Sermon – December 29 2024  Angels…                       Rev. Betsy Hogan
Have you ever seen an angel? It’s a loaded question, I know. Quite apart from the intellectual balancing of the literal and the metaphorical.

Because notwithstanding the angels that tend to gently sparkle and float over our nativity scenes, doing their heralding with white wings and white nightgowns…. most of us – if we consider whether we’ve ever seen an angel – are far more likely to muster up memories that instead evoke Abraham and Sarah, way back in the book of Genesis: who find themselves entertaining angels unawares.

So that from the unexpected kindness of strangers, to the ‘just at the moment when we need it most’ kindness of friends, to the sudden glimpse of beautiful out of the corner of our eye, to the revelations that shimmer themselves out of the absolutely ordinary – we might well, each of us, be able to say with some certainty that yes. We have seen angels.

There have been… bearers of good tidings. Gentle touches from beyond the veil. Messengers of grace. 

They just haven’t “looked like angels”. Which is funny, of course, because mostly what we think of when we think of what a Christmas angel looks like, they don’t actually “look like angels” either – at least not compared to how angels get described in various parts of the Bible.

Because angels in the Bible actually run the gamut. From beings who are covered in wings – six pairs! Covered in faces, covered in eyes, sparkling like topaz, wheels intersecting with wheels, all covered in eyes! --

To beings that are apparently more or less human-looking. Or at least that’s what we can probably assume, since there’s no mention of their being covered in eyes.

But there’s also no particular mention of just one nice picturesque set of wings. Or white nightgowns. Or even a heavenly glow. So we don’t really know what the angels looked like, who turn up in our Biblical stories of Christmas and in all our Christmas carols. 

We don’t really know HOW they presented themselves to Mary and Joseph and the Shepherds in fields abiding… we only know that they did.

They showed up. They brought messages. They reassured. They offered guidance. 

They helped. When everything was strange and new and uncertain and slightly chaotic, the angels in our Christmas stories helped. They got Mary and Joseph through the pregnancy via conversations awake and in dreams, they landed the shepherds in Bethlehem to greet the newborn child…

And they ARE shortly going to help again…. when Herod’s pathetic fury unleashes a massacre of innocents. They WILL turn up again… Joseph and Mary won’t otherwise know that they have to flee.

So they ARE shortly going to appear again, the angels… with their messages and their reassurance and their guidance and their help.

But this week? Not so much. This is just Baby’s First Week. 

Everyone’s tired. No one’s really sure what day it is. Mary’s exhausted and aching and trying to feed. Meals are happening at really strange times, visitors in and out. But it’s Baby’s First Week and there are rituals to observe. So precisely at the point when probably the actual last thing they feel like doing is getting up and getting properly dressed and going out and dealing with the world….

It’s time for Baby Jesus to be presented at the temple in Jerusalem, for his circumcision and blessing. The story from Luke’s gospel that Heather read for us earlier. 

There’s nothing like a ten kilometre walk through the desert with a newborn, a week after you’ve given birth. And not an angel in sight, to maybe take the edge off. Or at least give Mary and Joseph some insight into HOW this promise they now hold in their arms is meant to unfold.

Until… Into the sheer exhaustion and anxiety and emotion of not just this new baby but also the meaning of his birth -- come Anna and Simeon.

And do they look like angels? They very much do not. They look like exactly what they are, which is just really really old. Faithful, hopeful, tired, waiting, old. 

Old enough, in fact, to have been faithful and hopeful and tired and waiting for a very very long time. Through times of peace and terrible war – a Roman invasion and significant oppression – plentiful harvests and periods of drought -- Herod as a puppet king, and a calm secured by fear –

Anna and Simeon have seen times that were bright and times that were really not so bright; they’ve seen good and life-giving and bad and devastating. Anna and Simeon have seen it all, and they know.

Whatever upheaval, whatever uncertainty, whatever fear or despair may threaten to overwhelm, what Anna and Simeon have is perspective. The arc of history is long but it bends toward justice. It bends toward peace. It bends toward Godness and goodness.

And so do they. Anna and Simeon. Prophet and Elder in the temple two thousand years ago. They bend literally toward the infant Jesus as he’s brought into the temple for his eight-days blessing, because in him they recognize precisely that Godness and goodness that always prevails. That is always a reason to hope. That is and ever shall be defiantly unwilling to concede the field completely to whatever ugly deconstruction of justice and peace we as a human family can get up to.

The arc of history bends toward Godness and goodness, and so do Anna and Simeon. And it is not an accident that Anna and Simeon are very very old – it’s actually the most important part of the story.

Because it reminds us that Anna and Simeon have seen it all before. Up, down, bad, good. It reminds us that Anna and Simeon’s capacity not simply to pray very hard but to defiantly hope – as an entirely rational exercise, with confidence and on a firm foundation – isn’t in them despite whatever chaos and crazy might be going on around them, but it’s actually within whatever chaos and crazy is going on around them.

Because beset fore and aft though the light may have been, the light may be, the light hasn’t been, the light is not, extinguished. It just isn’t. Anna and Simeon have seen it all before, but the light abides.

And that’s what Anna and Simeon bear witness to, it’s what they embody, as the angels of Baby’s First Week. What they bring to Mary and Joseph, and to us, in this moment in the temple, is the gift and wisdom and guidance of perspective. 

And perspective matters. Yes, the passion of youth who imagine their cries for justice have never been cried before, as Mary sang out her Magnificat as though it wasn’t in fact prefigured in the words of the prophets written on every subway wall – and in the Older Testament – for the entire millennium prior –

But in Anna and Simeon, the perspective of age. The bearing witness to those cries that have gone before. To the foundation they laid down on which the passion of youth now takes root. To the incremental changes they wrought in their time, the lessons they learned, the wisdom they gained. 

NOT because they somehow need to take credit – but as guidance and wisdom that guards against despair. 

Anna and Simeon bring the perspective that matters, bearing witness to the reality that good and bad have always happened, in an ongoing and unchanging cycle – but also to the conviction that it’s NOT just a round and round cycle but an arc of history that bends toward justice. Toward Godness and goodness. It’s not just the perspective of age. It’s the perspective of faith.

Because remember, in that moment, as the story we heard from Luke’s gospel begins: Anna and Simeon arrive in the temple that day not knowing that today’s the day that the infant Jesus will turn up with Mary and Joseph for his presentation ritual. They arrive in the temple that day as they have every other day. 

With their decades of perspective on the world as it really is – but also with their faith perspective that God is. That Love is. That Goodness is. That these are powerful and unchanging and they prevail. 

Anna and Simeon are resolute in their faith perspective. There’s no WAY it hasn’t been tested – they’re really old! They have lived long lives and there is no way a long life gets lived without moments and days and even great blocks of time when one’s faith feels seriously tested.

But being resolute in faith doesn’t mean never faltering. It means when there IS faltering, we crawl back to it. And claim it afresh. Maybe even defiantly. Hopefully, energetically, intentionally. Facing reality with hard-won confidence that there can be better, that there can be justice, that there can be peace, that what IS, is in the hands of God, and Godness is goodness. 

What Anna and Simeon embody as the angels of Baby’s First Week, in effect, is living with resolution. That our perspective on this world will be a perspective in which God is present and real and at work in the world, and Godness is goodness.

So that what we see, what we locate, what we call out, what we embrace and lift up and participate in, is that goodness. We know what we’re meant for. We’re meant for caring and generosity and forgiveness and encouragement and unconditional love and support for those who are most vulnerable. We know these things.

And like all good angels, Anna and Simeon are just there to help. To remind Mary and Joseph, to remind us to live the goodness with resolution. Because the arc of history does bend toward justice. And with God all things are possible. Amen.