Magyar Egyház, 1994 (73. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1994 / 4. szám
18. oldal MAGYAR EGYHÁZ ANGEL VISITORS Text: Luke 2:8-15 The angels are getting more attention than usual this Christmas season. Of course they have always been part of the story. But in recent decades they have not been viewed as central characters. Our century has often shown impatiens with stories of the superhuman or the supernatural. The advice of science has been associated with the popularity of the doctrine of growing human supremacy in the universe. Perhaps of the collapse of the Marxist version of this doctrine has opened the way for a fresh look at things. And angels seems to be part of this fresh look. Books about angels, angel calendars and angels on television are more numerous now than ever before in my lifetime. Polls show that a majority of Americans believe in angels, and many believe that they have personal guardian angels. We in the reformed churches accept the existence of angels. But we have not emphasized angels as much as have other churches. And might be worthwhile to consider why. The Calvinist churches emphasized the contrast between the greatness of God and the smallness of humans. This emphasis has not been popular among scientific triumphalists who espouse what has been called “man’s conquest of nature.” But science itself tells a story more in harmony with ours. We have all seen pictures of the planet Earth as it appears from the moon, a small blue ball surrounded by a black vastness. Our neighbor planets Venus and Mars are merely bright stars in our sky; Earth is only a bright start in the skies of Mars and Venus. From the outermost planets of our solar system, Earth would be invisible, its tiny dot of reflected sunlight drawn out by the glare of the sun itself. And our sun, as big as a million earths, is only one of hundreds of billions of suns in our galaxy, which is only one of billions galaxies in the known universe. Any God who is the creator of this universe is much, much bigger than we are. And our Calvinist tradition suits this situation better than others that try to put God and man on something close to equal terms. But there remains a problem, which thoughtful people have faced since ancient times. If God is so much bigger than we are, how can He relate to us and be concerned with our lives in any detail? With trillions of solar systems and billions of years of time to supervise, how can He be concerned about the daily travails of one little Earth creature? One answer that has existed since ancient times is that God has numerous superhuman servants to whom he delegates the task of looking after the details while He takes care of the big picture. In some Christian traditions, angels and saints have been viewed as being available to turn to when God is too busy. We in the Reformed churches do not see it that way. We acknowledge and honor God’s superhuman servants; certainly there is plenty of work for them in a universe so big. But we don’t pray to them. We pray to God himself; it is an article of faith with us that He is never too busy. But how can we assert such a thing with any confidence? If the created universe is vast and complex for beyond our imagining, how can we hope even to imagine the nature of the Creator? The answer is that we can’t. But neither can the angels or any other superhuman creature. When it comes to attempting to understand God by our own devices, we may safely assume that we and the angels are in the same boat. The distance between the finite and infinite is always uncrossable by finite creatures, even if they are a good deal more impressive than we are. But the distance is crossable from the infinite side. We may not be able to understand God, but God can understand us most thoroughly. And He can reveal himself to us, sometimes in ways we would not imagine possible. No doubt He has revealed Himself to the angels in ways suitable to their nature. And, according to the message of Christmas, He has revealed Himself to us in a way suitable to our nature. As incredible as it may seem, the gospel story tells us that God has revealed His human face to His human creatures, and it is the face of Jesus. The baby Jesus, lying helpless in a manger, is God’s astonishing way of bridging the gap between Himself and us. The man Jesus, preaching and living an astonishing message of forgiveness, healing and love, is God both telling and showing us what He intends human life to be. Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, is God showing us that this intention cannot be defeated by any evil, no matter how it may seem from our tiny, momentary point of view. It was faith in this God of infinite power and infinite love that put steel in the backbone of our ancestors in the Reformed churches in times of hardship and persecution. Certainly they made mistakes and experienced failures. But acknowledge of their own weakness and sinfulness was part of their faith. And, instead of undermining their confidence and motivation, this acknowledgment freed them to put their confidence in a better place. We too have a better place to put our confidence than in our own supposed strength and virtue. We may place our confidence in a God who knows us better than we know ourselves, a God so great that He is conversant with the smallest detail of His vast creation. Among the amazing things that Jesus told us are these: that not one sparrow falls to the ground without God takin notice of it, and that even the hairs of our heads are numbered. This is a message that must be as astonishing to the angels as it is to us. People through the centuries down to the present day have reported encounters with angels. While we need not believe in the accuracy of every such story, there is no reason to doubt them all. We have learned much about the complex interdependence of Earth’s
