On Christmas morning, I’m writing about Easter Sunday. It’s odd. But it’s a good reminder that babies grow up. Even Baby Jesus.
Let’s look at angels. They kept telling people where Jesus was.
The night he was born, for example, an angel appeared to the shepherds and told them to head to town (Luke 2). The morning he came back to life, an angel appeared to two women and said that he wasn’t in the grave (Matthew 28).
Both times, the angels were in full dress, shining. Both times, they had to tell people not to be afraid. Both times, they had good news. One time it was new birth. The second time was rebirth. The first was a miracle, God putting on a human body. The second was a miracle, that human body coming back to life, for good.
What’s pretty interesting to me as I look at these two appearances of angels, is that they didn’t keep showing up. I mean, it was so effective with the shepherds. The angel said, “Go look” and the shepherds did. And with the women, the angel said “Go tell” and the women did.
It would be so easy to have angels appear all the time. It would be way more effective communication strategy for spreading good news than depending on people.
I, for example, have never had to say to someone “Don’t be afraid” when I started talking. I never have the same effect as angels.
But God seems to use angels as jumper cables or as pump-priming. Their directions to the shepherds and the women get things moving, redirect attention. From there on, we read, it’s the people that pick up the message. The shepherds told everyone. The women went running to tell the disciples.
Somehow, human voices mattered.
They do still.
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