OUT OF PLACE ANGEL [R, 12-11-25]

 

THE OUT OF PLACE ANGEL--A.D.

John Robert McFarland

[Mentioning my story about the out of place angel in the column for 12-8-25, reminded me that I have a copy of it that I could share. It’s 2000 words instead of my usual 500, but, if you have the time, it’s a fun story.]

            "Miranda, for heaven's sake, get up here in the front row where you belong."

            Gabriel, the Archangel, and Director of Special Music for The Heavenly Host, heaven's special choir, tried to sound gruff.  It's not easy to sound gruff if your voice is heavenly, however, and Gabriel had a most heavenly voice.  He also had a special affection for Miranda, the little front row angel, and he almost always ended up laughing whenever he looked at her. 

            Miranda was always out of place, and everything about Miranda was out of place.  Her wings were usually on upside down.  Her angel-hair gown was inside out.  She either wore her halo as a bracelet or used it as a hula hoop.  Her halo always fell off when she put it on her head, because Miranda flew around so fast it couldn't keep up.

            "But, Gabriel, we like to have Miranda back here with us," sang a thousand heavenly bass voices from the back row.

            "I know, I know," sighed Gabriel, "but Christmas is coming, and we must be ready.  Miranda will have to be in the front row or she won't be able to see me wave my wings to direct the heavenly host, and she'll get the words out of place.  Besides, I want her where the shepherds can see her.  I don't think they'll be afraid if they see a little angel like Miranda singing to them.

            Reluctantly the basses handed Miranda down to the tenors, who handed her to the altos, who handed her to the sopranos, who handed her to Gabriel.  Miranda grinned all the way. Gabriel placed her in the front row, a row of one, just for her, right in front of where he was directing the heavenly host.

            "Now," he said, "I can keep my eye on you."

            "What's a Christmas?" asked Miranda, angelically. 

            "Not 'a' Christmas, Miranda," corrected Gabriel.  "This is 'the' Christmas, the first one.  God is going to send Jesus to earth, to be born there as a little baby, to live with the earth people and the earth animals and the earth itself and to teach them how to live well.  We have to announce it on earth when it happens."

            "All right, Host," he continued, "let's see if we can get it really loud this time."

            Gabriel turned to face an imaginary audience and joyously proclaimed his solo part:  "Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.  And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger."

            And suddenly there behind Gabriel was The Heavenly Host, including Miranda, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among people with whom God is pleased."

            Miranda shivered with excitement.  It was going to be the greatest thing that ever happened on earth, and she would be a part of it!  She silently mouthed the words along with Gabriel on his part; they had practiced so much that she knew them by heart.

            She could hardly wait, but Christmas was not quite ready yet.  There were many other preparations to be made.  Also, the choir could not just practice all the time.  The regular routine of heaven had to go on.  There was harping and listening to the prayers from around the universe and silently encouraging the creatures on all the planets to do good.  Of course, Miranda had her own special pursuits, such as playing horseshoes with her halo.

            Wouldn't you know it?  One day Miranda was rolling her halo down one of the streets of gold and it hit a bump and just sailed away.  She went running after it, but it was rolling so fast it seemed like it was aeons before she caught up with it.  (An "aeon" is a very, very long time, almost as long as an eternity.)  Then she was so tired when she finally got it that instead of flying back on her own, she waited for a cloud that was going her way.  When she got back, heaven seemed very quiet. Only the seraphim were around.  A seraph is one of the very most important of all the angels, so important that it has three pair of wings.  All of the seraphim were always happy to chat with Miranda, though.

            "Where is everybody?" she asked one of the seraphim.  "Why is it so quiet?"

            "Why, it's Christmas time," said the seraph.  "Gabriel and The Heavenly Host have gone to earth to announce the birth of Jesus as one of the earth people.  Say, Miranda, I thought you were in The Heavenly Host."

            Poor Miranda!  Out of place again!  She was supposed to be in the front row of the choir that was announcing the birth of Jesus, and here she was, stuck in heaven.  She peeked over the edge of a cloud.  It was getting dark down on earth, and she thought she could just make out the glow of The Heavenly Host as it started for its one night stand in the world.

            Then, an idea came to her!  She could go fast, so fast even her halo could not keep up with her.  Why, she would just fly down to earth and get there before they started singing and be part of The Heavenly Host yet!  She grabbed her halo and jumped off the cloud and started flying to earth as fast as her little wings would carry her.  As she flew, she sang her part over, so she would be ready.

            Then, she remembered that she hadn't listened very carefully when Gabriel told the choir about where they would be going.  What was the name of the town?  B...  It began with a 'B,' she was pretty sure of that.  Well, she knew they were supposed to make the announcement to shepherds.  She would just find the town that had the name that began with 'B,' and she would look for shepherds, and that was where The Heavenly Host would have to be.

            Finding the choir did not turn out to be as easy as Miranda thought, however.  She went to a town where the name began with 'B.'  Bombasa was its name. She found some men who looked like shepherds.  They were black.  They seemed to be watching creatures that were more like gazelles than like sheep.

            "Have you seen The Heavenly Host around here?" she asked them.

            "No Heavenly Host around here," they replied.  "Who in the world are you?"

            "Well, I'm not exactly in the world," said Miranda, "except for right now.  You see, I'm an angel, and I have a special message for some shepherds."

            "Well, we're shepherds, sort of.  What's the message?"

            Miranda wasn't sure if she should give the message unless Gabriel and the choir were there, too, but what if they had gotten lost?  Without the message, Christmas would never come.  So she decided to go ahead and give it.  After all, she knew Gabriel's part and the choir's words, too.

            She recited all of it to the black shepherds, about not being afraid and about glory to God and peace among people and the baby.  When she was done, they applauded politely, but they looked a bit skeptical.

            "Where is this baby, anyway?," they asked.

            "Isn't this the town that begins with a 'B'?," asked Miranda.

            "Yes," they told her.  "That's Bombasa there."

            "Well, then," she said, "You just go in there and find a new-born baby that's born in a manger, and you'll have the right one."

            Miranda left them and flew around the world a little more to see if she could find Gabriel and the other angels.  She did not find The Heavenly Host, but she did find more towns that had names beginning with 'B.'  Miranda became confused.  What if Bombasa were not the right one after all?  So she stopped at every 'B' town on earth. 

            At Bahrain she found Arab shepherds in long flowing robes.  At Bavariaburg she gave the message to white shepherds dressed

in wolf skins.  At Beijung she talked to yellow shepherds.  In Bali-Bali she sang to brown shepherds who wore grass skirts.  At Bama-tuma she proclaimed the message to red shepherds, who watched over great herds of sheep that looked just like buffalo.  Oh, there were many more 'B' towns, and Miranda went to every one of them.  Wherever she went, she sent the shepherds into the nearby village to look for the newborn babies, telling them, "There you'll find God's Christmas present to you."

            Finally dawn was beginning to break, and Miranda was exhausted.  She had flown and proclaimed and praised God and given directions all night.  She could hardly move, but she caught onto the tail of a high wind that was going her way and just let it pull her back home.

            When she got to heaven, a big party was going on.  Gabriel and the choir were singing heavenly songs, and every angel in the place was dancing around just having a great time.

            "Well," thought Miranda, "they must have heard about the way I saved the day for them.  It's a good thing I got there to earth, since they obviously lost the way and didn't get the message proclaimed."

            When Miranda walked into the party, Gabriel suddenly stopped the singing and stared at her.

            "Where in the world have you been?" he asked.  "It came time for Christmas, and you were out of place, so we had to go on without you."

            "Oh, don't worry," replied Miranda, with a wave of her wrist.  "I went to earth and found out you missed the 'B' town, so I did it for you."

            "You did what?" asked the entire Host of Heaven together.

            "I went to the 'B' town and told them about peace on earth and God's present to them."

            Miranda was beginning to feel a little uneasy.  She did not know if she should tell them she had gone to all the 'B' towns.

            "You did what?," cried Gabriel.  "You weren't there.  We went to Bethlehem and proclaimed the message, like we were supposed to.  We didn't see you."

            Bethlehem!  That was the name of the place.  Oh, oh!  Poor Miranda...  out of place again...  It was the one 'B' town she had missed.

            "Uh, I'm pretty tired," said Miranda.  "I think I'll just go take a nap..."

            "Wait a minute," cried Gabriel.  "What 'B' town did you go to?"          "Well, actually all of them," admitted Miranda. "Except for Bethlehem..."

            Gabriel and the rest of the angels just stared at her.  They could not believe it.  How could she, when God's gift to the world had been so carefully planned?  This one little angel had messed up everything, by being out of place, as usual!

            Miranda began to cry.  She knew what they were thinking, and they were right.  She wasn't a good angel.  She was always out of place, and now she had done everything wrong and ruined God's surprise.  She took off her halo and started to trudge off to the farthest star in all the universe.  "At least I can't do any more damage way out there," she thought.

            Then a voice echoed through the heavens.  It was very loud, but very soft.  It was very deep, but very high.  It was very strong, but very gentle.  It was the voice of God.

            "Where are you going, little Miranda?," asked the divine voice.

            "I'm going where I won't be out of place anymore," sniffed Miranda.  "I ruined your whole plan for earth and Christmas because I went to all the wrong places.  I'm sorry."

            "Oh, ho, ho," laughed God.  "Miranda, by getting out of place, you did everything right.  You're about thirty earth years too soon, maybe, but that's all right.  My gift is for all the people on earth, everywhere."

            "But I sent them to all those babies," sobbed Miranda.  "They'll think every one of them is your special Christmas gift.  How will they know the true one?"

            "Every one of those babies is my special Christmas gift," said the voice of God.  "There is no baby that is out of place, Miranda.  Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in my sight.  You proclaimed the message everywhere, Miranda, so maybe you did it better even than Gabriel and the choir.  Perhaps I should make you Director of The Heavenly Host."

            "Oh, no," cried Miranda, running to Gabriel and linking his big arm with her little one through her halo.  "That's Gabriel's job.  If I did that, then there would be no one to do my job."

            "Uh, I hate to mention this, Miranda," came the voice of God, "but just what is your job, anyway?"

            "Why, being out of place, of course," smiled Miranda.

            God and all the hosts of heaven laughed for eons and eons.

 

 

 

ANGELS [M, 12-8-25]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life From the Years of Winter—ANGELS [M, 12-8-25]

 

Angels. There is a lot of talk about them, but not by me. There has been much thought about them and songs and sermons and stories, but not by me. [1]

I don’t know anything about them. I haven’t experienced them. There is a lot of talk about them in the Bible and in the history of the church, but to me it is just talk. It’s been easier for me simply to ignore them. I can’t recall anyone every complaining, ever saying, “Why don’t you preach about angels?”

It is only now, when I am far beyond any possibility of mounting a pulpit, that it occurs to me that I really should have tried to say something useful about angels along the way. After all, there is all that talk about them in the Bible. I’m not sure that a preacher should be allowed to get away with simply ignoring a topic like angels.

Especially in the Christmas season, when angels play a rather important part in the Christmas pageant.

I always tried to preach the whole gospel, not just my favorite topics. That’s the point of the lectionary—the listing of different scriptures for each Sunday of the church year. We preach the lections designated, rather than picking out our own, to keep us from being Johnny One Note.

In using the lectionary, I have always preached first on the Gospel reading. We are Christians, after all. We need first to hear the story of Christ.

If for some reason I felt the Gospel reading for the day was inappropriate, maybe too shop-worn, I next chose whichever of the readings was hardest for me to understand and apply. I figured if it were hard for me, it probably was hard for the rest of the congregation, too, so I should spend time on it. Most of the time the Gospel lesson was hard enough to understand that it qualified for sermon status on both counts.

There may have been lectionary readings about angels, but I don’t recall any. Sure, they appear in plenty of readings, like Christmas, where they tell the shepherds about Jesus. But they aren’t the main characters. That’s Jesus, and I was always ready to preach about Jesus.

So what now, when “I ain’t gonna need this house no longer?” One of the lines in that great Sturt Hamblen song is “I see an angel peeking through a broken window pane.”

The idea seems to be that we’re going to have to deal with angels when we die. So I’d better apologize for ignoring them all these years, both to my congregations and to the angels. I don’t want angels harping at me for eternity.

John Robert McFarland

1] I actually did write a book about angels, called “The Out of Place Angel,” about the little angel, Miranda, who was supposed to go with the heavenly host to proclaim the birth of Jesus, but she missed the flight, since she was always out of place. She went on her own to try to catch up with the heavenly host, but couldn’t remember where they were going. So she just went all over the world, proclaiming the birth of Christ wherever she saw a baby being born. It was beautifully illustrated by the late, great Shelly Rasche, but we never found a publisher for it. You can find Shelly's art on line.

SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR [F, 12-5-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Rememberer—SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR [F, 12-5-25]

 

Christmas is a time when we travel long distances to stay in a hotel in the town where we are visiting family. Now. Not when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, when my family visited relatives, or they visited us, there were never enough beds, so we kids slept on the floor. Sometimes the grown-ups did, too, according to how many folks had crowded into the modest homes most of us lived in. Often the hosts gave up their bed to the visiting grown-ups [not the kids!] and slept on the floor with us.

We didn’t think of it as a hardship, even Aunt Ginny [Virginia], who was no spring chicken even when she married the older bachelor farmer, George Redinbo, and less so when she gave birth to Bobby and then Ronnie.

Sleeping on the floor was an adventure, and worth it to be part of a big extended family that would not have been able to get together if we’d had to pay somebody to put us up…and put up with us.

When morning came, we gathered up the sheets and blankets and pillows and put them aside for the next night, and we helped fix breakfast, and we started planning the day together.

Even now, in this modern time, when people have larger houses but less room for guests, and we have more money and more hotels, when we were still able to travel, Helen and I sometimes spent the night with friends, and vice versa. We are blessed with good friends. They are good hosts.

It’s still a special time, even though none of us sleep on the floor. [In part, because once down, we would not be able to get up again.]

The problem with Christians today is that so few of us are willing to sleep on the floor. When you sleep on the floor in order to be together with others in the family or friendship community, you are sharing the hosting, and Christians are called to be hosts, not just guests, in the world.

Hosting is a shared responsibility. We don’t say, “Oh, you poor worldly misfits, we’ll give you a place to sleep.” We say, “We’ll share the floor with you.” That is what good hosts do.

And, if you can’t get with the floor-sleeping metaphor, whatever you think hosting is, the bottom line is that Christians are called to be hosts in the world. Jesus said, “I am among you as one who serves.” [Luke 22:27.]

John Robert McFarland

 

 

HE LAST PLACE ON EARTH [T, 12-2-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH [T, 12-2-25]

It’s not surprising that God threw Adam and Eve out of The Garden of Eden. After all, God had created A&E because God was lonely, and then A&E went and acted like they had created themselves and had no need of God. [Genesis 1:26-28]

When A&E were thrown out of Eden, they were homeless. No, not just unhoused. “Unhoused” means you don’t have a house. Homeless means you don’t have a home.

They tried renting. They found a new place to dwell. Turned out to be down at the end of Lonely Street. Definitely no Garden.

They had no choice but to keep looking for some homeless shelter that would take them in. Sure, they thought about sneaking back into Eden while God wasn’t looking, but no, they could not get back in. There was a flaming sword at the eastern gate. They’d get chopped up if they tried to go back. They were the first to day, “You can’t go home again.”

They wandered for eons, east of Eden, throughout the world, from Africa to Europe and Asia and the Americas, “from earth’s wide bounds to ocean’s farthest coasts,” looking for another Eden.

When they had tried every decent place on earth, they were finally so weary, so footworn, they were willing to take anything, even the last place on earth. That turned out to be a woebegone town called Bethlehem. Our of options, A&E had found a new home.

In Advent, preachers and theologians talk about readiness. Not just using Advent to get ready for Christmas, which is the appearance of God in the world in human form, Emmanuel. We say that Christ did not appear until the time was right, when all was in readiness.

In worship, we reenact the history of the relationship between God and the creation, from the big bang to resurrection. First we acknowledge that “…it is God who has created us and not we ourselves.” [Psalm 100:3] Then we confess that we act, though, like A&E, like we really did create ourselves, that we have no need of God. [That’s called sinning.] Then we acknowledge that God has made a new creation in Jesus Christ, and, finally, we commit ourselves to live as part of that new creation.

In Advent worship, we are essentially reenacting the history of the world from the Garden of Eden up to the birth in Bethlehem, from the time of “the fall” up to the new creation.

What does it mean to say that the time was right, that finally the world was ready for Christ?

Karl Jung says that there is a “collective unconscious,” an unconscious consciousness that all humans share. We are all Adam and Eve. In Bethlehem, A&E finally learned that they could not go back to Eden, but that they could go back to God, that the lonely God was still hoping for companionship, still looking for love, so much so that God was waiting for A&E, in that stable in Bethlehem.

That happens when all is in readiness, not when God is ready, but when we are ready. That’s often when we’ve tried everything but God first. That’s okay with God. God is always ready.

John Robert McFarland

To get a picture to accompany this column, I Googled “Last place on earth.” Google says it’s Duluth, Minnesota!

 

THE IMPORTANCE OF DEAD ENDS [Sun, 11-30-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE IMPORTANCE OF DEAD ENDS [Sun, 11-30-25]

 

Some of the most important events of my life were dead ends. Maybe yours, too.

I wanted to be an inner-city preacher. In college, I was fascinated by the work of William Stringfellow and others in New York’s East Harlem Protestant Parish. They were serious Christians, trying to live out the Jesus lifestyle in a radical way. I thought that since I had grown up in poverty, I could pastor well others who were caught in that plight. But a summer of social work [Howell Neighborhood House] and preaching in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago [the Wycliffe & Halstead Street Churches] taught me that rural poverty and urban poverty are very different. I did not fit in the city. I had no idea what to do next, but I knew my life would not be in the inner city. That was a dead end.

As I began to think that I was a good preacher, I decided I should be a seminary professor of preaching. So, in addition to my three-year seminary degree, I did another three years of graduate school to get the necessary union card—an academic doctorate. But all that work so that I could stand at a podium convinced me that my call was to stand in a pulpit. I learned that my call had been to preach, not to teach. All that academic work was a dead end.

As a parish pastor, I thought it would be neat to be sought after as a pastoral counselor. My seminary counseling professor was Carroll Wise, who had joined Anton Boisen in initiating the pastoral counseling movement, “human help for human hurt,” as he used to say. I liked the idea of sitting in a big chair in my study and listening to people tell me their problems and then giving them solutions. With congregational preaching, you never knew if anything you said was helpful. In one-to-one counseling, it was easier to measure your success. Either she gave up drinking or she didn’t. Either they decided to stay in their marriage or they didn’t. Either he cheered up or he didn’t. [Psychologist joke: He said he was depressed, so I told him to cheer up.]

So I took courses on psychology ad counseling, and read books about psych and counseling, and went to psychology seminars about counseling. But I was a useless therapist. Another dead end.

It turned out that I was a terrible counselor but a pretty good pastor.

Pastors walk the walk, not just talk the talk. They go through stuff with people, whether the stuff be good or bad. I could do that. Counselors do not help folks by giving solutions, the way a physician writes a prescription on a pad. That doesn’t work. But I did not have the patience to counsel. I’m a problem solver. If someone presented a problem to me, I wanted a solution. Now.

When I gave up sitting in the big chair and sagely nodding and providing a prescription after 45 minutes, and started walking through the morass with folks without telling them where to step, I became a useful pastor. 

But my dead ends were not wasted. First, of course, they taught me where I really belonged. They also taught me about my limitations. Knowing your limits is as important as knowing your skills. And what I learned as I went down those dead-end roads was useful to me, both personally and professionally.

So, even though we’re past the one day a year that is designated for giving thanks, I give thanks for my dead ends. They cost me a lot of time, but they were important in helping me be who I was really called to be.

John Robert McFarland

A SLIGHTLY OBSCURE THANKSGIVING POEM [F, 11-27-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—A SLIGHTLY OBSCURE THANKSGIVING POEM [F, 11-27-25]

 

On this day of requisitioned Thanks

I am glad my life

is drawing to a close

 

Don’t get me wrong; I love

memories and puppies

and trees that weather

storms

 

But we can give thanks

in prose and prayer

only a finite number

before the infinite appears

to beckon with new

 

memories and puppies and trees

to weather storms

 

John Robert McFarland

EMOTIONAL TRUST [M, 11-24-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--EMOTIONAL TRUST [M, 11-24-25]

 

We were visiting a daughter. She had been invited to a gathering of friends and didn’t want to miss it so she took us along, even though we were old and Methodist, and not likely to fit in with a bunch of Roman Catholics in their thirties and forties.

It was a pleasant occasion, back yard cookout on an evening of good weather. We were the oldest people there. Our daughter’s friends were being very careful around us, in a respectful way, for they were all Catholics, and they knew that I was a Methodist preacher. The host had gone to the university where I did my doctoral work, so he even introduced me to everyone as a theologian, not just as a preacher.

At one point I was sitting in a circle of 7 or 8 women. They sort of forgot about me, except for the woman beside me, who seemed especially uneasy as the subject turned to abortion. Everyone had an opinion, an uninformed opinion, an anecdotal opinion, different from every other opinion. They were all quite adamant that their opinion was best because it was backed up by a story they had heard from the friend of a cousin whose brother had been a priest. The woman beside me whispered, “Shouldn’t you say something about this?”

“I’m just a theologian,” I replied. She thought for a moment, then looked a bit sad as she said, “Oh, yeah…”

In this age of internet and social media, we not only ignore the educated, the informed, the specialists, but we don’t trust them. Their opinions count for less than those of the uneducated, uninformed, friends of cousins, and anonymous posters on the web.

Trust is now upside down. We now trust people who are ignorant or even people who are known liars. We mistrust people who are educated about a subject, people who rely on facts.

Trust now is based not on reality but on emotion. Trust is equated with emotional comfort.

It’s all Garrison Keillor’s fault. In his Lake Wobegon, all the children were above average. Those children are grown up now. They’ve accepted for so long that they are above average that they don’t need experts or specialists.

They are those whose gravestones will read, “I did my own research.”

Like the first emotional task of a baby, the last emotional task of an old person is learning to trust. A baby has to learn to trust parents and other care givers, who are stand-ins for God. An old person has to trust some care givers, yes, but they aren’t stand-ins for God. We are faced directly now with God. Shall we trust God for what is real and true, or shall we trust what we get from the internet, or a cousin’s friend?

You can tell the difference between true trust, trust in God and false trust by the way it makes you feel. False trust makes you feel comfortable. Trust in God makes you feel real.

John Robert McFarland