I always wondered what it would be
like to be an angel. No . . .
really. I mean, how would it be to be
immortal? Kinda cool, wouldn’t you
say? You wouldn’t have to worry about
health insurance, about little Gabriel Jr. growing up and becoming 21 and going
off your health plan, and you having to pick up some El-Cheapo 100-dollar-a-month
plan that excludes everything but direct atomic attack, would you? You wouldn’t have to worry about what to
watch on TV that night, because you could probably look down and see a
hundred-million dramas going on all at once.
But you have not much use for the lives of the mortals, to you who have
lived so very long, their puny generations seem like seconds, nano-seconds,
even . . .
And to you who are immortal, their
cares and woes look like silly, little soap operas, like inconsequential
insect-scrabblings, and you do God’s will—after all, you are God’s
messengers—you appear with fiery sword in hand, calling the prophets to do
whatever it is prophets . . . do, but otherwise you leave the humans to their
own smelly devices . . .
But on this night it’s somehow different,
it’s colder than Methuselah’s shovel, for one thing, the breath is coming out
of everybody’s mouth like steam-engines, but that’s not it, really . . . it
feels different, somehow, momentous, as if all heaven—and earth—is on the verge
of something, and you’re part of the greatest show on earth, the heavenly
chorus, and as you collect your folders and file in to the practice room, that
one cold winter night, the director—this tallish blond angel with a full halo
and impeccable taste—says “Word’s come from on high to expect something new
this evening”—and immediately a groan goes up from the sopranos, they
remember the last time they had to work a last-minute gig, something
about Elijah being taken up to heaven or something, and they had to hit a
G-sharp without even warming up . . .
And far below, you can hear a
clatter, and if you squint and strain to peer around the altos, you can just
make out old Gabriel, shining like the sun, and a bunch of ratty-looking
shepherds, cowering in fear—you’re glad you’re this far away from them, if you
know what I mean—and Gabriel always
did like an audience, you
grumble, but if you strain you can just barely hear what’s being said: “Do not be afraid,” he says, and you think
“Right . . . that ship’s already sailed” “Do not be afraid,” says
Gabriel, “for Behold!”—this with a flourish—“I am bringing you good news of
great joy for all the people!” and the heavenly choir-director steps up to the
podium and raises her baton, all the while listening to ol’ Gabe down below,
and his voice is louder, now, he’s getting to the good part, to the point: “to you is born this day in the city of
David a Savior who is Messiah, the Lord.” And the director cocks her head, straining to
hear Gabriel’s pronouncement and ready the choir at the same time: “This will be a sign for you” he says, and
the director’s baton is raised just a little bit higher, and she’s almost
vibrating with expectation, waiting for the cue, “you will find a child wrapped
in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”
And there it is, her hands flash down, and you respond, and from your
mouths come the most magnificent sound, multi-leveled, multi-voiced, polyphonic,
a great wall of cascading sound . . . it
is the most beautiful sound, you are sure, any of those puny mortals have ever
heard, pure and wild, filling the heavens . . . and yet within it, you can make
out the words—and you grudgingly admit all those enunciation exercises the
director made you do have paid off, because clearly within the looming cacophony
it can be made out: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill
toward Humankind!”
And straining to look down, while the
sound is still pouring from your mouth, you can see those silly, mortal shepherds,
standing with their mouths gaping open, and a wondrously bright light
pours down upon them—and they reach instinctively for their sunglasses—but just
as suddenly as it came, the director cuts you off, and the sound stops on a
dime, and so does the light, and self-satisfied, you look around in back of you
toward the throne, straining to see what God the Creator thinks about it all, looking
for some props from the ol’ Ancient of Days, and you almost fall off your
riser: the throne is empty, bare, there is no God at home.
You are flabbergasted, floored, flibber-ti-gibbeted,
because that’s never happened before in your life, God being missing in action,
and you’ve lived a long, immortal, life . . .
well, it did happen one time, just after God created all
those silly creatures, he spent an awful lot of time walking in that
garden, talking with that Adam person . . . but since then, God’s been a rock,
a Rock of the Ages, so to speak, and you are suddenly cold, bereft, it’s as if
you were suddenly the loneliest person in the world . . . the God of Heaven,
creator of the you, the universe, and all that jazz, has left the
building.
And by the whoosh and flutter of
wings all around you can tell the others are frightened, and when the shock has
abated, and you look around at the rest of the Heavenly Choir, you can see it
clearly . . . faces that for centuries showed only immutable joy, creased with
worry, pocked with panic . . . feathers falling in a great rain, onto the
ground below, piling up in drifts like so-much new-fallen snow . . . Henrietta,
fluttering like some over-stuffed peacock, Thaddeus gibbering like a
school-boy, and over in the corner, they’re pummeling Gabriel with questions,
but it’s clear he knows no more than any other: “I have no idea where God has
gone,” he said, “I just delivered a message, I’m just a messenger, like the
rest of you.”
And suddenly, somebody spies those
idiotic shepherds, slowly heading toward the west . . . and lo, there is a
great star shining out in that direction, and you think: It clearly has
something to do with them, might as well follow . . . and so you fold
your wings like you taught the eagles to do and plummet toward earth, and as
you look around you see you’re not the only one who decided to do that,
there’s a whole host of heavenly bodies, dive-bombing the earth, and just
before you crash into the shepherds, you pull up out of your bombing run, but
so artful are you that it’s like a troubling little breeze, ruffling their
greasy robes, and they look up, troubled, but you’re not visible to their
mortal eyes unless you want them to be . . . and nobody wants that . . .
And so, on you go, the entire
heavenly host, fluttering unseen above the shepherds, and you can’t miss the
irony of it all: shepherds—the most lowly of them all, the lowest of the low,
the outcasts of the outcast—leading all the finest that heaven can
boast. It’s like blind beggars, or
penniless war veterans, leading the upper-crust of earthly society toward an
unknown destination, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet following a
crank-addicted homeless man, trusting him to lead them . . . that’s what it
feels like to you, like the whole social order has been . . . re-ordered,
upended . . . and you think: “Man—the things we do for God.” And you look around nervously, and shudder
just a little, cause you don’t want to say what’s on your mind out loud
“Wherever God might be, that is . . .”
Up ahead you see the star, and you’ve
seen a lot of things in your immortal life, and you know—unlike these stupid
mortals—exactly what stars are, burning balls of hot gas, and you know the earthly
physics of it all, but it’s the weirdest thing: it’s as if the star is sitting right
over this little backwater town, and after you enter it—the clueless
shepherds and you, their silent stalkers—after you all enter it, you can see
that the star is right over a barn!
You’ve never seen anything like it in all your immortal years—and that’s
a lot of years—and the shepherds glance uneasily about—they can sense your presence after all—they
glance uneasily about and duck into the low-hanging doorway, and all the
heavenly host follow, and you’re glad your physics is meta
physics—and you suddenly find out how many angels can dance in the doorway of a
stable, and it’s a lot.
As you crowd in behind the shepherds you
see a beautiful young woman—just a girl, really— and a bashful young man,
barely able to shave . . . and over to the side are beasts of the pasture and
birds of the air, but your eyes are drawn like a magnet to who it is lying in a
manger, wrapped in ragged baby-clothes, face—how marvelous, a face!—shining like the sun. You’d recognize that Person anywhere, in any
guise . . . of course, it’s God the Almighty One, author of creation, Ruler of
the Heavens, in the form of the humblest, most helpless thing of all, a little
human baby.
And suddenly, the immensity of it all
crowds into your head, and you can hear the rustling sigh of all you fellow
choristers around you, and the sheep ba-a-a nervously, and the woman looks
around in wonder, as all your questions are answered. Here’s where God has gone: the most mighty
being in all the universes has become the most lowly of creatures, a squalling,
wriggling, infant, the most humble of these base human beings. And it hits you like a sledge-hammer, how
wonderful these creatures must be, these humans for whom—up until now—you
wouldn’t cross even the most narrow street of gold, how wonderful these
creatures must be that God would become one
of them, to give up immortality even for just a season, to experience pain and
heartache and death. What a wondrous,
magical, sparkling love that on cold winter’s night, God would shed all shred
of God-hood and become a human being.
Amen.
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