The Five Angels of Christmas

The Christmas story is not just a story—it’s a narrative. A narrative is big story that has little stories nested in it. The Christmas narrative has five stories nested within it--Marys’ story, Joseph’s story, the birth of John the Baptist, the shepherds’ story, and the wise men’s story. Each of these stories has three common elements

(1)     They are about ordinary people living ordinary lives.

(2)     They all lead to finding Jesus.

(3)     These ordinary people find their way by the intervention of an angel.

The word “angel” comes from the Greek word angelos. It literally means “news bringer.”

We imagine angels as white robed figures with wings. We also are told that angels are people who’ve gone to heaven. Both of these statements are wrong. Angels don’t have any particular form, but appear in any form they wish. They are not departed spirits, when we die we become superior to angels. We are co-rulers with God. Angels are merely messenger boys.

An angel takes whatever form will best deliver a message to a particular individual. Angels appeared in five different ways to lead people to Jesus. Let’s take them in reverse order, starting with the wise men.

1         The Wise Men

The Wise men—also called magi--were priests of the Zoroastrian religion from Persia. They founded both astrology and modern astronomy. They believed that the stars were angels, sent by God to bring messages to earth.

Whatever the “star” or Christmas was, to the magi it was an angel. They discovered it through the scientific observation of the heavens, through their study of planetary movements.

The angel spoke to them through their intellectual study. This was the form that these pagan astrologers would recognize.

For the scholar, God reveals Himself in the working of heaven and earth. Psalm 8 says, “The heavens declare the glories of God, and His firmament displays His handiwork.”

Creation itself witnesses to those who will it the revelation of God in Christ. When we see the organization of the natural order, it speaks to us of the reality of God, we are looking at an angel.

The wise men were wrong in their belief in astrology, nevertheless, God met them where they were. God reached down to them and met them where they were. They did not reach up to God.

The same is true with us. The more we study, the more we know how little we know. But in the study, God reveals Himself to be true.

2         The Shepherds

The shepherds were very ordinary men, yet they were treated to the biggest light show in history—a multitude of the heavenly host.

When they saw it, they were terrified. They almost fell over dead from it.

To them the angels appeared as a terrifying vision. Why?  God didn’t have to scare them. 

Terrifying them was the point. These ordinary people were too busy and occupied with making a living to care about spiritual things. It took a good scare to get their eyes off sheep and onto God.

Terror has the effect of focusing our attention. When we undergo scares in life, it gets out attention, and we start to seek God. 

When we are scared, we sometimes wish an angel would come and rescue us. What we fail to recognize is that the very disaster we experience is the angel. The disaster is a message to us to pay attention to God.

God’s angels said, “Fear not. I bring good news.” What we think is bad news is often good news. It least us to Christ. Disasters, sicknesses, job loss, accidents, and so forth to force our attention on what is really important. Our disasters are angels to us, leading us to see beyond this world to something bigger.

3         Zechariah

The birth of John the Baptist is the prelude to the Christmas story. Zechariah was the father of John the Baptist. Zechariah was a priest, serving in the temple when an angel appeared to him there. When Zechariah had trouble believing the message, the angel prevented him from speaking until the baby was born.

Zechariah was born to work in the temple, and that is just where he found the angel. In his ordinary practice in the temple.

If we want to see an angel, then we need to go to where we worship God. Worship is the way we come before God, and give God his due. We don’t always get messages from God in worship, though we become a little more knowledgeable of His word. But God meets us where we look for him. We look for Him in church.

Zechariah did not believe the angel he saw in the temple, so God struck him mute until the baby was born. He really didn’t believe his eyes. When we are in God’s house, we should expect to see His angels there.

4         Joseph

The angel appeared to Joseph in a dream.  Joseph had a lot of dreams—twice afterwards God would speak to him in a dream.

We know little about Joseph, but we can piece together a few things. We know he was from Bethlehem, and people from Bethlehem were different from other people. They were born believing the Messiah might come for them. An idealistic man from Bethlehem, who loved God, and hoped for the coming Messiah would dream of one day being the father of the Messiah. Joseph lived in a world where he saw Roman injustice all around him.  He dreamed of the day when it would end. 

Joseph was a dreamer. Not all our dreams are from God, but just like our thoughts and our feelings, God can speak in our dreams. 

We live in a world where we are taught we should have vision and purpose. But our purposes are not God’s purposes. But God wants us to have purposes, nevertheless. God can use those purpose to make something great out of us. Our human purposes are sometimes the way God reveals Him to us.

5         Mary.

Mary’s visitation was unique. It did not come through logical study. It did not come with fear—she wasn’t afraid. She did not dream it, nor did she experience it as a religious vision. The angel just appeared. 

Mary was a little girl, probably only thirteen or fourteen. Yet she alone had the faith to believe without question and see God through the eyes of faith. 

Looking at these five stories of God’s angels, what do we learn? We learn that God meets us uniquely where we are.

This Christmas, Joy and I bought Christmas presents for all our friends and family. If we wanted to, we could have just given money or gift cards, and we wouldn’t have had to look. But where’s the fun in that?  Our goal was to buy something for each person that was unique to that person, some gift that would speak and be meaningful to them. The gift we give each one is chosen according to their needs and interests.

Christ came at Christmas as a gift for all. But the way Christ manifests that and applies that to our lives is uniquely fitted to each one of us. 

Christ doesn’t love us all the same. He loves us like we love those we care about. He loves us uniquely, specially and individually. He cares about us all as individuals, so he sends his angels to meet our individual needs.