December 9, 2024

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The inclusion of angels throughout the biblical narrative is evidence of this, and the season of Advent can help us to reclaim the place these enchanted beings hold in our faith. Angels saturate the Christmas story and are seen as extensions of God’s indwelling presence. Angels, not humans, were first to announce the good news of Christ’s birth. And their proclamation was made to poor shepherds, not the wealthy and powerful elite. In the Bible, angels were seen as help from heaven (Psalm 91:11-12).

If you’ve ever received insight into a problem, felt oddly protected from harm, or sensed a vague spiritual nudge toward a specific direction, maybe the Lord’s angelic emissaries were at work and you were unaware.

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Angels We Ignore On High

Tish Harrison Warren, guest writer

In her book Walking on Water, the great writer Madeleine L’Engle observed, “We lose our ability to see angels as we grow up.” By this, she meant we live in a culture that encourages us to suppress our imaginations as we age. We do this in the name of cultural sophistication. We think it is charming to believe in (and claim to see) angels as little children. But as we grow, we are encouraged to put this enchanted nonsense behind us.

For all the gifts of the Enlightenment, its greatest liability was limiting any possibilities beyond what we can see through a microscope. Jesus once said that adults would do well to become like children if they are to enter the kingdom (Matt. 18:3). Maybe Jesus wasn’t talking about a future kingdom that will one day manifest but the kingdom that is now in our midst, which most adults no longer have eyes to see.

No wonder God sent Gabriel to a young girl (Luke 1:26–38)—a virgin would believe and receive the angel’s good news. Notice that when Gabriel visited the religious old man named Zechariah, he had a more difficult time believing and receiving the good news (vv. 11–20). As we age, we can lose our ability to spiritually see. We can close our souls to everything that cannot be scientifically explained. For instance, if an angel visited you today (in a dream or in a stranger or in a vision), would you be open to believing? Or would you explain it away?

From Genesis to Revelation, angels saturate the biblical narrative. Gabriel’s angelic presence on earth was not an outlier but perhaps the unseen norm made manifest. According to the Scriptures, angels could be anywhere. And in the Bible, we see them everywhere.

In the story of Abraham, angels became his guests (Gen. 18:2). Jacob wrestled with an angel all night (32:24). Through an angel, Daniel was given political wisdom (Dan. 10:10–14). John the Revelator fell prostrate after an angel visited him on the island of Patmos (Rev. 1:1). Angels gave directions to lowly shepherds under the evening sky (Luke 2:8–9). Angels ministered to Jesus in the desert after he vanquished Satan, an angel of darkness (Matt. 4:11).

Jesus said he could have called more than twelve legions of angels to his aid on the cross if he so desired (Matt. 26:53). And, of course, there is the mysterious line in the Book of Hebrews that encourages all of us to practice hospitality because those we serve may, in fact, be angels (Heb. 13:2).

In Matthew’s gospel alone, angels appear through dreams at least six times (1:20; 2:12, 13, 19, 22; 27:19). How profound that angels spoke not only to Jewish men such as Joseph but also, perhaps, to pagan women such as Pilate’s wife! God is everywhere (including in our sleep) and is desirous to speak with anyone open to listening, even those who are outside the faith.

A plain reading of Scripture reveals that angels fill the whole earth. As L’Engle reflects,

All the angelic host as they are described in Scripture, have a wild and radiant power that often takes us by surprise. They are not always gentle. They bar the entrance to Eden so that we may never return home. They send plagues upon the Egyptians. They are messengers of God. They are winds. They are flames of fire. They are young men dressed in white.

Perhaps it’s God’s provision that we are not yet fully aware of his omnipresence. Maybe, like with Wi-Fi, the overall input would crush us in our current physical state. When Gabriel appeared to the prophet Daniel while he was in a deep sleep, Daniel was terrified and afterward was “worn out [and] lay exhausted for several days” (8:27). It is no wonder that a glimpse of Gabriel sent shivers up Mary’s spine!

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Glory in the Eyes of the Shepherds

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Not only do angels speak to humans, but also what their listeners choose to do with their instruction bears tremendous impact on our lives.

Consider the similarities and differences between Gabriel’s visits with Zechariah and his ones with Mary, for instance. After Gabriel spoke, both Zechariah and Mary asked follow-up questions. We should never interpret from Scripture that God is opposed to our questions. He knows we are finite beings. He is, however, opposed to a posture of narrow-mindedness. When we limit the possibilities of God’s revelation, our hearts close in.

Recall how Zechariah was silenced after he responded in unbelief to Gabriel’s prophesy about his aging wife Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist. Yet we might not see this as a punishment so much as an invitation for him to be still and open to new possibilities—his nine-month silencing was meant to expand his capacity for spiritual imagination. Mary, in stark contrast, immediately replied to Gabriel in a posture of openness: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38, ESV).

In short, to believe the Bible is to believe in angels. Sorry, secular humanism, but the world is enchanted with divine presence, chock-full of God stuff. Just as Jacob’s ladder found angels ascending and descending (Gen. 28:12), the realms of the heavens and of earth intricately overlap.

Do we live as if this is true? I don’t. I could rightfully be accused of living as if the world were devoid of divine presence and angelic activity. We occasionally hear testimonies of spiritual visitations, God moments, or the Holy Spirit moving in a worship gathering. But experiencing God’s presence occasionally on earth is not the biblical worldview.

The writer of Hebrews means to encourage us with the fact that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (that is, dead saints; see 12:1). So why not angels too? Maybe angels surround us every second of the day but exist in other frequencies or hidden dimensions just beyond our noticing. Angels are like ladders from God, connecting heaven and earth, and we should always live with the possibility of their presence in mind.

The possibility of enchantment might explain why fantasy authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and J. K. Rowling grip us with their stories. Even some of the staunchest of atheists long to believe that there is more to the world than meets the eye. I think most people would like to believe that earth’s atmosphere is permeated with a presence greater than us.

The truth is, we inhabit a God-saturated earth. One of the divine names is Immanuel, meaning that God is with us. Despite the way we may feel at times, we have never been alone, we never are, and we never will be. God’s presence saturates the entire cosmos. Yet what Jacob said is true for us: The Lord is here, and we are often unaware. How might an increase of spiritual awareness to the presence of God—through angels or otherwise—affect our daily lives? Perhaps we, too, (like Mary) might become full of God’s empowering grace if our posture became that of surrendered servants.

In this spirit, perhaps Christians might add one additional verse to the iconic song of the late and great Louis Armstrong:

I see angels sing,
Miracles too.
The earth is imbued
And being renewed.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.

What a wonderful, enchanted world, indeed!

Adapted from Rediscovering Christmas by AJ Sherrill. Copyright © 2024 by AJ Sherrill. Published by WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC. Used by permission. ISBN: 9780593445532. Excerpted from pages 83-94.

AJ Sherrill is the pastor of Saint Peter’s Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and also teaches doctoral courses on preaching and the Enneagram at Fuller Theological Seminary.

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I believe the church calendar is something like that.

Every Advent I find myself stepping into a new place in the river. This is the slow and winding journey of character formation—which happens to be one of the primary strategies the church has historically employed to grow her people up into the image of Jesus. This incremental formation is designed to occur over the course of a lifetime as we are shaped by the story of the gospel.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters have rhythms too. Some we have followed, many we have (sadly) left behind. One of their rhythms is to debate the Pentateuch each week before attending the Saturday Sabbath service. They finish at the end of their calendar year, and then immediately start all over again. So seven years ago I decided to join one.

Every Saturday morning I’d walk to the local Reformed Synagogue and politely listen as they hashed out Torah in community. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—line after line, week after week—for the whole year. The experience was unforgettable. The theological imagination, the narrative creativity and the layers of understanding made my local Bible study feel like an afternoon round of bingo at a local retirement home. After six months I summoned the courage to ask a question. Engaging the elderly woman to my left, I wondered,

“Mam, how do all of you know so much?”

She replied, “Son, most of us have been chewing on these texts for over fifty years!”

But isn’t the Church calendar limited? Doesn’t it feel constricting to teach to the same story year after year?

Boundaries bring freedom

Mako Fujimura asserts that an artist learns very early that creativity demands boundaries and limits to thrive.

Contemporary art has sought to expand the borders of expression, claiming unlimited expansion for the sake of freedom of expression, often using shock as a means to draw attention to herself, and blatantly challenging boundary making. Freedom of expression, then, became an overriding goal, and any boundary making would be seen as anti-freedom, and anti-art. And as a result, we have dehumanized ourselves in our obsessive focus on self-expression. What if we considered limitations as the beginning of our creative acts? Then, paradoxically, we may see beyond them. Limitations can be a catalyst to find freedom. That is what the Incarnation of Christ teaches us. Following Christ is also to recognize and honor the limits and boundaries of being human; less is more.

Like Mako in art, I have come to find a freedom in boundaries pertaining to following and preaching the Church calendar.

Following the Church calendar year after year is simply the spiritual discipline of narrative recall. We are like spiritual amnesiacs, often forgetting who God says we are before lunch.

In the Scriptures, the command to “remember” as a spiritual practice occurs at minimum 219 times. I’d call that emphatic. Therefore, living (and preaching) the calendar over the course of every year, the Church learns the movement of God toward and through creation.

But if God has a movement toward creation that we are called to remember, what is that rhythm? The calendar is one of the ways to best comprehend God’s activity in creation. In short, it is among the best discipling tools to be formed by the shape of the gospel. God’s relation to creation, which the calendar annually guides us into, is prepositional.

What do I mean by this? A preposition is defined as “governing word preceding a noun/pronoun and expressing a relation to another element in the clause.” In other words, first and foremost, God is relationship; God is expressive. The God who is is also the God who reveals relationally.

We find God’s movement toward creation best articulated though the story that the Church calendar re-enacts. Consider four movements:

Movement 1) Over and against deism, Advent through Epiphany reminds us that God is with us.

Movement 2) Over and against an angry God, Lent through Easter instills within that God is for us.

Movement 3) Eastertide through Pentecost is the signpost that God is in us. The Spirit of the Risen Christ indwells the Church, making her holy.

Movement 4) Finally we enter into Ordinary time, which makes up more than half the calendar year. But make no mistake, Ordinary time is anything but ordinary by the world’s standards. This time of the year is the promise that God works through us.

Think about it: a theology of the ordinary is no ordinary theology. After all, isn’t this where we learn the sacramental nature of all things? More often than not, God has chosen to move through ordinary elements like bread and wine, water, flesh, and nature to bring about the fruit of the Kingdom.

Faithful is greater than novel

By living the boundaries of the calendar year, we enter into the freedom. Simply put, we trust that the Spirit of God will move through the arc of the story to bring about transformation.

It was winter of 2006. I was 24 years old pastoring a young adults community that had grown to average 1000 congregants on a Sunday. Without a clue as to what I was doing, it became obvious to me that we had succumbed to the self-imposed pressure of needing more innovative and clever preaching series. This meant more thematic videos, which meant trendier graphics, and so on. Within a year of planting the community I was exhausted.

In the freneticism of that season, my path crossed with a young Anglican church planter who pastored a similar demographic in another city. Toward the beginning of our conversation I asked him how he designed the preaching series' throughout the year. I’ve never recovered from his response (in truth I never plan to). He said, “Years ago, I grew weary of funneling the best of my creative efforts into coming up with preaching series’ month after month. Now I just teach the calendar, follow the story, and allow God to be the creative One in our Church…”

For years I bought into the illusion of novelty. Since then I’ve discovered the transformation of human souls lies more in the pursuit of being faithful than being novel. To follow and preach the Church calendar is an act of trust—trusting that the story that got us here is the same story we should faithfully pass on to the next generation. By participation in the sacred year of the Lord we become part of what we celebrate, and it slowly but surely becomes a part of us.

Aren’t boundaries liberating? Isn't the pursuit of faithfulness superior to novelty? Isn’t following tradition beautiful? The Austrian composer, Gustav Mahler, said it best: “Tradition is not to preserve the ashes but to pass on the flame.”

Appendix for preachers

Consider how Trinity Grace Church in Manhattan is utilizing the calendar for preaching series in 2014-2015:

*Note: This chart does not detail special services such as Christmas Day, Christmas Tide, Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Ascension Sunday, and so on. On those days churches at Trinity Grace typically preach one of the lectionary readings.

AJ Sherrill is pastor of Trinity Grace Church in Manhattan, New York.

Copyright © 2015 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

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The woman had long since jettisoned any semblance of faith. And so the email Ellen sent to us concluded:

People are the hinges that swing wide the doors of cultural change.

"Would you prayerfully consider joining me in raising $5,000 for this woman over the next 48 hours? I think that showing radical generosity in the name of Jesus will be a powerful display of God's heart towards her in this time. May God's mercy be released over her life through this."

It was a big ask, and for the first time in a while, Ellen felt her faith inform her work. She was beginning to discern where God was on Monday.

Manhattan

The Lenape Native Americans called it Manna-hata. What once meant "island of many hills" was repurposed into a level, concrete plain of labor. With vacancy rates hovering at a low 2.8 percent and subways jammed, Manhattan is where people come to work.

When moving here a few years ago, I was haunted by the prospect of gathering a church amidst a society of compelling options. I mean, who would really seek out faith on Sunday in the home of Broadway, Lincoln Center, and Shake Shack? It occurred to me very early that if my ministry did not equip the congregation for the other six days of the week, we simply would not be around for the long haul. And this was no shift of accommodation, but essential to having a biblical witness in a post-agrarian, pro-industry, post-Christian era.

As pastors, we would do well to heed the question of Dorothy Sayers: "How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life?" Any religion with little concern about the coalescence of faith and work must derive from a different book than the Bible. The Bible begins with a God at work who quickly, it seems, commissions humans to join in and take the narrative forward. As pastors, are we equipping the congregation for the other "nine-tenths"? Or are we overly concentrated with pulling off one hour a week on Sunday morning?

We've never had more tools for this topic than we do today. We stand on shoulders from the recent past such as Abraham Kuyper, the 20th-century Dutch journalist, theologian, and politician. His famous proclamation, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine!" is the reminder that should resound in the ears of every Christian in the work force.

More recently, we have helpful guides in scholars such as Richard Mouw, Steven Garber, and Miroslav Volf; pastors such as Tim Keller, Jon Tyson, and David Kim; writers such as Dorothy Sayers, Gabe Lyons, and Skye Jethani. And there are dozens of others doing important work and creating excellent resources on this topic.

Yet despite these significant voices, does the average congregation grasp even the essentials to create a richer vocational imagination? I suggest these essentials lie in understanding the following questions:

Identity: Who has God called us to be?

Two significant obstacles stand in the way of advancing faith at work for our congregations. The first is that far too many are over-identified with their work. In other words they view work as the context to achieve identity rather than express identity. When our identities are not settled in Christ, we subconsciously put them up for negotiation—and that negotiation is usually based on our "success" or "failure" we experience in the marketplace. Am I good enough? Is my future secure?

There are few environments that bring together so many disparate people for a unified purpose than the church.

But what we search for most through work is already ours in Christ. To be sure, there is a place for these internal conversations, but when they become driving obsessions, our identities hang in the balance. When the work of Christ ceases to be our grounding, we grab onto whatever we can as forces of meaning. And the word for this is bondage. Until Christians in the work force find freedom from over-identification, they will only view work as meaning, while never getting around to approaching work as mission. This is where our church ministries can help disentangle them from that illusion.

The second obstacle we must come to terms with is that most congregations are under-empowered. In churches where the staff oversee all the ministry, it is no wonder that congregations feel spiritually paralyzed at the office. Many feel they have never been released and resourced to effectively make disciples beyond Sunday.

Outside of sporting events, entertainment gatherings, and the DMV, there are few environments that bring together so many disparate people for a unified purpose than the church. In any given congregation, there are representatives of each major industry present. In our church context, we create salons throughout the week by pairing a lay member up with a pastor to facilitate discussions on various industry specific issues. The salons allow the congregation to reimagine their particular industries in light of biblical truth. The pastoral presence helps guide the conversation theologically, while a designated lay member leads the conversation pragmatically.

More often than not, this produces robust discussions and naturally leads to intercessory prayer. From there we often hear accounts of the Holy Spirit inspiring new ideas, initiatives, and innovations. It is then up to the members to remain accountable and continue to meet at their discretion.

Shifting our congregations from the posture of occupational over-identification to security in Christ, and from feeling under-empowered to the place of vocational commission is a necessary first step. As the Franciscan, Richard Rohr, once said, "When you get your 'Who am I?' question right, all the 'What should I do?' questions (begin to) take care of themselves."

Equipping: What must the congregation know?

The first thing we want our congregations to know is that as much as they may care about their industries, God cares even more than they do. This is inspiring. Paul writes that creation itself longs for the revealing of the children of God (Rom. 8:19ff). And this revealing isn't arbitrary. It carries with it the expectation that we, as God's image bearers, will finally receive our call to steward the earth as God intended.

Faith at work is relational (people-centric,evangelistic) before it is structural (equal pay,good work conditions).

Second, we want our congregations to know faith at work is relational (people-centric, evangelistic) before it is structural (equal pay, good work conditions). We often pursue structural renewal with little regard for relational transformation. I often hear zealous pastors with good intentions use the language of "industry renewal," but few articulate what this would actually look like. Furthermore, much of the renewal insight offered is applicable only to the top tier of the workforce who sit in positions of significant structural influence. In this framework, most congregations in the work force wrongfully conclude joining God in cultural transformation as both elitist and unattainable.

What we find at the heart of every industry (including the tech industry) are people. And people are the hinges that swing wide the doors of cultural change. Cultural transformation begins internally, within the hearts of people, and then manifests externally into society. The simple fact is that renewed people renew industries. Therefore, reclaiming winsome evangelism as a part of cultural renewal is vital to the whole.

Now, at this point you might argue, "And are you suggesting that coworkers must become Christian before common good such as fair wages and gender equality can be pursued?" No, but let's not forget that the Bible teaches us that in the future every knee will bow. I am suggesting the road to human flourishing is holistic, and in our time evangelism has been omitted as an imperative in the work place. In fact, it is usually the last thing Christians get around to, if they get around to it at all. Furthermore, when the Spirit of God dwells in the hearts of people, equality, reconciliation, and flourishing work conditions becomes more plausible.

Many in the Western church have forgotten that, through the power of the Spirit's work, we are God's design for cultural transformation. For some mysterious reason, God has always empowered broken yet redeemed people to renew society. I'm not convinced many congregations in America believe Jesus was talking to them (and not just clergy) when uttering the Great Commission.

Here is where this gets difficult. Because faith at work is highly relational, our congregations must know that being faithful precedes being fruitful. In a post-agrarian context, this a hard truth to swallow. We expect instant fruit. And if we don't see it in our timeline, then we think something must be wrong.

"Lord, save me from spectacular," Henri Nouwen cried. Many have heard inspiring testimonies such as New York's Businessmen's Revival or tales of the Clapham Sect. These capture the potential of what God can do. Yet my fear is that most struggle to reconcile their ordinary work experiences with the spectacular stories they hear. So they don't do anything. They learn of the glorious movements in times past, and disqualify themselves based on their mundane everyday lives. Few recall that the Businessmen's Revival began with just six people who showed up (late, I might add) to pray for the marketplace. And they forget the entire Roman Empire was brought to its knees in the fourth century because of the faithfulness of a few praying in an upper room in the first century.

'Lord, save me from spectacular," Henri Nouwen cried.

Every spectacular moment in the kingdom is preceded by days, months, and even years of faithful sowing. Beauty is only made manifest after much toil. The farmer spends months attending carefully to the field before expecting a harvest. It is no different with cultural renewal. If all we are after is the spectacular, we will neglect the ordinary moments to sow the necessary relational seed that makes the harvest possible.

Action: What should the congregation do?

Ten years ago Elaina, my wife, landed her dream job in New York. While working at an architecture firm on Wall Street, at times her team labored 16-hour days to make their deadlines. As the only Christian in the office, it felt peculiar to her that she was the one her coworkers confided in when life crises arose. I like to think of her as the Brother Lawrence of the interior design industry.

These crisis moments opened doors for her to share the gospel as the solution to whatever they were facing. Years later, she crystalized why they entrusted her with their darkest moments in three words: Grumbling, Gossip, and Glory.

She explains, "In some ways, being light has never been easier." Elaina had resolved to never grumble to her coworkers about the work load, to refuse to partake in office gossip, and to commit to vocational excellence in every project, believing excellence glorifies God. Over time, redemptive moments naturally surfaced when sowing these three values in the workplace. She believes when we commit to these ways, over time people view us as trustworthy and our truth claims become credible. It is in that moment when cultural transformation becomes possible at every level.

This isn't spectacular. But it's faithful. And being faithful is always the foundation of spectacular.

In response to Ellen's plea for a few of us to join in resolving her coworker's plight, within two days she arrived to work carrying a sealed envelope. Laying it on her coworker's desk, Ellen informed the woman that there were a few folks at church who believed in her comeback. Later that day Ellen sent an email to those who supported the cause. It read:

Being faithful is always the foundation of spectacular.

"So thankful to share the story of today with you. I wrote a letter to her this morning, and put the full amount in the envelope. I wrote of grace being a free gift, that she is indebted to no one, and that all who gave did so out of the belief that they've received that same but infinitely greater gift of grace from God. When she came in and read the letter, she called me to her office and embraced me weeping. She said she'd never received unconditional help before, and that it was the most profound thing she's experienced. 'Thank God, thank God,' she kept saying. She is now able to stay in her apartment. She has a promising job interview next week.

"Later in the day, another coworker came to me with tears in her eyes and hugged me. The woman had told her what transpired, and said, 'Not only have you changed her life, but you've revived my faith as well.' Just last night she had told her husband that she felt her faith in Jesus was dead. She said that in all her life she had never seen such a thing, and it reminded her of truth."

We are attracted to stories of hope like these because of the conclusion. Yet we only get to the spectacular ending by starting with a routine, relational beginning.

For 10 months Ellen simply showed up to work, her ordinary job, with an ordinary team. And at the right time, it was appropriate to move out in faith to display the grace of God. It is the simple, mundane moments which create bridges of trust that change the world. Renewed people renew culture.

As we equip our congregations for faith at work, perhaps the question isn't "Where is God on Monday?" Maybe, instead, we should wonder, "Where isn't God on Monday?"

AJ Sherrill is pastor of Trinity Grace Church in Manhattan, New York.

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

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