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I know what you're thinking. You're thinking the old fool has finally lost his mind. Doesn't he know it's not christmas yet, Doesn't he know it's not time to be reading the christmas story yet. We're

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still doesn't he know that he made for Rachel? Stop right in the middle of the reading. We're not supposed to be reading yet. Not even finished the sentence. For God's sake. What's the matter

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with the old man anyway? Well, I do know, I know several things. First of all , I certainly am an old fool. There's no question about that. I may be losing my mind

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. You are not the first people to think that , nor I suspect will you be the last. But I also know that my choice of the gospel election this morning and the place to stop reading it

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. We're both conscious and deliberate on my part. You see, I want you to have in mind the image of angels vanishing into heaven. Olivier messy . I, the composer of that magnificent organ piece

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that eric just played for us must have had something in mind when he wrote lays on the angels messy as angels are all angularity and agitation, all flurry and fury as they ascend into their musical heaven.

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The melody line whirls and swirls higher and higher up and up and up it goes until it disappears into the rafters, Angels I think must be like that as I listened to those last disappearing notes of the

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messy. I I found myself wondering if Luks absconding angels that are represented in those notes or perhaps the key to understanding something important about advent, have some more to say about that. But in a minute

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you see I have a problem with angels. My problem is not whether they are literal or metaphorical, to be really honest, as long as they serve my poetic purposes, I really couldn't care less.

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No. My problem is that angels are always interrupting us at the most inconvenient moments in the narratives of our lives, bringing the progress of our event may be human events to a screeching halt delivering their world

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altering proclamations and then ducking out on the consequences. Already in luke's tale so far, part of which of course, we didn't read the Angel Gabriel shows up and blinds the old priest Zechariah, because the

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priest dares to question the angels credentials. Imagine doing that to a traffic cop. Yeah. And then a few verses later, Gabriel shows up again. Apparently, once was not enough this time to deliver

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the dubious good news to marry a teenaged. Not quite a bride that not only is she pregnant out of wedlock, but that the child she bears will soon be the savior of the world. What is

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a young mother to be supposed to do with news like that? And now the heavenly chorus has shown up, turned on the floodlights in the Palestinian night sky and roused the drowsy shepherds from their hard earned

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slumbers. Also that the angels can download the glory of God onto a world already fairly trembling under the weight of the roman boot. And in every one of these cases, every one of them after the

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angels deliver their so called good news. They turn tail or maybe wing and dissolve into the clouds like the final bars of that Messianic peace. But here's the thing, disappearing angels always leave behind disoriented shepherds

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, dazed and confused, scratching their beards and saying to each other, I don't know, bob. What do you think? I realized a while back that in all the years I have suffered through advent

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. Art and christmas, kitsch. I have never once seen a painting of the angels with their backs turned fleeing into their heavenly haven. While the poor benighted shepherds sit around elbowing each other in the ribs

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before going back to their game of mumble T pig , plenty of anjali God entities rocking the heavens with their riotous rejoicing Narry. A One of Angela few GN tas skipping out on the shambles. They have

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made of our carefully constructed status quo, ducking back into the divine darkness and leaving us to deal with a world where everything is suddenly different. Here's a poem entitled advent use, which means something like arrival

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or coming. What approximate apocalypse arrives tomorrow. Lost key. Lost love, cancer, Butterfly extinction, blood on the floor of sanctuaries? Schoolhouse, must we endure yet more of heaven's plan. Do you

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dare to raise your eyes, peak between the stars , to see the angels turned for home after they have rearranged your dreams after the dream comes the dark . Be not afraid. Why did the Blessed say

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this? When the only reasonable response is fear? Or maybe flight if you can make your feet work ? Are you not supposed to fear the beast when you meet a bear or a host of angels with

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your back against the wall? Will you stand your ground against the feral claws of glory after the Glory comes the dark? Do you yearn to leave the sheep and wander into town in search for manger mother

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child? A glow with Heaven's subtle light. Leave the eastern palaces to track a star, offer homage at the hard world's fraying edge. Leave the boats and nets and trail a migrant preacher pinned like a

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butterfly to across after the cross comes the dark, and who knows what might happen in the dark? That's just it, isn't it? After the glory comes the dark. The problem with angels is that

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they are always absconding into the clouds, taking with them their heavenly light and leaving us in the dark with choices to make and chaos. To combat. The problem with angels is that they are creatures of

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glory. They can't seem to imagine that glory isn't the normal state of affairs on earth. Or maybe even from our perspective, a desirable state of affairs here on earth. Down here in the muck and

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muddle of the mundane. We are not used to glory. Don't know how to handle. It can't get used to the way it shreds our hopes ransacks our houses, breaks our hearts. The poet Rainer

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Maria Rilke says, every angel is terrifying. I wonder if this is what he meant. The 5th century Syrian Monk who wrote under the pseudonym Dionysius. The area up a kite says that there are two

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orders of angels, the Seraphim and the cherubim of the Seraphim, whose name in Hebrew means the burning ones. He writes for the designation Seraphim really teaches this a perennial circling around divine things, penetrating warmth

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, the overflowing heat of a movement which never falters and never fails. A capacity to stamp their own image on subordinates by arousing and uplifting in them to like a flame. The same warmth in the llegada

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, the body of non legal rabbinic writings that you will find in the Talmud and Midrash team, there is a legend that the Seraphim issue from the fire beneath the throne of God to offer their praises in

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never ending song. Holy Holy Holy art thou old Lord of hosts. But hardly can they utter the first Holy before. They are overwhelmed by the intensity of the holiness, they proclaim and they burst into

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flames and return to the fires when they were born , they're to be purified and reborn to sing again and again and again. And thus it is that the divine throne is enshrouded in a globe of perpetual

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fire, in which eternally echoes the ethereal cry Holy Holy Holy Well, angels setting themselves on fire is fine I guess for heaven. But the problem with angels is that they are also setting fire to things

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here on earth. Maybe not literal fire. Maybe not even literal angels. Maybe they're allegorical angels lighting figurative fires. But either way they burned the house down our metaphorical house as surely as if they had

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tossed a molotov cocktail into the center of the front parlor. More than a little ironic is it? I think that the very first thing an angel says when they show up is before striking the match,

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don't be afraid. Yeah, right. And that I think that I think is what advent is really all about advent is the season for being afraid for coming to the awareness that the house is on fire

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and burning down around us and that we had darn well better do something about it before there is nothing left but ashes. If I had chosen to read the actual Lucan election for the morning Lukes apocalyptic sermon

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in Luke 11, you'd have understood this right away . Nations rising up against nations, earthquakes and famines and floods, cities being devastated and populations fleeing to the mountains there to starve in the hills, pestilence

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and disease captives and exiles and swords a world ablaze . It sounds just like the evening news. We read these words every year and yet every year we slide from thanksgiving into advent, still a little groggy

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from all the trip to fan in the Turkey, still blissfully unaware, but our hair is on fire and the house is full of smoke. Maybe this year will be different. I don't know, maybe

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the pandemic and the upheavals in society over systemic racism and the chaos at the airport in Kabul and the political paralysis in the halls of government have made us aware, if not that the house is burning,

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then at least that we are smelling smoke from somewhere . Maybe as we round the turn into a new liturgical year, we are conscious in ways we haven't been in other less eventful years that the glory of

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God is up to something dragging us somewhere. Maybe we sense in that hair standing up on the back of the neck sort of way that it's somewhere we just as soon not have to go. Maybe it's

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Bethlehem, maybe it's Golgotha, maybe it's the kingdom of God, no matter the angels have left us and gone away into heaven. You know, I used to think that angels were cowards unable or perhaps

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unwilling to stay with us and help us cope with this broken and blasted world of ours. But lately I think angels are just doing the only thing angels can do because fixing the chaos that still dominates creation

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, putting out the fires ignited by the intrusion of the glory of God isn't their job, Maybe it isn't even up to God, maybe it's up to us, jewish Mysticism teaches that creation is broken and

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has been since the very first. Let there be According to the mystical vision. Light from the Holy one pours forth light from beneath the fire from the , from the fire beneath the throne of God.

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Light that is the heart and soul of the Glory of God itself. Light pours from this Holy One in a single blinding ray. It pours into the cfe Roath. And I know that's a new term

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for you. It means well, I don't know exactly what it means, but it means mystical vessel . It emanates the Cfe wrote. They emanate from the being of the One. They are made of

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that divine light that one has poured into the creation , and they're made to contain that light. But some of the city's heroes are flawed and cannot hold the light. They crack and splinter and the shards

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of the vessels, the Chevy Roath along with the shards of the light, fragments from the very Glory of God fall down into the darkness, jewish mystics called this Moment Chevy Rock. Ha Khalim! The

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shattering of the vessels there in the darkness, the light from the one lies trapped among the broken pieces of the CFR oath, waiting To be freed to rejoin The one and the only thing that can free

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the light is Tikkun Olam. The repair of the world and the only ones who can repair the world are you guessed it? Us, imagine that not the angels, not the one us hush our faithfulness

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, our hope in the face of heartache, our trust in the possibility that light may yet overcome darkness . Every time we act with justice or kindness. Every day we live in love. Every hour we

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spend in acts of devotion or study in spirit and in obedience to God in just such every day. S scatological moments, say the mystics, a little bit of the repair is accomplished, and a little

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bit of the light is freed from its prison in the dark. And one day, one day, someone from among us unaware that they are the person to do so will perform some random act of kindness

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or devotion or generosity, and the last remaining shards of light will be released and the glory of God will be whole again and the angels will sing and this time they will not disappear into the heavens.

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And that is why I still put up with advent . Why I am willing to put up every year with those blasted annoying absconding angels. Because they remind me every year that the glory is still out there

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, shattered and broken and in the dark, waiting for someone to repair it. Who knows who it will be or when? Maybe it will be me . Maybe it will be you. Maybe it will

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be this advent. Maybe it will be today!