I don’t know about you, but I find that the beloved nativity story from Luke is so familiar to my ears that I have a hard time really hearing it. How many of us, like Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas, could rattle off this narrative from memory? It can begin to feel a bit like a lullaby, a sentimental bedtime story. In reality, though, this tale is anything but sleep-inducing. It may ultimately bring comfort, yet it is also surprising and subversive. Tonight, my attention is drawn both to the messengers in this story and to the message they proclaim.  

Have you heard of “biblically accurate angels?” The AP reported the back-story of this social media phenomenon:

It was during the pandemic when the Rev. Kira Austin-Young and her puppet-maker husband, Michael Schupbach, were going a little stir-crazy that they came up with the idea. Instead of a star or some stylized humanoid angel to top their Christmas tree, why not create a biblically accurate angel? The result was a pink, blue and gold-feathered creature with six wings and dozens of eyes that went a little bit viral.^[1]

The word “angel” in Greek, angelos, simply means “messenger.” And I love the way the poets portray God’s angel messengers. Lucille Clifton insists that angels are wingless, that they are in fact ordinary people who wear their own clothes. What sets them apart is their love for us. And Jan Richardson imagines the angel Thelma as a protector and provoker, who fiercely coaches us through the pangs of birthing. In the Bible, the appearance of an angel almost always evokes terror. And yet a standard angelic greeting is “fear not.” In other words, when a messenger of the holy one breaks into our lives it is unsettling. And yet, the presence of the divine stirs in us something more like awe: a new openness that can release us from the constriction of fear and fill us, instead, with the expansiveness of love. We hear all this in the words of the angel, shining glory in the fields of the shepherds: “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.”

“Peace on earth” is a benign sounding message when written on a greeting card. Consider, though, the Gospel-writer Luke’s assertion that the peace of God is actually a force that will rearrange the world as we know it. Notice that one “angel of the Lord” is quickly replaced by “a multitude of the heavenly host.” This singing-angel army represents a direct challenge to the armies of Rome. The whole story in fact draws a contrast between the ways of the emperor and the ways of God. Augustus registers the world for the purposes of taxation and conscription. He rules by fear and violence; he takes with greed; he believes himself divine; and, to him, divinity is power-over, might makes right. By contrast, the real God arrives as a peasant child, born into a family without shelter, wrapped in torn rags, sleeping in an animal-feeding trough, heralded by lowly working men. In other words, the peace of God ushered into the world by the birth of this holy child is a power of a completely different quality than that of the Pax Romana. 

The message of this night, the astonishing proclamation communicated through the song of the angels, witnessed by the shepherds and pondered deep in the heart of Mary—is that God brings peace to the earth through holy vulnerability. Surely our fear is real, and there is much to fear. Many of us fear what is coming for our country. We fear the new dangers we will face. We fear the hard choices we may have to make. We fear the effects of toxic polarization. We fear chaos and violence. We fear the future our descendants will inherit.

And yet God’s messengers declare “peace on earth.” The holy child, born among us this night, beckons us to uncurl ourselves, to release our bodies and hearts from the constriction of fear, to give ourselves instead to the expansiveness of a love that is wide enough and deep enough to encompass us all. In the midst of fear, choosing openness instead of self-protection is counterintuitive, and it is also incredibly powerful. We can emulate God’s giving of God’s self to the world in holy vulnerability. And yet it is not safe for us to do this work alone. We need each other; we need community.  

Embracing holy vulnerability might look like: resisting the seductive pull of sensationalized news and polarizing social media content; choosing a posture of curiosity when confronted with a person who holds an opposing view; fostering a capacity to imagine new possibilities; using humor to diffuse tension; embodying values of justice and inclusion despite possible consequences; sharing the truth of our pain; allowing the harder experiences of our lives to serve as points of connection rather than reasons for alienation. 

I’m not sure Charles Shultz is the greatest theologian who ever lived, and yet I think his little film really does convey something about the true meaning of Christmas. It’s not so much in Linus’ impressive recitation of Luke’s Gospel, as it is in Charlie Brown’s search for love, respect and belonging. Charlie, ever the screw-up, was sent out to find a Christmas tree for the Christmas play. He couldn’t resist selecting the one scrawny live tree, with drooping needles, amid a field of glamorous, glistening artificial trees. He endured merciless heckling and deep self-doubt until eventually his community came to see the beauty and power inherent in this little, vulnerable tree. My friends, even as emperors of this world seek to conscript us into their fearsome armies, let us open ourselves to awe-inspiring love embodied in God’s force of peace—God’s ragtag band of angels and shepherds, unhoused families and newborn babies. Let us emulate the baby in the manger, who shows us, with his very being, how to heal the world through the power of holy vulnerability. Amen.

^[1] https://apnews.com/article/christmas-tree-toppers-biblically-accurate-angels-48d36bc871cfbfe5802afa5179ad349e