O God of our salvation, grant us to trust that
because of your grace, all shall be well ☩
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
There are things in life and faith that we wonder about, even if we do not worry about them; things that we are curious about or questions that we have for which the answer is not really a make-or-break issue. That’s not to say such topics are not important and can’t have an impact on us, it’s just that they aren’t foundational to how we live life and follow Jesus. Given the season and today’s readings, I want to consider such a topic: the virgin birth.
To
start, let’s define terms – the virgin birth means that Jesus was not made or
born in the way that we were. For better or worse, we all have two earthly
parents, but Jesus is different. He was not created from the cells of Mary or
Jospeh, rather Jesus was “incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin
Mary,” as the Creed puts it. I’m not saying that you have to believe this in a
literal way, though you’re most welcome to, I’m simply defining the term in a
way that is appropriate for churchgoers of all ages. The virgin birth is a way
of saying that the conception and birth of Jesus happened in a unique way. The
concept of the virgin birth is not about what Mary did or did not do prior to
Jesus’ birth. The doctrine of the virgin birth isn’t even really a doctrine
about Mary, it’s about the power of the Holy Spirit.
I
hope that none of you have ever lost sleep pondering the question of whether or
not Jesus was born of a virgin, but it’s still an important question, because
the answer, as is said of Mary in the Hail Mary prayer, is full of grace.
It’s
a doctrine that is often debated. People who want to dismiss Christianity as
being a fairy tale will often bring it up as the scoff, “They believe in stuff
as crazy as virgins giving birth.” One solution is for Christians to respond with
something like, “Well, maybe some Christians take everything literally, but I’m
not one of those Christians” or “Sure, people used to think that before we
understood how gestation and biology work, but no one takes that seriously
anymore.” Perhaps you’ve even heard a priest, or yourself, give such a
response.
I
certainly understand those sorts of responses and though I’d never say something
like that today, I might well have a decade ago. The issue with simply
dismissing the idea of the virgin birth is that, dismissed along with it, is such
tremendous grace, which I’ll say more about later. At this point though, let’s
sit with the idea of the virgin birth to let it speak to us instead of us
lining up to tell that doctrine what we think of it.
A
bit more critically instead of being reactive, some dismiss the idea of the
virgin birth as a pagan legend that the Gospel writers picked up and used to
say something like “See, our Messiah is just as special as your deity.” Both
Matthew and Luke who wrote the two nativity stories in Scripture were Jewish,
and Jews did not think much of pagan legends. Matthew hearing the propaganda
that Caesar was born by divine intervention and thinking “Oh, that’s a good idea,
I’ll work that in” is absurd. Faithful Jews wanted to distance themselves from
pagan myths, not mimic them. So, if we choose to embrace the virgin birth, we are
not adopting pagan myths, but rather are opening ourselves to a grace that is beyond
our ability to fully comprehend.
Others
are, rightly, weary of affirming the virgin birth because of the unchristian and
degrading “purity culture” that often goes with it. A lot of people have been hurt
and harmed by being told that, because of their past, they are no longer good,
pure, or worthy. And this isn’t only about the romantic past, but all kinds of
things that we have done. Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the world. Full stop. No asterisks or exceptions. After all, it was the
angel of the Lord who said that “You are to name him Jesus,” and the name “Jesus”
means “God saves,” “for he will save his people from their sins.” No matter
what you have done, no matter what you have not done, your sins are forgiven.
That does not mean that we do not have reconciliation and restitution to do to
rebuild relationships that we have broken, but our sins are not counted against
us. We are not defined by our mistakes, we are not the worst thing we have ever
done. Rather we are the beloved, redeemed, and forgiven people of God. God’s messenger
proclaimed this purity before God, so who are we to say otherwise?
Because
of our over-sexualized culture though, we are uncomfortable anytime the topic
is even alluded to. That is our problem, not Scripture’s. The virgin birth is
not a moral statement, it is about the power of God to make a way out of no
way. All of the wrong done by the Church to people in name of behavior control,
purity culture, and shame over our bodies is lamentable, and if you have received
that harm, in the name of the Church, I am sorry for that.
I am always faithful to
the Tradition that we have received, and so I do confidently say “the virgin
Mary” in the Creed and prayers when warranted, but I don’t gratuitously use
that title – because it’s not the point. Mary, nor any woman, should not be
reduced to the history of her intimate relationships. We don’t talk about the
virgin Paul, so if that description is about purity, then perhaps we should use
it more carefully. The virgin birth isn’t a commentary on morality, and just because
many abuse it in that way to advance their own agendas does not mean that we
should reject it.
Another
objection to virgin birth is more academic. It gets rather technical because we
have to talk about the translation of Hebrew words into Greek, and then into English,
and also exploring the range of meanings that each of those words carry. And as
much fun as a linguistic lesson might be, that’s not the Gospel that I want to
share this morning. The basic gist of the argument is this – the word used in
Isaiah, which Matthew quotes, means something like “maiden” or “young girl” and
does not necessarily correlate to what she has or has not done. Furthermore,
the prophecy of Isaiah was not given so that the people of Israel would have
hope that one day, centuries later, a Messiah would be born after they had all
died and that this Messiah would be divinely conceived.
Isaiah’s
prophecy comes in the context of political struggles and warfare, and the word
of hope given by God to the people through Isaiah is a present hope. The
meaning of the prophecy is that because God will redeem the people, life will
go on. Things as normal as young women having babies will continue; this is not
the end. The sign that the Lord is giving to Ahaz is that by the time the young
woman has a child and that child is old enough to eat curds and honey, the dread
of warfare will be over. It’s a prophecy that says “this suffering will not
last forever.” Yes, by the power of the Holy Spirit who inspired Isaiah, this
prophecy might mean something more than Isaiah could realize, but it does not
mean less than that either.
Therefore,
some will dismiss the idea of the virgin birth saying that the word is actually
“young girl” and it wasn’t about the future as much as the present. The argument
is that Matthew picked up the word in Hebrew and used a more restrictive
translation that gets us to “virgin” instead of “young woman.” On linguistic grounds,
some will dismiss the whole conversation about the virgin birth as a mistranslation
gone awry. And, sure, maybe Isaiah never meant his prophecy to be taken this
way, but when has God ever been limited by our understanding?
The
last objection that I’ll mention is one that I’ve been alluded to throughout
Advent – that we live in a disenchanted world. In short, we have a poverty of
imagination because our understanding of science doesn’t allow for the birth of
a child without certain biological processes happening first. But I don’t think
any of us have gotten up and dressed to come and worship a deity that is limited
by our imaginations on an otherwise perfectly good Sunday morning.
Those
are some of the reasons why people, even of good faith, dismiss the idea of the
virgin birth. I’m not going to present the other side and try to convince you
why you shouldn’t cross your fingers at that part of the Creed. Instead, I want
to talk about the grace that comes through this doctrine.
And
we have to always start from a place of humble unknowing. We do not know the
mind of God. I don’t know that we would have picked Israel to be the chosen people,
but God did. None of us would have come up with “crucified Messiah” as the path
to salvation. So if the One who created the stars, galaxies, laws of physics,
and all living things, and who sustains all things, and redeems all things has
decided it best to be born into creation through the same Holy Spirit who gives
us life, who enables people to seek forgiveness, who inspires people to lay
down their lives in love for others, who are we to say “But that doesn’t make
sense?” None of life makes sense – so we have to give up our need to be in
charge and have all the answers.
What
the virgin birth shows us is that it’s all about grace. God’s salvation does
not depend on the actions of men and women. God is not sitting around and
waiting for us to open the right doors and windows, but rather God is the one
who split the Red Sea so that the people could escape slavery in Egypt. God is
the one who shut the mouths of the lions while Daniel was in their den. God is
the one who gave children to Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Hannah, Ruth, and Elizabeth.
God is the one who gave strength to David, Esther, and Judith to stand up
against their enemies of Israel. God is the one who led Rosa Parks to sit down
and Martin Luther King to stand up. God is the one who paved the way for truth
and reconciliation in South Africa. God is the one who helps addicts put down
the bottles and pills. God is the one who takes jealousy and stingy people and
turns us into cheerful and generous givers. God is the one who came to us a
Jewish man who lived briefly, died violently, and rose unexpectedly on the
third day. And while all of those feats involved human participation, none of
them required any human initiative.
God
is always the first mover. Before we plan anything, God is. Before we say
anything, God was. Before we do something, God will be. The virgin birth is a doctrine
of grace and is about the sovereignty of God to make a way out of no way, and
to be gracious and loving enough to include us in our own salvation. It’s not about
biology, it’s about God’s unwavering commitment to us, about God always being
the one who takes the initiative to save us, about God’s refusal to abandon us
to our own devices.
And
there’s also grace in what, genetically speaking, the virgin birth suggests.
Matthew makes it clear that the linkage of Jesus as the fulfillment of the
promise to David is fulfilled through Joseph. But it’s clear that Joseph is not
the father. Meaning that the promises of God do not depend on us getting things
literally and exactly right. This grace reminds us of God’s gracious adoption of
us all. Romans speaks of the “spirit of adoption in which we are grafted into
the vine of Israel,” Ephesians says that “God destined us for adoption through Jesus
Christ,” Galatians reads that “we are redeemed so that we might receive
adoption as God’s children. In other words, God has chosen us.
We
don’t have to have the right lineage, we don’t have to have gotten everything
correct, we don’t have to be perfect people to be loved by God because we are
chosen, adopted by God. Joseph adopts Jesus and thereby bringing him into the
lineage of David just as God has adopted us all and brought us into the
blessing of being God’s chosen and beloved community. That’s what the virgin
birth is all about – a God who doesn’t worry about the limits of humanity, but
who transcends all boundaries to redeem us.
Thanks be to God that we are
loved by a God who would do and continues to do things so gracious, audacious,
and unlikely as to do something beyond our ability to understand in order to
save us.
