Christmas Eve, 2025
ISAIAH 62:6-12; PSALM 97; TITUS 3:4-7; LUKE2:8-20
the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified
It sounds idyllic, doesn’t it.
Camping under the stars with your best buddies; maybe with a small fire burning nearby to keep away the nighttime chill; maybe with a flask of something to warm the stomach. There’s cute little lambs mewing nearby. What else could make such a moment for the shepherds watching their flock by night more sublime!
But then the angels appear. And how awesome is this, now! Little chubby babies with little stumpy wings playing little bitty harps and flutes! How grand it must have been to have such heavenly entertainment.
Well perhaps not so much. There’s a reason, you see, why we hear that the shepherds were terrified at the angels appearing, and at the shining of the glory of the Lord. And that’s because angels are not little chubby babies with little stumpy wings playing little bitty harps and flutes. Angels are terrifying. And it’s pulpy fantastic stories and weird fiction that gets this right far more often than does the renaissancepaintings of Botticelli, Michaelangelo, or Raphael.
Take HP Lovecraft, for example. A lonely, socially awkward man with problematic politics, who, despite his vast influence in contemporary pop culture, died penniless and unknown in 1937. He was the sort of author of weird stories that got something very right actually about cosmic creatures. In a world increasingly reduced to what lies right in front of us, reduced to only those things our senses can perceive, in a world drained of the mysterious, of the supernatural and of the numinous, Lovecraft shared an enchanted world where celestial creatures are fearfully powerful. And Lovecraftian films like The Thing, Alien, and the Lighthouse understand this: celestial creatures are not necessarily nice ortame or at all comforting. And to encounter them is to be changed by them. Like the shepherds were that night.
Lovecraft’s soul-altering creatures were practically Biblical. We hear tonight that “an angel of the Lord” stood before the shepherds, and “the glory of the Lord shone around them,” and as a result, the shepherds “were terrified.” But why, though? Aren’t angels little chubby babies with wings, playing harps and flutes, or delivering divine e-mail?
Not exactly. One of my favourite subreddits is called r/dankchristianmemes, and of you ever look up that little marvel of internet obscurity, you will find a good number of memes with the title “Biblically Accurate Angel,” and if you were to see those memes, you would understand something about why those shepherds were terrified.
The cherubim, the angels we often imagine as little chubby babies, are described in Daniel as having wings, but wings and bodies entirely covered with eyes. Daniel saw an angel who had a “face like lightning, … eyes like flaming torches,” legs like metal, and whose voice roared with the strength an entire crowd; It’s no wonder Daniel went white and his legs went wobbly. Ezekiel saw angels that had “four faces”: the face of a “human being, the face of a lion … the face of an ox … and the face of an eagle,” with hooves for feet and legs like metal. In Revelation, John describes four angels similar to the ones Ezekiel encountered, but now entirely covered again in eyes.
Call this to mind. Is this comforting?
So we can begin to imagine why the angel had to say, “do not be afraid.” It’s because angels are more like Lovecraftian terrors than they are like winged renaissance musicians. They are fear-inducing cosmic creatures, bathed in the glory of the Lord, they are not like anything we already know, they come from a place in the cosmos we have only come to glimpse, and they have powers we do not understand. To see an angel like this is to glimpse into God’s apocalypse, and to have the thin sheet that separates heaven from earth torn away, showing us possibilities we cannot begin to comprehend. In the face of such alien authority, potency, and power, what else could we do before them, but tremble.
Lovecraft, though, as much as he gets the terror of heavenly creatures right, the cosmos that Holy scripture describes to us is not meaningless, nor is it uncaring or bleak. He may have had his finger on just how terrifying a world enchanted by gods and angels might be, but he did not know what we know, hearing this particular story of angels appearing to these shepherds.
Because we do not encounter here, in the Gospel, a reminder of just how small, and purposeless, life can be in a vast and uncaring universe. In the revealing of the glory of the Lord, we are not left at the mercy of the callous; we are not left to the whim of fate; we are not left to suffer alone. Neither are we left in fear.
The heart of the Christmas message is that in all this, we are not left cold and on our own in a meaningless universe—but rather the maker of the cosmos itself desires to be as close to us as a child at his mother’s breast, in care, sustenance, and life.
The glory of the Lord may be terrifying; God’s power could hardly be anything else but that. But this terrifying power is brought to bear on the world not in an enduring horror but in a child, in God with us, a God that is with us in shared fragility, in shared frailty, and in shared weakness.
And if those shepherds were able to turn their fear into joy, “the shepherds return[ing], glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen,as it had been told them,” how much more might we rejoice, knowing where this story of God with us is heading. This story is heading ever more deeply into grace: the grace of a people transformed for the good, the grace of a world made right, the grace of a restored natural world that will be at peace; because in his graceful appearing as a child born to us for our sake a renewed healing of the whole world is taking place.
There’s plenty to fear in this world, and much of it for good reason. But tonight, let’s heed the terrifying angel’s counsel: “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy.” And so with the shepherds, let us turn our minds away from fearful things, for a time tonight let us turn our minds towards the joy of our rescue, a rescue that comes in the glory of the Lord, and in the announcement of the word made flesh, dwelling among us.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.