No Ordinary Angel: Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims about Jesus

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NO ORDINARY ANGEL

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Chapter One

Truth can be painful. Do I really want to see the world as God sees it? Or myself as God sees me? I do not even like to watch myself on video! How much more frightening, then, to catch even a glimpse of myself through the lens of God's camera-God, who "is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart," and before whom "no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare" (Heb 4:12-13). It would be so much more comfortable to go on seeing things, self included, as I want to see them.

Healing also can be painful. If I am to be healed of my psychic and spiritual distress, then I must admit that I have erred. I must own up to wrong judgments that I have made about myself or others, or to wrong deeds that I have done, or to deeds that I have left undone. If I am to be healed, then I must give up my unhealthy compulsions and dependencies. I must change. Most painful of all, I must say good-bye to the time that I have wasted and mourn its loss.

And yet, despite the pain that truth and healing may bring, I-and so many like me-seek after them! The world has shrunk,pluralism has grown, and with so many visions of reality now competing for our allegiance, truth has become ever more elusive. And yet, we go on searching high and low for truth. We long also for healing-healing of our damaged selves and damaged relationships. We say we are willing to suffer the pain that comes with change, if someone would just tell us what to do. Our desire for truth and our desire for healing are bound together. For to find the truth is to be healed of our blindness-our wrong ways of looking at ourselves, our wrong ways of looking at the world, and our habit of looking in the wrong places for our heart's desire.

In these present days of the quest for truth and healing, angels have emerged in many people's lives as agents of revelation and change. Consider the case of Martha Beck, who offers memoirs of an extraordinary pregnancy in Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic. Martha and her husband John have already adorned the walls of their cramped apartment with two Harvard diplomas apiece. As her story opens, they are graduate students in quest of Harvard PhDs. The Becks have bought, without reservation, into the Harvard ideal of the good life. Being brilliant (or looking brilliant) and working insane hours to get ahead are what matter in life. Personal concerns always have to be subordinated to these higher goals. For women students, pregnancy is viewed as personal failure. When Martha accidentally conceives Adam, who will be her second child, she is inexplicably joyful, yet determined to hide her condition from professors and peers till the last possible moment for she knows what their response will be. The pregnancy turns out to be relentlessly, almost impossibly, difficult. To make matters worse, John has to be in Asia for extended lengths of time.

Some weeks into the pregnancy, amazing things begin to happen. A woman acquaintance shows up at the door with a bag of groceries as Martha is about to collapse from dehydration and lack of nourishment. She receives mysterious aid as she and her eighteen-month-old daughter are about to succumb to smoke inhalation in the stairwell of a burning building. Later she sees a picture taken by news reporters at a moment when her anonymous helper should have been right behind her, but no one shows up on the photo. She experiences miraculous healing when the placenta pulls away from her uterine wall (a potentially fatal condition for both mother and fetus). She experiences moments of clairvoyance, when she is mentally transported to the sights and sounds that John is experiencing in Asia (later confirmed by him in conversation). And she is gradually becoming aware of invisible beings present all around her, guiding her and comforting her whenever she opens herself to them.

When Martha learns that the child she is carrying has Down syndrome, Harvard professors, colleagues, and medical personnel pressure her and John to abort the fetus. But Martha and John insist on having the baby (at first, she more urgently than he). And from that point forward their outlook on life begins to change. Martha has a dream in which a young man, whom she feels she has always known, tells her not to be fearful. She knows he is "Adam." (Later, after her son Adam's birth, a psychic tells Martha that he is an embodied angel-a point she does not wholeheartedly endorse, but does not refute either. She also favors the comment of a friend who tells her that angels attend Adam wherever he goes.) Most significantly, both Martha and John have moments of truth, when they see with new eyes how shallow and false are the lives of those who embody Harvard's measures of success. Martha sees through the façade of a physician who had urged her to have the abortion to the personal fear and pain that drive him. John suddenly sees the coveted office of a world-renowned professor as the small, cramped cage of an empty life. Throughout her narrative, Beck intersperses anecdotes about Adam's present life. These anecdotes are designed to show how he heals spiritual blindness, helping Martha, John, and others to see the world as a place of wonder and delight. They reject their former lives as worthless, holding only to the truth that Adam and the spirit-beings have brought.

For Beck, these beings are agents of healing and messengers of truth. They help her to turn from the dark prison of a driven existence to the light and joy of everyday life. It is not surprising that Beck should give angels such a prominent place in her story of conversion or rebirth: it is a role that they frequently play in popular American culture. Clarence Oddbody in It's a Wonderful Life, Monica on the long-running CBS series Touched by an Angel, Michael in the film by that name, Seth in the movie City of Angels-all of these angelic figures help people to see the world in a new way. They heal the blindness that keeps us from "seizing the day." Or consider the child-angel in the popular novella The Christmas Box, about an industrious young entrepreneur named Richard (played by Richard Thomas in the Hallmark television version), who neglects his wife and small child to attend to his growing business. The child-angel repeatedly appears to him in a dream and, with the assistance of a human "angel," or messenger, helps Richard to see that by his overwork he is "trading diamonds for stones." So, in Expecting Adam, when Beck depicts her spirits as ones who help her to turn from blindness to true sight by showing her the magic of everyday life, she is tapping into deep cultural currents.

The angels of certain biblical accounts also heal human blindness and convey divine truth. In this chapter, I will examine several such accounts and briefly compare them with modern stories of angelic healing and truth-bringing. Such comparisons will help to clarify what is distinctive and compelling about each set of stories. Then I will turn to consider the New Testament portrait of Jesus as one who heals blindness and brings truth. How does Jesus' role resemble or differ from the role of biblical angels who do the same? And more importantly, how can Jesus speak to our own quest for healing and truth?

The Bible tells many stories of blindness healed, but few as engaging as the story of the prophet Balaam and his donkey. It is here that we begin.

BALAAM AND HIS ASS

The children of Israel have hiked in the wilderness for forty years and are about to cross the Jordan River to enter into the Promised Land. They are encamped on the plains of Moab. The native inhabitants fear that Israel will try to capture and destroy them. So Balak, the king of Moab, takes action. He hires the prophet (or "seer") Balaam to curse the people of Israel. King Balak says to Balaam, "A people has come out of Egypt; they have spread over the face of the earth, and they have settled next to me. Come now, curse this people for me; since they are stronger than I; perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the land; for I know that whomever you bless is blessed, and whomever you curse is cursed" (Num 22:5-6). Balaam sets out on his journey to fulfill the contract. But then the Lord's anger is kindled against Balaam, and "the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as his adversary [Heb. satan]" (v. 22). The donkey sees the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with drawn sword in hand. But Balaam, the famed seer, does not see the angel. Balaam beats the donkey for stopping. The same thing happens again. The third time the angel of the Lord blocks them at a narrow pass, and the donkey lies down under Balaam. When again Balaam beats the ass, God gives it voice. The animal asks Balaam why he is striking it and Balaam answers, "Because you have made a fool of me! I wish I had a sword in my hand! I would kill you right now!" (v. 29). The ass points out that it has not been in the habit of treating Balaam this way, and Balaam admits that this is true.

Amazingly, the miracle of the donkey's speech passes by without comment. Neither the ass nor Balaam remarks on this unusual occurrence. Perhaps the narrator wants to direct all attention to the second, greater miracle that is about to occur:

Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with his drawn sword in his hand; and he bowed down, falling on his face. The angel of the Lord said to him, "Why have you struck your donkey these three times? I have come out as an adversary, because your way is perverse before me. The donkey saw me, and turned away from me these three times. If it had not turned away from me, surely just now I would have killed you and let it live." Then Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, "I have sinned, for I did not know that you were standing in the road to oppose me. Now therefore, if it is displeasing to you, I will return home." The angel of the Lord said to Balaam, "Go with the men; but speak only what I tell you to speak." So Balaam went on with the officials of Balak. (Num 22:31-35; emphasis added)

The true miracle is not the donkey's speech but the opening of Balaam's blind eyes. Balaam continues on to meet Balak the king, but instead of cursing Israel (as the king wishes),four separate times Balaam frustrates the king by blessing Israel. Balaam is, in his own words, "the man whose eye is clear, ... who hears the words of God, and knows the knowledge of the Most High, who sees the vision of the Almighty, who falls down, but with his eyes uncovered"(24:15-16). Balaam is no longer a blind seer who uses his divining rod to beat his donkey. Now Balaam sees-more than that, he knows.

THE ANGEL OF THE LORD

The angel who blocks the donkey and then Balaam is the mal'ak yhwh, Hebrew for "the angel of the Lord." This angel appears at various points throughout the Scriptures. In the Balaam incident, he comes to convey God's displeasure that Balaam-much like the ass-has refused to go the way that "the master" wished. The narrator is not especially interested in this angel's appearance or nature. Here, as in other early biblical accounts of angels, primary interest is in the sender-the Lord-and in the Lord's message. In the Balaam story, the Lord and the angel seem virtually to be one and the same. For example, when Balaam is healed of his blindness, the narrator notes that it was the Lord (not the angel) who opened Balaam's eyes. And, when the angel says to Balaam, "Go with the men; but speak only what I tell you to speak" (Num 22:35), he uses the pronoun "I" as if he were God, and he echoes the very words uttered by God a little earlier in the story (see v. 20).

This ambiguity as to the identity of the angel of the Lord also occurs in a number of other stories in which this figure appears. Consider, for example, the story of Hagar, the handmaiden of Sarah with whom Abraham has intercourse (at Sarah's instruction, because she herself cannot conceive). Sarah (who is called "Sarai" in this part of the narrative) grows jealous of the pregnant Hagar and mistreats her, so that Hagar runs away. But God has other plans for Hagar:

The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, "Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" She said, "I am running away from my mistress Sarai." The angel of the Lord said to her, "Return to your mistress, and submit to her." The angel of the Lord also said to her, "I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude." (Gen 16:7-10)

The angel speaks as if he were God. And when the angelic message is ended, Hagar says, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?" (v. 13). Hagar does not distinguish between the angel who visited her and the One whom that angel represents.

Also in the story of Abraham's near sacrifice of his son Isaac, the narrator makes no clear distinction between the Lord and the Lord's angel. It was God who commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, as a test of Abraham's faithfulness (Gen 22:2). It was God who showed Abraham the spot where the burnt offering should be made (v. 3). But it was the angel of the Lord who intervened at the last possible moment to stop the sacrifice, saying, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me" (v. 12). The angel's use of the first person pronoun ("You have not withheld your son, your only son, from me") guides the reader's attention away from the angel and toward God, who requested the sacrifice. Somehow, God is fully present in the words of the angel.

In the story of the burning bush, at first the angel of the Lord is said to be the one who appears to Moses in the flame (Exod 3:2). Soon afterward, the speaker is said to be "the Lord" or "God" rather than the angel. God (not the angel) says to Moses, "Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground" (v. 5). Moses hid his face because "he was afraid to look at God"(v. 6). And so on through the rest of the story. Did the narrator forget that the angel of the Lord had already been introduced as the one speaking from the burning bush? The narrator appears to assume that God and God's angel are interchangeable.

How do we account for the easy alternation, in the foregoing stories and in others, between "God" or "the Lord" on the one hand and the "angel of the Lord" on the other? Scholars have devised various explanations. One theory is that the older layers of the tradition spoke without embarrassment of God appearing directly to human beings, but later editors of the stories were troubled by such assertions and therefore substituted "the angel of the Lord" in place of some but not all of the references to God. Another theory is that the distinction drawn between the Lord and the Lord's angel has to do with point of view. Supposedly, biblical authors used the "angel of the Lord" whenever they were describing how God enters into the perception of a human being, but "the Lord" when they were not describing any particular interaction with humans.

This frequent alternation between "Lord" and the "angel of the Lord" expresses a crucial but paradoxical truth. On the one hand, God is so holy that humans cannot "see the face of God and live" (Exod 19:21; 33:20; Judg 13:22). In other words, humans cannot encounter God directly. Therefore God's presence must be experienced in some other, more oblique way. On the other hand, God truly is present in these encounters, so that when the biblical narrators referred to "God" or "the Lord" instead of to "the angel of the Lord," they were correct. It really was God who spoke to Hagar, Abraham, Moses, and others. To try to explain away the biblical stories' switching between the Lord and the Lord's angel misses the point that both halves of this paradox are true. James Kugel remarks that the angel in these stories "is not some lesser order of divine being; it is God Himself, but God unrecognized, God intruding into ordinary reality."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from NO ORDINARY ANGEL by Susan R. Garrett Copyright © 2008 by Susan R. Garrett. Excerpted by permission.
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