What is the scariest opening line you can think of? For a preacher, it's "Why haven't you visited so and so?"
For a student, it's, "The Principal needs to see you in his office," or, "Wanna take a guess what I found in your jeans pockets?"
For a husband, it's, "Do you know what YOUR daughter did?" Although the clincher, the one that strikes terror in just about everyone is, "We need to talk."
Have you ever thought was might have been going through Mary's mind when an angel appears out of nowhere and gives her this opening line? I've always loved the way the King James Version states it: "Hail, thou art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women."
Now, I've got a question for you ladies: has any guy ever used that as a pick-up line? Better yet, have you ever been doing something, minding your own business, putting on your makeup, doing the laundry and standing there between the pile of whites, darks and colorfasts you see an angel who tells you that God is going to use you in a special way? I didn't think so.
What has been the most memorable opening line you've ever heard? And who was it that stated it?
Most of you probably know that before I went into the ministry, I was in broadcasting. I know how important it is for a broadcasting network to put their best faces and their best voices forward. Think of the major events that have happened during your lifetime.
I remember 40 years ago, November 22, 1963 sitting in class in the 4th grade when the teacher is called out of the room, steps back in and her face is ash white. Not saying a word, she turns on the television set to the only channel we could receive, which was the local CBS affiliate, and I look up and there's Walter Cronkite saying, "Let me repeat: President John F. Kennedy has been assassinated." And to this day, I'll never forget that look on Walter Cronkite's face and the tone of his voice and even the way he took off his glasses. For some reason, I can't think of any other person telling me this news.
Fastforward to 1980: I'm glued to the television watching the election results and Ronald Reagan, as only he could, says, "Ladies and gentlemen, I've just been informed that the airplane carrying our American hostages has just left Iranian airspace." Can you think of any other president delivering that message?
Whether we like it or not, when there's big news to be told, much of our ability to both receive and to digest that news depends on who it is that's delivering that news. And not only that, a lot of it depends on the messenger's choice of words.
I think of all that went into my training as a broadcaster. I think of all that went into my training in the art of preaching. I then think of the messengers God used in the Bible: not even Billy Graham would have been good enough for delivering God's message in certain circumstances. Not even Walter Cronkite, or my personal favorite, David Brinkley, would have been good enough to deliver some of the messages God sent to certain individuals.
For this reason, God created, specifically for the job of delivering important news, a special class of beings. To deliver the information that GOD wanted to deliver, without any kind of editorial bias, He created angels.
Now what's the first thing that we think of when we think of angels? Flapping wings? Closely followed by halos? How many of you know that angels probably don't have wings? How many of you know that angels probably don't have halos either? Are you aware of how those notions came into the popular mindset?
First, God DID create special beings who DO have wings: the cherubim and seraphim, winged creatures who surround God's throne. It's the job of the cherub and the seraph to represent God's presence. They don't really SAY anything. But somehow in the popular nomenclature, people got to thinking that angels were like the cherubim and seraphim in appearance.
Perhaps the biggest reason we think that angels have wings is a mid-air collision between biblical faith and Greek mythology. You see, the Greek pantheon of gods, with a small "g," had their own being whose job it was to deliver their messages to us puny human folk. His name was Mercury. Since Mercury was always on his way from the heavens to the earth and from the earth back up to the heavens, he was always depicted as being a winged creature. Like so many other things, our conception of biblical things is often more rooted in other religions and in popular culture than it is from the actual scriptures themselves.
God created angels to be His messengers. As a matter of fact, the word angel is a Greek word, and that's its literal sense; it means "messenger." So the next time you hear the word angel, you shouldn't think of a creature with long blond hair playing a harp and flying around like a fairy. If you want to think biblically, when you hear the word angel, think of the good old days when telegrams were delivered by the Western Union Man. Or think of the face of your favorite newscaster.
As a broadcaster, most of the news this messenger delivered was on the bad side. What kind of news did the angels get to deliver? It's not that usual mixed-bag opening line of "Well, I have good news and I have bad news." A lawyer goes to a client in prison and says, "I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is that the governor turned down your request for clemency and they're going to go ahead and execute you at midnight. The good news is that I just saved a ton of money on my auto insurance."
More often than not, the news that angels brought to people was good.
Now, let's think about that for a moment. You are a shepherd. You have the worst job in society. The guy who cleans out dumpsters is up the ladder from where you are. The guy who follows the elephants at the circus and scoops up their messes has a job that's glamorous compared to yours. You are usually cut off from society. Your only companions are these stupid animals who are always wandering off, are prone to vicious attacks from wild animals, and whose intelligence is only a tad smarter than that of an oyster's. You are at the low end of the totem pole economically and socially.
Yet, with all these things going against you, who is it that is first told these glad tidings? Who's the first to receive the good news? Is it the royal family? Is it the bigwigs at the highest form of government? Is it the reporters and reporter-ettes of the big media conglomerates? No, it is to you, the dregs of society, that God chooses outside the immediate family to tell.
And why is that? Perhaps this will help you understand. When we lived in Pennsylvania, the state Lottery went weeks without a winner. That jackpot total kept creeping higher and higher and higher. People were getting to convenience stores at 6:00 in the morning lining up, sometimes waiting close to an hour, just to buy their lotto tickets. And then, somebody finally hit the winning number. Who won the biggest state lottery in history? It was a lady named Paranzino, who owned a chain of tuxedo and formal wear rental stores that were in downtowns and shopping malls all across the state and New Jersey. It was a lady who was already rich, a millionaire many times over. So, when she was delivered the good news, it was as if she were on the phone with someone else and says, "Oh, just put the trunks of money over there in the corner with all the other trunks of money. I'll have to figure out later what to do with it."
Now, imagine that somebody brought you the same news, and you're the school janitor who makes $15,000 a year sweeping floors. You're the single mother whose daycare bill is somewhere close to the national debt. You're the elderly couple whose medical bills have exhausted your savings and beyond. You're homeless. You're on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. And then, someone shows up and delivers this message: I have Good News and I have even better news."
So you can imagine what it was like for Abraham and Sarah, who had been trying, unsuccessfully, to conceive a child that God had promised them 40 years earlier. To suffer with the weariness of childlessness, and then an angel shows up and says, "Good News."
And you can imagine what it was like for Gideon, who had seen crop after crop wiped out by hordes of marauders who had burned down his fields. To suffer from the weariness of war, and then an angel shows up and says, "Good News."
It has been my job for these past years to deliver news. In my old world of broadcasting, I delivered news of coalmine disasters and floods and of government corruption. But when I came into this new world, the news wasn't always bad. But there are two times when I was asked to be an angel, a messenger, that I will never forget. They both took place during the course of two weeks. It was December, about two weeks before Christmas and I was a Student Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. A young, single mother from the congregation had gone in for a routine checkup and the doctors found a problem that required minor surgery. I was there with the lady's mother and son on the day of what was supposed to have been a minor procedure.
During the course of the surgery, the young lady suffered a pulmonary embolism and died. The doctor came out to the waiting room to deliver the news. The son was busy with all the goodies in the playroom and wasn't there. The mother went into shock and had to be taken down to the emergency room for treatment. It was left up to me, a guy who barely knew the family, to tell this boy that the person he loved most in the world was gone, and that he would never see her again in this lifetime. I remember going into that playroom and getting on the floor. He was playing cars. I picked up a car and raced him for a while. Then I picked him up, held him in my lap, and told him the best way I could about this mommy. All he said was, "Well, one day Jesus will take me to be with her again." That's all he said. Then he got back down on the floor and started racing cars, and I got back down with him and raced until the family arrived.
About two weeks later, a middle-aged lady was brought in for heart surgery. She'd' been suffering from heart disease for years and kept getting worse and worse. The surgery was a last-ditch effort that had only a 10% chance of success. The family gathered in the waiting room for what could only be called a death vigil. About six hours into the surgery, the family was ash white. The surgery had only been expected to last four hours. No one had the strength to find out what had happened, because they all expected the worst.
I got up to go to the vending machines and get a Diet Pepsi and on a whim, took a detour to the surgical nurse's desk. And there, in her scrubs, was the chief anesthesiologist nursing a cup of coffee. Between sips of highly caffeinated beverages, she informed me that something approaching a miracle had happened, how they had almost lost her. But during the surgery, when it looked like the inevitable was going to happen, something happened and a bleeding valve, all of the sudden, inexplicably stopped squirting blood. She was going to live. And, best of all, her quality of life was going to improve dramatically.
It was going to be another 45 minutes or so before the doctor could come out and see the family, so I asked if I could deliver the good news to the family, minus, of course, all the medical jargon. And so I went back to the same waiting room, where two weeks earlier I had told a young boy that his mother, who was expected to live, had died. And I told them that their mother, who was expected to die, would live. And not only would she have life, she would have it more abundantly. And I remember getting down on that carpet, that same carpet where I had raced cars with a boy who had lost his mother, and prayed with a bunch of people with racing hearts who had received probably the best Christmas present they had ever received and ever would receive.
God has created angels for Himself and for us. They are there to deliver news, to carry out the purposes of God, and to watch over God's children. But angels aren't supposed to be the only ones who deliver God's News. Like Gideon, there's a world out there at war. Not only the kind of war where they fire bullets and mortar shells and drop bombs and kill people; there's a war going on in families; there's a war going on in the hearts and minds of people; there's a world out there that's weary of war. Won't you be the one to deliver the news of peace on earth, goodwill to men? And. like Sarah, there's a world out there that is childless. Won't you be the one who delivers good news, for unto you is born in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord?
I'm a former broadcaster of bad news. I'm a present broadcaster of Good News. I guarantee it will be the greatest opening line you can ever say to anyone.
© Rev. Duane Brown, 2003
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