Seems you'd spend a lot of time worshipping God, living in his presence. In the Bible, some angels seem to have six wings, although we don't know what shape. We don't know whether angels are built for speed or beauty or strength, for hovering or for darting… whether they're more like hummingbirds' wings or albatrosses', like bats' wings or storks. I saw one in a church window this morning - St Michael - and they look both pretty mighty and mighty pretty.
What would it be like to be an angel?
All that flying from the realms of glory, spreading your wings over all the earth… and on top of that, at Christmas, you've got news. You know something that only God knows, and you have the strange joy of passing it on to Mary, to Joseph, to shepherds, and later on performing a synchronised flight with a thousand part harmony over the fields of Bethlehem, like some sort of CGI Busby Berkeley routine but with the world's best reason for celebration behind it.
Was Christmas remotely like this?
And would you like to be an angel? Announcing news of happiness and buzzing nervous shepherds? It may be quite an elevated position.
Or it might not.
Angel is the Greek word for messenger. And outside of Isaiah there's not much mention of wings. The big suggestion is that some - most? - of the angels in the Bible don't appear as bright and shining mightily and multi-winged seraphs. They just appear as people. And the one big thing we need to remember about the word for angels in the Bible is that it also means a normal, run-of-the-mill messenger. It can also mean a human being with a message.
Now that might take the shine off things for you. But don't worry, I'm not suggesting that the angels who arrived at the shepherds' field were actually the Bethlehem branch of some liturgical dance barber shop quartet. No doubt there'd've been enough tea towels for them but the flying might have proven a problem.
Not my cup of tea, but power to their elbows.
Actually, far from taking the shine off anything, this is more likely to put the shine back on things. Because it means you too can be an angel. Never mind that you don't have wings. In the BIble, the trajectory of angels is very very rarely up, up and away. The trajectory of angels is usually down, down and into the thick of it. I don't know about angels with dirty faces, but I'm pretty convinced that angels have dirty hands. For two reasons. One is that they're sent out to convince all sorts of people of all sorts of things - Zechariah of fatherhood, Mary of motherhood, shepherds of a birth and into Joseph's dreams. You find angels in ordinary workplaces and streets and kitchens and fields as well as in the Holy of Holies in the Temple.
The other reason I'm convinced angels have dirty hands is that they do the work of God. And the work of God - Father, Son, Spirit - is also often hard and dirty work. God is no lily-white-handed God who shuns mess and muck. Right from the start the Father is taking the dust of the earth - mud, even - and fashioning it into the shape of a man. It might be figurative, but it's a messy image. Isaiah tells us of God baring his holy arm before the nations. In context, it's all about God rolling up his sleeves to get his hands dirty with the problems of Israel and the nations round. God the Father is not scared of dirt. If his child fell over in the worst mud and God was there wearing a white robe, watching that child run towards him crying, God wouldn't hold her at arm's length, worried about getting a bit of mud on his cassock. He'd throw his arms around her and never mind the mud. The trajectory of God the Father is into the mud.
Then there's Jesus. Jesus who - at Christmas - starts out as messy as any baby ever before the midwife clears away the streaks of blood and amniotic fluid. Jesus who does all the messy things that humans do with poo and vomit and wee and eurgh (that's a technical term). And that's not enough for Jesus. You'd think that having endured all the indignity of being a human baby, he'd distance himself from that mess when he got old enough to choose what he's about. But instead he washes filthy feet and mixes mud and dies as he was born, streaked in blood and spittle. The trajectory of God the Son is into the mess.
Where have you been?
And then there's the Holy Spirit. He could hover at a distance, could be a helicopter Holy Spirit, could fly just out of reach. But instead he comes alongside. It's his job description as paraclete. The Holy Spirit comes alongside us in the mess and muck and mud. He's found in our hearts, which are also the homes of a good deal of dirty and naughty thinking and selfishness. And rather than shunning us, he starts mending it. The trajectory of God the Spirit is into the mess.
And so the angels in the Christmas story take a leaf out of God's book. They too - when the diving and soaring and sweeping is done - head into the mess, coming alongside, helping, doing whatever angels do.
And if that's true of the winged variety, it has to be true of God's less-winged messengers, too. By which I mean us. You see, we are angels. We have the same good news that the angels had for those shepherds. Christ is born in Bethlehem, and God and sinners can be reconciled, saved when we have gone astray.
Your job at Christmas - your job every day of the year - is to roll up your sleeves and muck in where human life is messiest. Your job is to wash feet. Your job is to come alongside those whose journey now is hard, whose hope is burning low, who tread the rocky path of life with painful, slow steps. That's my angelic commission, and it's yours.
The hands of an angel, most probably.
Sometimes it's a simple case of "Be an angel and put the kettle on." "Be an angel and lend an ear." Sometimes we are the angels whom people have entertained unawares. But much as I'd like to soar and sweep in the sky, God has something better lined up for us. It's not to elevate ourselves, but to lift up the people who are being beaten down. And when we do that, when we trust in the Lord for that, then Isaiah (again) says that we will be raised up on wings like eagles. Or maybe angels.
God's trajectory is always into the mess and the dark, to help people find a way out and forward. That has to be our trajectory too. God's way is to wash feet and be alongside, and that has to be our way too. In that mess and in that darkness with a message of God who loved and came, a message of hope in even the dimmest and dullest and most hopeless situation… that's where we belong, and that's where we'll find ourselves lifted up by the simple joy of finding God alongside us as we're alongside someone else in need.
An angel going in the right direction.
Get down there, get in there, and be an angel. tell someone the hope we have.
Angels… pass it on.
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