The Singing of the Angels

"There must be always remaining in every one’s life some place for the singing of angels. . . ." -Howard Thurman

Let me say at the outset that I do not believe in angels, other than the ones who come with human hearts, with human hands and human feet. Those, I know, exist, and sometimes they even take flight, for I have met them and I have rested in the shelter of their wings,--metaphorically speaking, of course.

Most of you have heard me speak enough to know that I do not read the stories of Jesus’ birth as literal accounts. Most biblical scholars agree that these accounts are not factual. They are fictions, created mainly to legitimize what people already believed about Jesus Christ.

We actually know next to nothing about Jesus’ birth, the where or precisely the when, except for the certainty that it took place, except for the likelihood that it happened somewhere in the region of Nazareth, possibly in a town called Bethlehem (though not the Bethlehem that is actually celebrated as the place of his birth). We know almost nothing of Jesus’ real family, except that he undoubtedly had one, that he likely had brothers and sisters (since they are mentioned in the New Testament), and that he was probably not well appreciated by them. (This is not hard to believe: who really wants a radical in the family?)

All of this does not mean, of course, that the stories about Jesus’ birth are untrue; that is, that they do not contain truths, with a small t.

What is it, then, about that story that, if it does, continues to hold our imaginations in thrall? What is the source of its strange power to move us?

I believe that Howard Thurman had it right: all of us need a place in our lives for the singing of angels, "some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful," as he puts it, something which raises us above the "drab and commonplace," and, let’s face it, above the downright depressing and despair-inducing realities of this, our world. Yes, we need the singing of the angels. We need poetry and music. We need hopeful stories. We need almost anything we can get our hands on which will help us to transcend, even momentarily, the fear and the hopelessness which this tired old world can sometimes lay upon us.

Our responsive reading counseled us, in David Rhys Williams’ familiar words, to "withdraw from the cold and barren world of prosaic fact, if only for a season" so that we might "warm ourselves by the fireside of fancy, and take counsel of the wisdom of poetry and legend." Yes, we must do that. We need that. Indeed, we cannot live without it.

Each year at this time I consider anew the question, what is source of the Christmas story’s staying power? And I have to conclude that it is because we can see ourselves in the story, and we can feel the story in us. It is because the story is somehow true, though not in the way some would have us believe. Let me try to explain what I mean.

All of us were born--perhaps not in a stable, certainly not of a virgin, but we know enough to sympathize with that baby lying in a manger, and with his parents hovering nearby. We understand the preciousness and innocence of childhood, and the reality of the threats which hang over it. Anyone who has been a parent can empathize with the hopes and dreams and fears of those Bethlehem parents; in fact, the story is so powerful precisely because, if we know anything about the Christian narrative, we already know the ending, and we know that it is not a particularly happy one.

Richard Leach has captured this foreknowledge in his beautiful carol, "Is a Murmuring Dove Nearby?"

Is a murmuring dove nearby as you sleep upon the hay?--
Like the dove that you will see coming down from parting skies.
That day is far away, O child upon the hay,
But in the stable I can hear a murmuring dove.

Is a donkey standing near as you sleep upon the hay?--
Like the donkey you will ride through the cheering pilgrim throng.
That day is far away, O child upon the hay,
But in the stable I can see a donkey stand.

Are the shadows deep and dark as you sleep upon the hay?--
Like the darkness that will fall though the sun is overhead.
That day is far away, O child upon the hay,
But in the stable I can see the shadows dark.

Does the morning sun break in as you sleep upon the hay?--
Like the sun of early dawn that reveals an empty tomb.
That day is far away, O child upon the hay,
But in the stable I can see the morning sun.

In the present, there is poverty. There is homelessness. Lives are still threatened by terrible political realities, by wars and rumors of wars. Two thousand years along, and this is still not the world we wish it to be.

If we have any empathy at all, we can see ourselves in the story.

But we can also feel the truth of the story in ourselves. Every life will experience suffering, pain, and grief, though I pray that we don’t get more than our share. Many of us will experience injustices. Some of us will experience terrible losses. Many of us, perhaps most, will be crucified in some fashion before we are done. As Woody Allen famously said, none of us is going to get out of this world alive.

We trust that there will be joy, too, but we need to be honest about the shadows.

We know all of this, if we think at all. And that is why the dream of a savior is so powerful. We long for someone to swoop in and save us, to heal us, and to bring peace to our troubled and troubling world. Even if we don’t really believe it, we desire it. The Scandinavian Edvard Evers captures this deep and abiding desire in his carol, "Jul, Jul, Stralande Jul" ["Yule, Yule, Radiant Yule"]:

Yule, Yule, radiant Yule, over white forests shining,
Heavenly crowns with their glistening light,
Every church with its arches lit bright,
Carolers singing from year to year,
Longing for peace and for heavenly cheer,
Yule, Yule, radiant Yule, over white forests shining.

Come, come Savior tonight, lower your wings around us.
Over the turmoil and strife of the world,
Over the grief and the sighs in our breast,
Over the ancients now gone to rest,
Over the young who are building their nest.
Come, come Savior tonight, lower your wings around us.

But the other truth hidden in the Christmas story is the difference that a single good person can make. It can literally change the world. You and I can make a difference, too. We can effect the "quality of the day," as Thoreau put it. We can reach below the hard surface of life, on which, as Emerson once wrote, we usually only skate. We can plumb the depths. We can be those flesh and bone angels that I spoke about at the outset, doing seemingly insignificant little acts of kindness which in the end make all the difference. Despite the inherent tragedy of life, despite the hopelessness we sometimes feel, we can transcend it all, if only temporarily.

For as one of our great hymns ["The Morning Hangs a Signal"] reminds us, "The soul hath lifted moments, above the drift of days, when life’s great meaning breaketh in sunrise on our ways." We live for those lifted moments, and, though they are rare, they are enough to keep us keeping on, and perhaps, just perhaps, they reveal a glimmer of what might yet be.

The Christmas story reminds me of this. It reminds me not to get too bogged down in reality, that there is still hope and joy, that life does have meaning, even if it is only the meaning that good men and women down through the ages have given to it by their words and deeds. At such moments, the truth of Thurman’s claim becomes clear:

The commonplace is shot through with new glory--old burdens become lighter, deep ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting. A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. Despite the crassness of life, despite the hardness of life, despite all of the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock