Tuesday, December 22,

Scripture: Luke 2:8-15
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”

ANGELS APPEAR TO THE SHEPHERDS

“Glory to God in the Highest”—this, the angels knew, and knew well. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty,” they sang in God’s throne room, and presumably have since the dawn of time. They sang, “the whole earth is full of his glory,” knowing that creation bears His stamp; and what is creation, but a vehicle for the praise of God’s glory?

But the Gospel is not merely a repetition of what has always been—this would be of little benefit to us, starving as we are for something new.  Neither could it be something so new, so abrupt, that there was little or no continuity with what had been—an alien bursting onto the scene of a Western, a whale breaching in sand dunes by a desert caravan. The Gospel is good news because it is genuinely new and a source of real hope and intervention; but at the same time, it is ancient, and profoundly harmonious, bound up with our past. For we need something new that also speaks to who we are with continuity—something as ancient as Adam and Eve, if not older.

So the angels sang “Glory to God in the Highest,” which they had always sung, and “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of His glory.” But in the midst of this ancient refrain we find something new—a profound twist—which Bonnell portrays with a burst of light, motion, and color across a darkened sky. For the glory of God in the highest did something new, and the form in which the earth was fit for His glory—this changed! “Glory to God in the Lowest,” they might have sung, “for His glory has taken up earth, closing virgin clay ‘round eternal glory.”

This was indeed something new. The angelic choirs were the same; the God was the same God; but the Incarnation of the eternal Son was new. And the angelic worship lay not untouched, for here was the mystery into which they longed to look. As Jonathan Edwards tell us, “the perfections of God are manifested to all creatures, both men and angels, by… God’s works,” and “so the glorious angels have the greatest manifestations of the glory of God by what they see.” This is true above all “in the death and sufferings of Christ,” but on Christmas Day we have the first glorious movement brought to completion on the cross and empty tomb. It is here that the angels’ understanding of the glory of God was brought to new heights by being taken to new depths: the glorious one born in ignominy, to die a yet worse fate.

Why did the angels burst forth in song before the shepherds? Because the angelic nature is to sing, is to worship. And as the angels beheld the Lord of Glory exercising His glory by embracing humility, what else could they do, but sing “Glory to God in the Highest, and peace on earth to men”? This was the beginning of that peace—a peace made possible by the Glory of God in the lowest. And oh that we, like our shepherd brothers in Bonnell’s painting, might be caught up in the wonder and worship of our fellow creatures and the song they now sing to eternity: “Worthy is the lamb who was slain!”

PRAYER
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Glorious God in the HIGHEST,
                        in the lowest,
Grant us a share of the joy of Your angels
In knowing You, in worshipping You.
And grant us likewise, we ask,
That we may join the shepherds
Putting speedy feet to the task.
Amen.

Adam Johnson, Assistant Professor of Theology, Torrey Honors Institute