Touched By an Angel's Face-Melting Gaze

As a kid, my image of angels was indelibly shaped by a few dubious sources. One was the hit television show Touched By an Angel, where the characters ranged from the almost unbearably sweet Roma Downey with her Irish lilt and eternal patience, to the wise, maternal sass of Mrs. Della Reece. Andrew, the Angel of Death, was a polite, well-dressed fellow with golden locks and a winning smile, and they all walked among us in the everyday, subtly setting right the wrongs of this world before the big finish, when the music swells and the light shines down on their heads and they break that shocking revelation: “I am an angel, sent by God.” Then there was Frank Capra’s dopey angel Clarence, who just wanted to earn his wings by showing George Bailey that it really is a Wonderful Life. And let’s not forget Raphael’s chubby cherubic children, who grace the imagination with innocuous Hallmark visions of cuteness and warmth.Now picture with me a spirit-being so imposing and terrible that every time one appears, even the most hardened of warriors falls on his knees, begging for mercy. Something so radiant with glory that even our most sainted apostles must be admonished not to worship them. Their opening line is almost always, “Fear not,” which is only the sort of thing you lead with if you actually are incredibly scary. As a 5’7” baby-faced Anglo-Irishman, I have never had to open with that line. Even when we discover that perhaps we have entertained them unawares, our knees grow weak at the thought that we were so close to such power, that we might have misstepped and forever reaped the consequences.My goal here is not really to get into accurate angelology and pop-culture versus Biblical witness, but I do hope you can begin to sense the tension. There is likely a wide gap between what we generally accept as our inherited picture of angels and what the shepherds actually experienced on the night of Our Lord’s nativity. I couldn’t have been more proud of my wayward little sheep and my radiant, annunciating angel as our girls performed their parts in the Sonshine program this past Wednesday night, decked out in their traditional children’s nativity garb next to the Slaughters’ live animals (not to be confused with live animals slaughtered!*). I love that we re-enact and retell this story every year in so many ways and with so many participants. That’s part of humanity’s liturgical calling – to tell the story over and again in fresh and illuminating ways. So this Sunday, as we return to the fields again, imagine with me the stone cold terror of a sky rent wide and an army of terrible supernatural warriors breaking into your drowsy night shift with an urgent message from the Sovereign Ruler of the cosmos. It was not a silent night!- Josh*Maybe at the Easter pageant. Ask Amy.