When the angel spoke to the Shepherds at the first Christmas, the glory of the Lord shone and the Shepherds heard this: “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people.”
When we’ve heard or seen something often enough, we tend to lose the wonder and awe of it. Recently I was in a cafe in Tetbury. While I queued up to order at this obviously very popular place a child went from his Mum’s side in front of me to look at a strange object close to us. He recognised the QWERTY keyboard on it, but the rest was alien to him. Fascinated, he pressed a key and a bit of metal popped up from inside the machine. He tried another key, and a different bit of metal appeared. He tried three keys at once, and three bits of metal appeared (and got stuck together). He was fascinated. ‘What is it?’, he asked, but his Mum was talking. He tried some more keys, but nothing seemed to happen. Being a sympathetic sort of person, I walked across to the typewriter he was playing with, untangled the arms, and said ‘Its a typewriter. It used to be used to write letters and books before computers came along.’ By this time his mother had noticed what was going on, and she started to explain how it all worked. He was fascinated.
The cafe was actually full of typewriters of various ages. I’m not sure why, but I guess it was just part of their ‘theme’. Those of us ‘of a certain age’ hardly noticed them. Yet to those from a younger generation who had never seen anything like them before they were fascinating, interesting, and intriguing. But (here’s the point), if I hadn’t realised what the child did not know, if I hadn’t spoken about it, if his Mum hadn’t taken up the conversation and explained more, it would just have been a bit of ‘installation art’ – of interest, but with no real value or purpose.
When the Angel announced Jesus’ birth, the announcement said, first of all, that it was ‘news’. The Greek word used there is euaggelizó which is a compound word: eú, “good, well” and angell?, “announce, herald”. A herald brought vital information that was previously unknown. And today, though it may seem so familiar, we’re also heralds of that ‘news’ … there is a world out there who, like that boy in the cafe, see a ‘thing’ which they don’t understand and there is news we still have to tell.
The Angel secondly said that it was ‘good news’ … again it’s all part of that one word ‘euaggelizó’. It means ‘the complete good message’. That’s why the Angel goes on to explain what the good news is: ‘Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you: He is Christ the Lord’. This is what we need to explain to people. When the mother was explaining the typewriter to the boy she said ‘those metal sticks – they have letters on the end’. I didn’t think to explain that! I kind of assumed he’d know it. But the boy said ‘Oh!’, and looked at the metal letters on the end of the sticks. The mother then explained about the inked ribbon and how the letters hit the ribbon to put the letters image on the paper. He was fascinated, and understood how it worked. Christmas has a message that is amazing news of sins forgiven, life offered, relationship with God, and eternal hope. So few have any idea of the reality of that message this Christmas. What an incredible opportunity to share ‘good news’ we are offered each Christmas!
How are you going to be heralds of the good news of Jesus this Christmas?
Finally, you’ll see that the Greek word looks rather like the English word ‘evangelist’. And that’s because that’s where the English word comes from. This Angel was an ‘evangelist’ … the good news of Jesus was proclaimed by him. Christmas provides us with this incredible opportunity to obey God’s call to use to be his witnesses, to be heralds of the good news. Whether it is sitting down to read a book about the Christmas story to your children (or grand-children), asking a question of a friend like ‘When did you first hear about the real story of Christmas?’ and using the opportunity to explain what they probably don’t know, or sending a Christmas card that explains the real story, this is a time when you can help take people from ‘interest’ to ‘amazement’. How are you going to be heralds of the good news of Jesus this Christmas?