Ministering To The Minister

I once met an angel on Madison Avenue.

She didn't look like an angel. She didn't sound like one. She had no wings, only a grubby old coat and matted, thinning gray hair. But she was an angel, appearing in an unexpected place and an unexpected way. She irritated me. She smelled bad. And my first concern wasn't what I could learn from her but moving on down the street to continue my walk unharrassed. Like most of us, I missed the point entirely. Angels never look the way we think they should. Angels, in fact, do not have wings. Do not sport brilliant halos. Angels look like school children and construction workers and policemen and bakers and farmers. They look like janitors and CEO's and waitresses and garbage men. Looking like a vagrant is one of their favorite guises, and I should have known that. But an angel could also look like a gang member or a policeman. Whatever slips under our radar, that's what they will use because their purpose is not to rule us or even to guide us but to do the will of He who sent them. Their mission is often simply to invoke His presence or to ask a question. If they appeared in a ball of flame with a choir singing, we'd surely tell them what we think they wanted to hear, rather than answer honestly. For the honest answer, for the more meaningful lesson, an angel will most certainly appear in a guise we'd least expect. And, by the time we even realize they've been among us, they're gone.

And that's what happened to me. I paid little attention to that woman, or to that moment in my life. So vested in my mortality, in my Me Vision, I didn't even realize this person was an angel until she'd vanished, leaving me standing in the snow on Madison Avenue at 2AM, quaking in the realization I had failed to accept and realize this divine vision. She'd come to challenge me, to help me be a better man, a better soul than I am now.

And then, just like that, she was gone.

CONTINUES BELOW   READ ORIGINAL ESSAY

The Terrors of Guacamole

I just awoke from a nightmare. I am not one who has nightmares or even tends to dream much. I’m quite sure the nightmare had more to do with the onions on the guacamole burger I dozed off to while watching House reruns than it did any divine revelation. I was back in New York, somewhere near Edgemere which is out in Far Rockaway, an impoverished beachfront community which was about to be hit by a passing hurricane. I was talking with some of the emergency responders who, drinking coffee in the pitch-black night while sheets of water and heavy winds hammered us, were quite nonchalant about it all. This, after all, was what they’d signed up for: to go out into the storm. It is, beloved, what I signed up for. What we all signed up for. But only a fraction of us actually do it. And only a fraction of those who do are genuine about what they are doing. But that wasn’t the nightmare part.

The nightmare part occurred when I headed back to my car. My beloved ’83 Mercury Cougar that no longer starts but was running fine and still in her prime in this guacamole vision. As I approached the car, an old woman, a white woman, opened the driver’s door and hurriedly got out. She appeared to be homeless, and I’d left my door unlocked, so she’d taken shelter inside my car. As homeless persons tend to do in New York, she’d also rifled through my things and taken whatever she could fit into her pockets. I became annoyed with her, and she engaged me, challenging my Christian ethics and working that hustle homeless people become so good at: blaming you because you caught them stealing or lying or what have you. Making you responsible for their sin and for whatever befell them to put them in their situation. See what you made me do?! Emotionally manipulating you for simply walking around breathing. Making me feel guilty for having a job and a few dollars in my pocket and a 27-year old car I loved more than anything else I owned.

I had a hard time hearing her. It was windy and raining and I just wanted to go home. Then this woman pulled a knife on me. A small, jacked-up steak knife which happens to be the only knife I own, the one knife I rinse off and use in those infrequent times when I actually need to cut something in my kitchen. Annoyed, I took the knife from her and, though I could barely hear her over the hurricane winds, I got the gist of her continuing barrage of withering criticism as she accused and attacked me, me, the owner of this beloved old car she’d trespassed in and invaded. And that’s what hustlers do: become angry at you because you won’t let them take advantage of you.

I just wanted to go home. But this woman, this aged, veteran street person, accusing me of not being a genuine Christian, of lacking compassion for her situation, of being a hypocrite because I refused to give her money I did not have, lunged forward, impaling herself on the knife in my hand. This old woman's eyes blazed momentarily with shock before fading to glass. This fragile old bag lady crumpled over into a ball and fell to the rain-slick ground. I stood there holding the bloody steak knife, knowing no one would ever believe I was the victim of this thing. That I’d only come out in the storm to see to those rescue guys, that I’d been there trying to help. There were no witnesses. There was, as is usual in my life’s journey, no one to help. There would be police. And news reporters. And, whether I was convicted or even accused I knew life, for me, was over. The dead woman at my feet had taken it from me. Had killed me just as surely as people would assume I had killed her. But that still wasn't the nightmare part.

Sirens in the air, now. I, as many if not most of us do, assumed those sirens had something to do with me. Which was my self-absorption speaking as the deafening wind noise and hard rain suggested those cops had other priorities than a dead homeless woman. I glanced down at her again, and--this was the nightmare part: I recognized her. I’d seen her before.

She was the woman from an essay I'd posted way back in 1997. A moment’s observation made back in the 80’s, back when the Cougar was new and I was just beginning my journey through life and ministry. She was a woman I eventually came to conclude was, in fact, an angel. One of those creatures that was neither god nor man but were implacable servants of God, lacking a will of their own or even much of what we’d consider a life. Angels are, at the end of the day, animatrons, puppets, extensions of God’s essence and will. We tend to romanticize them and see them as hopeful, benign creatures. Most of our cultural assumptions about angels have no biblical truth to them. It’s just more baggage, more stupid stuff we done heard someplace. More Truth By Assumption because so many of us are simply too lazy to learn much about what God’s word actually says.

Sense & Nonsense About Angels

First: angels don’t have wings. This is, perhaps, the greatest lie we ingest about angels. Some Bible passages picture angels with wings (Isaiah 6:2,6). Other verses talk about angels flying, and we assume that the wings would be useful for that flight (Daniel 9:21). However, I suspect that angels can move around without having to depend on wings. Most references to angels in the Bible say nothing about wings, and in passages like Genesis 18-19, it is certain that no wings were visible.

Seraphim, literally "burning ones,"—a kind of warrior class of ecclesiastical servant—have wings. Angels do not. Seraphim are mentioned in the Book of Isaiah as fiery six-winged beings attending on God. Angels in the Bible never appear as cute, chubby infants! They are always full-grown adults. When people in the Bible saw an angel, their typical response was to fall on their faces in fear and awe, not to reach out and tickle an adorable baby.

Angels are not beautiful. Angels, in fact, do not necessarily look like anything or anyone. They appear to us in many guises, many forms. Though they may appear human, angels are essentially “ministering spirits,” (Hebrews 1:14) and do not have physical bodies like humans. Jesus declared that “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:37-39). The Bible does, however, make it clear that angels can only be in one place at a time. They must have some localized presence.

The word “angel” actually comes from the Greek word aggelos, which means “messenger.” The matching Hebrew word mal'ak has the same meaning. The word usually describes the whole range of spirits whom God has created, including both good and evil angels, and special categories such as cherubim, seraphim, and the archangel. Angels are mentioned at least 108 times in the Old Testament and 165 times in the New Testament (Chafer, Systematic Theology, II, 3). Hence, there is ample information available in Scripture to allow us to build a foundation for our knowledge of angelic beings.

Despite what your mom told you, you don't go to Heaven and become an angel when you die. Angels are not glorified human beings. Matthew 22:30 explains that they do not marry or reproduce like humans, and Hebrews 12:22-23 says that when we get to the heavenly Jerusalem, we will be met by “myriads of angels” and “the spirits of righteous men made perfect”—two separate groups. Angels are a company or association, not a race descended from a common ancestor (Luke 20:34-36). We are called “sons of men,” but angels are never called “sons of angels.”

Unlike us, angels cannot be tempted. They cannot be bribed or bought off. They are not competitive. And, despite what Hollywood movies want you to believe, angels are simply incapable of human emotions like hatred, envy, lust or even love. The otherwise scripturally accurate (and, therefore, chilling) Nicholas Cage film, City Of Angels, was ruined by its departure from scripture by allowing Cage’s character to fall in love with Meg Ryan, have his divinity stripped from him as punishment, and become human. Angels have no self-determination, have no motivation to do anything of or for themselves. And, no matter what Nicholas Cage says, they are not human and cannot become human.

Since angels are spirits rather than physical beings, they don't have to be visible at all (Colossians 1:16). Elisha once prayed that his servant would see the armies of angels surrounding the city, and the young man discovered that he had overlooked a lot of invisible beings (2 Kings 6:17). Angels can take on the appearance of men when the occasion demands. How else could some “entertain angels unaware” (Hebrews 13:2)? On the other hand, their appearance is sometimes in dazzling white and blazing glory (Matthew 28:2-4). Abraham was visited by three heavenly messengers. When angels do appear, they generally appear in the form of men. In Genesis 18, Abraham welcomed three angelic guests who appeared at first to be nothing more than some travelers. In the following chapter, two angels went to Sodom where they were assumed to be simply a pair of human visitors. With the possible exception of one debatable passage in Zechariah 5:9, angels always appear as males rather than females (Mark 16:5).

Angels are creepy. They are pretty good at hiding the fact that they are angels but part of an angels’ hustle is for you to realize, usually too late, that you have, in fact, been talking to one. It is how we learn: if we open our eyes to God’s promise. This bag lady in my dreams: I’d seen her before, on Madison Avenue in New York. I am quite sure I saw her recently, here in downtown Colorado Springs. I did not stop and talk to her, only realized it was, in fact, her, after I’d walked a few blocks past. And, when I tuned to look back at her—she was gone. Another favorite angel trick.

Angels lack the spark of life, the creativity and wonder of humanity. Were they capable of such things, I’m pretty sure they’d be jealous of us, of all that we are and of the insatiable and usually unrequited love God has for each of us. But they are not. They are animatronic mannequins, literal extensions of God’s will in ways you and I will never be. Because the very essence of God that lives in us empowers us with free will. Free will is more dangerous than Plutonium. It’s like handing the Hope Diamond to a meth addict. Free will is the means through which our holiness is infected by arrogance such that we endanger our genuine and purposeful and invaluable connection to God in exchange for useless junk. Money. Sex. Ego. Angels don’t care about any of that. But they also lack free will or creativity. They have no art. They can’t taste anything or feel anything. They can’t appreciate the magic and artistry of a summer’s dawn. They can’t fall in love. Their closeness to God is their essential nature. God wants us to be close to Him because we choose to, because we choose Him.

He could have made us puppets, animatrons. He could have designed us to be faultless and guiltless, to lack purpose or creativity. And we would serve Him. Faithfully. Tirelessly. We would exist for no other purpose. Why God chose to create us in His image—by which the bible means of His essence--may remain a mystery until each of us actually comes to meet Him. He wants us to love Him, but He wants us to choose to love Him, choose to serve Him.

And, every now and then, He dispatches a little piece of Himself to remind us.

Christopher J. Priest
with excerpts by Dr. Paul Eymann
5 September 2010
editor@praisenet.org

TOP OF PAGE