In this month’s birth story of Jesus the
Great Healer and in next month’s Epiphany story of the Magi, we get angels. A
lot of them. From all of the incidents in these two stories, it is clear that
angels interrupted to either announce a new trajectory or to change a certain
trajectory. Either way—interruption.
Let’s look at the incidents:
Joseph,
engaged to Mary, finds out she’s pregnant and plans to dismiss her quietly rather
than publicly shame her. “But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel
appeared to him in a dream and told him, ‘Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your
wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Spirit…’”
The
angel Gabriel appears to the elderly, childless Zechariah to announce that his barren
elderly wife will bear a son, John. (John later paved the way for his cousin Jesus’
ministry.)
The
angel Gabriel also appears to Mary and tells her about her miraculous pregnancy.
An
angel appeared to shepherds in their fields and then a multitude of angels
announced Jesus’ birth to them.
In
the Epiphany story, the Magi set off alarms for King Herod the so-called Great
who was threatened that they had come to find a “newborn King.” After the magi
visited Jesus and then left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream
and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain
there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy
him.”
Then
when Herod dies, another angel appears to Joseph in Egypt, “Get up, take the
child and his mother and go back to Israel.”
Joseph
was warned again in a dream (by an angel presumably) to go to Galilee rather
than Judea.
Many,
many interruptions by angels! The
biblical stories of angels are often dismissed as myth. However, I know from
the stories I’ve heard privately and the ones I’ve read about, that angels have
interrupted many modern people’s lives. One story I love comes from a friend
whose neighbor’s house caught on fire. The little children who had been
upstairs in their bedrooms on the 2nd floor were found standing on
the lawn, completely unharmed. The children said they were rescued from a second
story window by “a really tall guy who reached up and pulled them out and put
them on the ground.” There, of course, was no one around.
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