The Gospel of the Angels

A D A M N A R L O C H

Luke 2:8-14

 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the an-gel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and say-ing,

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men”

Whether you consider yourself a Bible buff or not, I’m certain you’ve heard this bit of scripture before. This time of year espe-cially, it’s such a familiar text. Perhaps too familiar.

Recently, I was listening to a Christmas sermon by one of my favor-ite preachers. Tim Keller, best-selling author and pastor of Re-deemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, remarked in one of his Christmas sermons that one of the problems with Christmas is that people think they get spiritual meaning, depth and significance too easily.

Too easily? What the heck does that mean?

It struck me. I was even a little offended. See, I get defensive about Christmas. Especially in this day in age where it seems to be under attack. So, even though I like this guy Keller, I was on edge, ready to hear what he meant.

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As he continued, I began to agree with him. A few minutes later, I was even feeling a little guilty.

What this wise pastor was communicating is that Christmas is one of those times of year where the “spiritual” is shuffled from the pe-ripheral of life, to center stage whether you like it or not. As a result, this festive time of year makes it much easier to feel as if you are part of something ancient, spiritual and significant. In recent years, even before Halloween arrives, the stores and advertisements begin to introduce manger scenes, shepherds, angels, and stars. Every-where you look there are religious signs and symbols. Even main-stream radio stations unknowingly play hymns, songs and carols dense with scripture and overtly religious phrases. On Christmas Eve, even the church halls are teeming with those who don’t nor-mally attend.

Now, of course, he wasn’t saying that these are bad things. Not at all. He was simply pointing out the fact that familiarity tends to breed contempt, whether you realize it or not.

A perfect example is the passage from the Gospel of Luke printed above. The most famous exposition of this passage was first given in 1965 by the great theologian Linus to his frustrated friend Charlie Brown. The well known Christmas special climaxes when Linus re-minds Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about by reciting this passage: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good-will towards men.”

So familiar. Tim Keller was right. I am a pastor and have realized this year that I am guilty of glossing over the most beautiful truths this world has ever known. I am guilty of taking it all for granted as I roll along with the holiday hype. I didn’t even realize how ridicu-lous, outlandish and impossible are the claims of this passage.

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Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, goodwill to men?

Do you see how strange that is? Do you fully realize the impossibil-ity of this proclamation?

Much like an M.C. Escher drawing, at first glance this passage seems natural. Yet, a closer inspection reveals it’s awesome absurd-ity. You probably never saw it before. And if you didn’t see the ab-surdity, you probably never realized just how good the news is which was brought in earthquaking majesty by the angels that night. Why? Because you don’t really know what it means.

What is glory to God really? What is peace on earth?

Before you can begin to appreciate the message of the angels, you need to know a little about ancient Hebrew, a little about physics, and a little about yourself.

So, first, a little about speaking Hebrew:

This passage was first written in Greek. The greek word for glory in this passage is Doxa which is taken from the Hebrew word Kabed (pronounced KAW-BODE). The word means weightiness, heaviness or copiousness. So glory, in the sense that the angels were proclaim-ing, was a superabundant overflowing of some ultimate substance. What substance?

God.

Putting this new meaning back into the passage, we begin to see something we didn’t see before. Remember the glory (weightiness) of the Lord shown around the shepherds? Remember how this scared the heck out of them (they thought they were going to die)? And the army of angels who appeared with them proclaimed “Glory (weightiness, heaviness, greatness) to God in the highest...” What does this mean?

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There is another passage in the Bible where one of God’s most faith-ful servants, Moses, asked God if he could see His Glory. Now, let’s remember that in his life, Moses had made great personal sacrifices to serve God faithfully. He became a legend in Israel’s history as a model of faith and obedience. But when Moses made this request of God, “Let me see your Glory”, God said: “I can’t. It would kill you.”

Really? It would kill him? Isn’t Moses a good guy?

Not good enough, I guess.

Or what about the great prophet Isaiah? He had a vision about see-ing the glory of God. And although it was just a vision, Isaiah thought he was being torn apart by the greatness of God’s presence. God’s glory was so heavy it was literally crushing Isaiah to dust while he just mumbled to himself about how he was an unclean man.

Wait. Wasn’t Isaiah a good guy?

Not good enough I guess.

What’s the big deal about God’s glory? Why do people always think they are going to die when they come close to it? Why is it that throughout the Bible, angels are always telling people they need not to be afraid?

Here is where we need to talk a little about physics. The Science of Physics is the observation of how reality behaves. Now, there is a ba-sic principal in physics which says that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. The range of this principal ex-tends from Archimedes’ studies of buoyancy and density to Einstein and Pauli’s studies of quantum mechanics. The bottom line is that

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if two bodies need to occupy the same space, the denser, heavier or greater of the two will always win.

Always.

The same principal is true of relationships and opposing wills. As an illustration; if my wife wants to watch Desperate Housewives, and I want to watch Lord of the Rings, we will end up watching Desperate Housewives because her will has more density than mine. Or in other words, her will has more glory.

Can you imagine what it would be like if God’s will was opposing yours? Wait a minute. Is God’s will opposing yours?

Now we are beginning to see why the shepherds were terrified. The Glory of God was coming down and they were about to be dis-placed. God weighs more. He is infinite. How much do you think in-finity weighs? Think of dropping a brick in a bucket of water. What happens to the water? Why? Because the brick has more glory. Yes, I think the shepherds were terrified with good reason.

God is the ultimate reality. Scripture calls him “The Everlasting”. Are you everlasting? Nope.

Scripture also tells us that He is Holy; that He is supremely good. Within God there is no chaos, no conflict, no competition.

Now this is where you come in.

Scripture also says that this world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, that something is very wrong. Without getting all wrapped up in list-ing various sins and discussing what is right and what is wrong, I think we can all agree that everyone in this world thinks life is all about them. We all want reality to bend to our own will, and for life to serve our own needs. There is something inside you that is desper-ate to keep the focus on you. Psychologists call this the “id”. The

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“wrongness” of the world stems from everyone constantly trying to be the center. This creates a world of opposition because we can’t all be the center. All this opposition creates chaos.

Chaos. Now that’s something we’re familiar with.

See, everyone knows that something is wrong with the world. Every-one knows that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. It shouldn’t be this chaotic.

But if God is ultimate, and His way is heavier or more glorious than ours, then in the end, eventually only one way can be left standing (see our physics discussion above).

It doesn’t look good for us.

Fortunately, there is a way that it is supposed to be. The Bible talks about that too. There is a reality that the Bible speaks about when weapons of war will be turned into tools to help feed the nations. It talks about everyone getting along and laying down any and all dif-ferences. It says that even the lions will lay down with the lambs and we will feast together at a great banquet complete with rich food and aged wine as brothers and sisters. But greatest and most impor-tant of all, it says that we will be one with God.

The word Scripture uses for this idea, the idea of the way it’s sup-posed to be, is shalom, or peace. This is God’s way.

So the angels proclaim Glory to God in the highest. Ok. We under-stand that a little better now. But what about this peace on earth? They spoke of Glory to God in the Highest and on earth, peace, good-will toward men. What? How can those go together? What about all of the billions of people with wills all opposing each other and God? What about all the crime, war, hate, poverty and evil? What about all that’s wrong with the world? Where is the peace? How can

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we read this two thousand years later and not wonder: Where is the peace which was proclaimed?

Do you know how many tragedies happen daily? Do you know how many people die at the hands of others? Have you stopped to think about all the blood spilled in war, or all the evil committed every sin-gle day?

And yet the angels proclaim glory to God in the Highest and peace on earth?

Are you starting to see the absurdity?

Glory to God in the highest contradicts the very idea of peace on earth.

And yet, Christmas announces the beginning of a supermassive col-lision. Like two freight trains, speeding headlong toward one an-other. The Christmas message of the angels, means that for the first time in history, the Glory of God, (which is the way things are sup-posed to be), and all the brokenness of the world (which is the way things are presently) are starting to collide.

Psalm 85 says it like this:

“You forgave the iniquity of your people    and covered all their sins. You set aside all your wrath    and turned from your fierce anger...

...righteousness and peace kiss each other.”

Righteousness and peace kiss each other? How can that be? Doesn’t righteousness demand justice? Doesn’t justice involve punishment? How can there be peace if there must be punishment? How can

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God’s Glory collide with our chaos and produce peace? That sounds impossible.

The answer to the riddle is laying in the manger. As the angels pro-claimed, he is the savior. Savior? What is he saving us from?

From God’s glory.

This is where it gets weird.

Maybe you’ve never heard it put this way before, but the Bible says that God’s glory is coming down to heal the brokenness of the world. It says that His Glory is going to displace all the “not the way it’s supposed to be” of this world in order to make room for all the “as it should be” of His peace and shalom. But remember what that means for you. Remember that you and I are the reason the world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be because we can’t help wanting every-thing to be all about us. That is precisely what God’s glory will dis-place. That is what God’s Glory will get rid of, once and for all.

For God’s glory to come down without killing us, like God told Moses it would, it would have to displace something else. Something equal. Essentially, something else would have to take in all our bro-kenness and be smashed into nothing by God’s glory coming down.

That would be the only way righteousness and peace could kiss.

That would be the only way the message of the angels would be good news.

That would be the only way the message any of this could be true.

Glory to God in the Highest!

And on earth, Peace! Goodwill toward men!

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The good news of Christmas is that the message of the angels is true! For the savior, the baby who was laying in a pile of straw in a barn in Bethlehem was God Himself.

Jesus was the only person who ever lived a life that wasn’t all about Himself. The Bible tells us that even though He was the only person who deserved for life to be all about Him because He is God, He de-cided to make His life all about everyone else, all the way to the point of His death on a cross (Philippians 2).

And it was there, as that baby who was born in a stable, who lived a perfect life of awe-striking love, was killed by God for us. That Beau-tiful, Perfect Lover of all, was displaced by God’s righteous Glory.

Unlike Isaiah, who felt like he was being torn apart, Jesus was torn apart. Why? So we could be put back together.

Unlike Moses, who would have been killed had he seen God’s Glory, Jesus was killed. Why? So we can stand in God’s full presence forever.

Jesus was born in a manger and died on a cross to bring “Glory to God” and “Peace on Earth” together.

I realize as I write this that even though Jesus came and died, the world is still a mess. But the healing has begun. Peace with God is here now and total peace is breaking in moment by moment.

Many people believe that if they work hard to put this world back to-gether, God will honor that hard work by giving us peace with Him. But Christmas and the good news of that angels say the opposite. God gives us peace with Him which will put this world back together. His gift of peace through Jesus comes first.

God loves us. After all, He created us. And God wants to take this world, which isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, and restore it, so that

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it is beautiful and perfect. God wants every bit of sadness, evil and brokenness to come untrue. And it will.

In order to do that, instead of giving us what we deserve, He took care of it himself. And it cost Him.

It cost Him everything, so there could be:

Glory to God in the HIGHEST

and on earth

PEACE, GOODWILL TOWARD MEN!

Merry Christmas. I hope that you find that in this season, where meaning and significance are cheapened because they come too eas-ily, you collide with the glory of the Gospel of the Angels.

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