Where there are Angels...

It's the Eve of Christmas, a night filled with anticipation and waiting.

And I'm beyond tired. I'm at the end of myself. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, as it's often when I come to the end of myself that I find so much more of God. But I am bone weary.

For the first time in my walk with Jesus I'm not going to make it to Midnight Communion tonight. For me it's a night that is normally filled with old friends and older words echoing in the candlelight, waiting for the strike of midnight, when Body broken and Blood shed will be shared - celebrating the bairn who grew into a man who lived in a way that was so outrageously full of grace that he had to be killed...but Love always wins.

Tonight will instead look like PJ's and ginger beer and a candle lit at midnight to celebrate light and life. And, this will be enough.

A couple of years ago I wrote a piece to be read as the framework for our Midnight Communion Service at Christ Church Purley. I thought I would share that here tonight.

It's spoken by an Angel, from their perspective - and it is written to be spoken word rather than read...but it still stands.

Angels we have heard on high.

Blessed Christmas Eve...

And so, we arrive at tonight.  A time of waiting, a time of watching, a time of anticipating.

Waiting is hard.  Humans seem to find it almost impossible.  For us angels, waiting has become something of an art form.  Not the inactive kind of waiting, you understand…more the kind of waiting in which you understand that the story needs to be told, and it needs be told in order, almost breathed into being, like a snowflake being born, crystallising, growing, becoming the thing of beauty it was destined to be.

More fragile than that though. 

When Father chose to give you all free will and invite you to participate in the story we knew that the infinite number of variables that threw up would mean that we never had a quiet moment again.

 We’ve been waiting you see, us angels.  Right from the dawn of creation when all the morning stars sang together, and we shouted for Joy. 

 We saw the sheer delight of the Father as he walked in the Garden with Eve and Adam in the cool of the day.  We knew His hopes and dreams for you all, the things he longed for, the plans He wanted you to join Him in.  We saw His heart leap as He called you His children, and we knew that from that moment onwards, there was nothing He wouldn’t give for you.

 We were there at that awful moment when the evil one, who had made such bad decisions in leaving the family of God, helped Adam and Eve to make equally bad decisions and eat from the fruit of the tree…

 Our hearts broke as we saw the tears of Father as He took an animal from His perfect creation and killed it so that he could use its skin, clothe them in their newly recognised nakedness and remove their shame. 

 The very first sacrifice, right there in the garden.

 And from that moment on, nothing was the same.

 As Father placed one of the cherubim at the gate of the Garden, never to let his children in again, we saw His heart break as He watched his creation leaving that place of perfection that He had crafted with His own hands, to wander in the rest of the land.

 And, boy, did that wandering continue.

 We met Hagar in the desert and ministered to her, speaking of Gods plans.  We went into Sodom & helped Lot to get out of that place, we cried out to Abraham from heaven, we entered into Jacobs dream – you know, the one with the ladder, and us going up and down and up and down…

 We travelled with the Israelites in the Desert, God sent us before them into the promised land to prepare the way, as He did so many times.  You wouldn’t believe how much ‘preparing of the way’ Father asks us to get up to. 

 We met Balaam on the road, and saw when God opened up the donkeys mouth and let him talk.  Now that was REALLY something. A talking Donkey. 

 We spoke to Gideon and told this scrap of a boy that the Lord was with Him, and that he was a mighty warrior.

We were there with King David and we saw his mistakes, and the mighty things He joined Father God in doing. 

 We fed Elijah when he got too tired to carry on.

 We fought for Daniel and closed the mouths of the lions in the Den.

 And the prophets, oh, the prophets.  The conversations that God asked us to have with those crazy, wild, amazing men.  If it weren’t written down in the word, you would never believe it. 

 Wild times indeed.

 We have stood with Father and seen Judges and Kings and Prophets come and go.

 And in all of this we waited, and we watched and we saw the Father at work, desperately giving His Children every chance possible to return to Him and the way He meant for it all to be in the beginning. 

 We saw Him hope as His people once more returned to His ways, and we saw His heart shatter every time they once more started wandering…

 And we were there at that moment, 9 months ago.

 That precious, priceless, beautiful, heart breaking, inspiring moment when the community of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – decided that now, now was the time…

 9 months…it’s a long time to wait.

 But here we are, on this night.

And we don’t have to wait much longer.

 We stand here on the eve of all things new.

The world is literally waiting with baited breath.

You may not be able to hear it, but it really is. 

 All of heaven is waiting.  All of creation knows that this night is going to change everything.

The community of God - Father, Son & Spirit - apart for the first time.

 When He, when they, told us the plan - that Jesus was literally going to come and inhabit and be amongst the Children of God, we had to catch our breath.  We knew that this was no new thought to Him, to them, and we saw that even in the midst of telling us there was a glimpse of sorrow mixed in with the joy. But that is another story to be told.

 The details of the plan emerged, and we loved the part that we were going to get to play in its telling.

 A wonderful woman called Elizabeth, who had not had children up until this point, was going to give birth to a child called John, who would be known as the Baptiser – someone who would follow in our line of work, and prepare the way for Jesus and His journey. 

 Gabriel got to go and tell Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband of the part that they would play in the story.  He made this beautiful speech – ‘I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news.’  I can still remember it now. 

 

A beautiful moment.

But what followed was even more precious.  Mary, a young girl, who SO loved Father, was going to be the one. The one who got to carry the Saviour, the one who got to nurse the creator of the heavens and earth. 

The maker of all things, whose hands flung the stars into space and whose voice raged over the waters, the one who spoke all things into being was going to become a child, a baby, and she was the one who would bear Him. 

Gabriel was sent again to give the message, and as He delivered it and spoke words that held such promise and hope and joy, we all waited to hear her response. 

 You could almost sense every angel in heaven and on earth leaning towards them, waiting to hear what came next.  And our hearts burst with joy as we heard Mary singing out her song to Father…’My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour, for He has been mindful of the humble state of His servant.’

 Beautiful, just beautiful.

 Father really did choose well.

 We reassured Joseph, Mary’s husband to be, through a dream, and spoke words of comfort to him.  This was no ordinary situation after all.

 And then, this time of waiting.

 Mary was the one who was pregnant, of course, but at the same time it felt like the whole of creation was pregnant - with hope, with anticipation, with barely held back joy at what was going to happen.

 And, 9 months on, we arrive at tonight.

 Mary & Joseph had a long journey into Bethlehem.  We were with them all the way, of course, whether they felt it or not.  Father wasn’t going to have them make that journey in any other way than with us surrounding them.

We saw the look on Mary’s face.  Tired, worn out, dusty from the journey.

 We saw the worry on Josephs face as he realised that there was no-where for them to stay. 

 Life becomes socially hard if you have a pregnant unwed fiancé.  People tend to not want to have you in the spare room.

 But, he found somewhere. 

Not what he would have hoped for, but something at least.

 I know that Joseph doesn’t realise it, but the fact that Jesus, the Word become flesh, will be born in the most humble of places, with nothing to His Name but His Name – the Name above all other Names – well, this fact will echo through the whole of the story that Father is telling.

 A story in which the lowest is raised to the highest, where the first will come last and the last will come first, whisperings of a revolution.

 And tonight, tonight those whisperings become a reality.

Mary is pushing, Joseph is encouraging, and the World is waiting.

 It’s nearly here.

He’s nearly here.

Can you feel it?  He’s doing a new thing.

Lean in…can you hear the whisperings of Hope?

 And so.

The night for which we have waited for so long is upon us. 

Creation can breathe once more.

There are shepherds to tell, songs to sing and stories to unfold…and now, I depart.

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through Him all things were made; without Him, nothing was made that has been made.  In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not put it out.

 The Word became flesh and made His dwelling amongst us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father. FULL of grace and truth.