. Knowing this, I find the resurrection a slam dunk obvious truth. Not vice versa.

Tonight, Dec 21, 2020, I watched the huge “star” in the southwestern sky just 20 degrees above the horizon here in the clear southern California desert, realizing in awe what the wise men saw, looking southwest from their eastern home toward Israel and Bethlehem.