Born of a Virgin

Text: Luke 1:26-42

One thing we tend to read over at Christmas time is that Jesus was born with questionable paternity and this had to have been a stigma that followed him all his life.  To us the story goes that the archangel Gabriel appeared to a very young Jewish girl of Nazareth named Mary betrothed to a much older man named Joseph and told her that God had chosen her to be the mother of the Messiah, the anointed king who would deliver the Jewish people.  Mary asked how since she had never done the prerequisite activity.  Gabriel told her that the Holy Spirit would overshadow her and she would become pregnant with the Son of God.  “I am the Lord’s servant,” she said, “Let it be with me as you have said.”  That’s pretty, “Wow!” to us.  Yet, to Mary’s community the story was probably that her family noticed the baby bump and her father was very vocal in demanding to know who the father was so that she could be married to him and save the family honour.  Then the question of who the father was made its rounds at the whisper posts.  Paternity options were rape, a fling, incest, or Joseph.  It wasn’t Joseph for he was ready to end the betrothal yet after his own angel moment; he decides to go ahead with it.  Even so, Mary went to stay with Cousin Elizabeth.  Wink. 

Jesus’ birth is something that many Christian’s have a difficult time with and it has nothing to do with the negative stigma attached to having questionable paternity.  Many in the church actually find labelling Jesus “illegitimate” more plausible than to proclaim that he was born of a virgin.  In the academic world, there are those who say that the early church invented this story of Jesus being born of a virgin in an attempt to legitimate his divinity in the Greco-Roman world.  How do you that? How do you make a man into the Son of God in the Greek world?  Well, you say that Zeus was his father.  Many compare the story of Jesus’ birth to the birth of Apollo who in Greek mythology was the son of Zeus by a human mother.  Roman mythology also liked to call the Roman emperor the Son of God and some emperors thought of themselves as a sort of incarnation of Apollo.  So, many academics say that the early church made up the story of the God of the Jews fathering Jesus as a Jewish version of the Apollo birth myth in order to claim that Jesus was greater than Caesar.  These academics will then go on to say that the early church had a leg to stand on because of the identity of Jesus’ real father being questionable.  And so, the official historical version determined in the university by the best scientific methods is that the virgin birth did not happen, Joseph was not Jesus’ real father, and that he was most likely the product of a fling, rape, or incest…or. And I’m sure someone is published somewhere claiming Mary was fertilized in vitro by aliens or time travelers.

The debate surrounding the Virgin Birth of Jesus exposes quite readily our culture’s pseudo-scientific presumption that God, if there is a God, does not get involved in his creation.  Miracles like that don’t happen.  Oddly, some will profess that God created this Creation out of nothing and yet in the same breath deny that God initiated New Creation in the womb of Mary, New Creation where God has mingled created matter with his very self in order to reveal himself through it and to heal it of sin and death.  Many think that the doctrine of the virgin birth is really not all that important in the scheme of things.  Truly, when was the last time you heard a sermon on it?  But, consider this; if there was no real, historical virgin birth, then there is no new humanity that came into existence as Jesus of Nazareth, no humanity in union with God, and thus no salvation.  Jesus Christ is the first born of the New Creation, a new humanity in perfect union with God (Col. 1:18; Rom. 8:29).  

The virgin birth of Jesus Christ is as essential to God’s means of saving his creation as the cross and resurrection.  Humanity, (us, you and me, and everybody) which has been dehumanised through sin, now has a way opened up to being truly human in union with God in, with, and through Jesus Christ who is the true human in the midst of our inhumanity.  Humans in union with God in, with, and through Jesus the Son in the power and indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is the end of fallen humanity.  And let’s get BIG about this, it is even more so the end of the whole fallen Creation.  This union is then not only the end of fallen humanity but also the beginning of the new humanity and the New Creation that God will bring to its completion at Jesus’ return.  This means that because we are human we can share now in this new creative act that God has wrought in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit and that sharing in this creative act results in our in the present being liberated from the corruption and bondage that we have to sin in our fallen selves, relationships, and communities that only die and decay even when they are at their best.

The Virgin Birth of Jesus was a complete act of God’s grace showing us how he acts in our lives to save us.  It is all about God’s doings and nothing of our own.  God’s means of saving grace is that God the Son himself in the power of the Holy Spirit in union with humanity in the human Jesus, comes into this creation and into our fallen humanity being born as a baby, born of a woman, born a real human to be with us in our estrangement and to bring forth from it a new humanity healed and restored to being God’s image.  What this all means is that God’s saving of his creation and his beloved humanity by God the Son’s uniting himself to it/us initially in the power of the Holy Spirit as Jesus the Christ and now to us by our adoption as children of the Father in union with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit poured into us, all this is 100% God’s doing.  We do not earn it or say our cooperation with it makes it possible.  Gabriel telling Mary that she had found favour with the Lord didn’t mean she lived so righteously that God that God decided to make her pregnant with his Son, the Messiah.  There wasn’t a cult of virgins back then living righteously in an effort to gain the motherhood of the Messiah.  No, it was that in his grace for his own reasons God chose Mary and acted in her.  She could not say no to it and stop it.  She could only get on and live with it.  It was, “Mary, this is your life.  Now, go live it.”  

Jesus was utterly new humanity not born of the will or the agency of a human father, but solely of the will and agency of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The union of God the Son and a human embryo in Mary’s womb by the creating power of the Holy Spirit conceived the embryo that became Jesus the Christ.  In like manner our real union with God the Son in the Holy Spirit is the embryo of the New Creation and the New Humanity that is coming with the return of Jesus.  The question may arise as to what role our faith plays in all this.  Obviously, it is not our faith that makes God’s saving grace possible or a decision to believe that gets this grace applied to us.  Our human faith is not the agency of our salvation.  It is the response to it.  Faith, like the womb of Mary, is the empty vessel into which God pours his grace.  John of Damascus, a 7^th century monk and priest, said, “Mary conceived through the ear: she heard the Word and the Word spoken by the Holy Spirit in her ear begot himself in her and through her, and so the Word which Mary heard and received and obeyed became flesh of her flesh.”[1]  So it is with the Word of God that we proclaim in the Gospel.  The Word of the Saving Lordship of Jesus Christ through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit comes into us through the simple hearing of it and it goes to that part of us in which our ability to trust and be faithful is and begets saving faith in Jesus Christ in us by uniting us to him, creating an embryonic relationship with him in us that begins to grow and mature and make us to be more and more like him. 

Like pregnancy, some women say they knew the moment the baby was conceived, others knew only after certain changes began to happen within them, others in rare instances didn’t know until the baby was born.  Nevertheless, when a woman finds out she is pregnant for the health of the baby and of herself.  She must adjust her life to henceforth live to nurture this new life in her.  So, it is with new life in Christ.  Friends, Jesus Christ is Lord and our Saviour from the many bondages that sin gets us into whether they be good or bad.  He is Lord and Saviour of the entire Creation and this is very good news and entirely the work and the result of the Trinity’s love for us.  He is your Lord, your Saviour.  Friends, through no effort of your own and whether you perceive it or not you are now pregnant with the new life of Jesus Christ simply because I have proclaimed this good news to you.  How are you going to live now? for the nurturing of this new life or…?  Amen.

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[1] Torrance, Thomas F.; Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ; Robert T. Walker, Ed.; InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove; 2008; p. 101.

While You Are Waiting...

Text: 1 Thessalonians 1:5:16-24

            In our culture we view waiting as an unpleasant waste of time.  I believe this is largely because we’ve got some crazy ideas about time.  Particularly the belief that time is an article of private ownership.  As such, we spend our lives in the pursuit of that elusive bogey called, “My time” or “time to myself”.  For couples, we seek out “time for us” while families pursue “family time.”  We never seem to find that time.  We never seen to have enough time for anything we would truly wish to have more time.  We believe that our time is our own yet the reality of never having enough time for things we’d like to have time for seems to me to suggest that time is not ours to own.

Another crazy idea we have about time is that time is money.  We punch the time clock so that somebody is not only paying us for our skills, they are also buying a share of “our” time.  We do this because paying somebody for their time and skills is believed to be a viable alternative to slavery.  Thus, ownership of our time and skills is part of what we believe makes a person a freeperson.  Nevertheless, when we punch a time clock we do indeed sell our own selves into slavery for in essence we are saying for this period of time my skills will belong to whoever pays me for them.  It would make one think that as long as there is time there will be slavery. 

With respect to time spent waiting, to have to waste time waiting on something or someone amidst our worldview of time being an article of private ownership and a commodity to be bought and sold is in essence to enter into slavery for which there is no wage.  Waiting is slavery for which there is no wage.  Indeed, when we find ourselves having to wait on someone or something it becomes painfully obvious that our time belongs to someone who is not paying us for it.  How many times have we wanted to send a bill to the doctor for the two or more hours we’ve had to spend waiting to be seen?  What about the lines we have to stand in at the various government ministries in order to partake of the services that our taxes pay for.  We pay governments for services and they enslave us, indeed take us hostage, whenever we need to partake of those services.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a doctor actually show up early for an appointment or for government ministries to open up a little bit early for our convenience.  After all we are paying for them to serve us, are we not?  We own their time and skills, do we not? 

And then there are the greatest time-thieves all.  Wouldn’t you like to send a bill to Wal-Mart or Zehr’s and all these other big-box retailers who hold us as hostages by making us wait in line because they won’t spend the money to buy the time and skills of enough people to work those fifteen empty cash registers that are always unstaffed.  But, they don’t care. In their minds they bought our time by making us think they save us money.  That’s like saying, “Gee honey, I just got paid $5 for a half-hour’s worth of work standing in line at Wal-Mart and reading the National Enquirer.  Dream job, eh?  Pays $80 a day. Tax free.”

Waiting is a fact of life.  We don’t like it.  It makes us feel as if we’ve unwillingly sacrificed our personal freedom or been taken hostage.  It should strike us odd then that God would choose waiting on him as the primary means of shaping our character.  Indeed, in the Bible there is no such thing as private ownership of time.  There is no “my time,” “our time,” “family time” or “work time.”  There is only God’s time.  This phrase that we hear so often, “I just need a little time to go and find myself” is the language of fairy tales.  We don’t find ourselves in time.  We find ourselves in being found by God.  Our lives are hidden with Christ in God.  Therefore, we must wait for God to reveal us to ourselves in his time and however he sees fit to do it.  Time belongs to God and so we must undergo the discomfort of waiting on God to act for me and you, life, and history to make sense.  God gives us time.  It is a gift.  Therefore, time is not matter of ownership.  It is a matter of stewardship.  If we approach time from the standpoint of private ownership we become disillusioned not really knowing who we are or what we are here for. Yet, if we spend this time we’ve been entrusted with in waiting for God, he fills it with knowledge of himself and of ourselves.

To say that what we do with our time is a matter of stewardship is to say that what we do with our time matters.  Waiting in a world where time is viewed as a matter of private ownership and a commodity makes us feel as if our time is wasted, as if we are being bad stewards.  Truly nothing good is accomplished waiting in line at Wal-Mart.  On the other hand, if our waiting occurs in a world where time belongs to God every moment can be time well spent even if it is in the line at Wal-Mart.  In our passage today Paul tells us how to wait, how to let time serve its God-given purpose for us. 

Paul begins here with our inner lives, with our attitudes.  He says, “Rejoice always.”  This is to let oneself feel joy always.  Joy does not mean, “Be happy, happy, happy all the time.”  Joy rather is like hope, which goes hand in hand with faith.  There is a contentment that arises from knowing that God is going to do what he says he is going to do.  To know that our lives are in the hands of a gracious and loving God should bring us joy.  To time and time again experience that God works all things together for the good for those who love him and are called according to his purposes sets joy firmly in our hearts, a joy that uproots despair and bitterness.  Paul tells us to rejoice always which means we have to take responsibility of our inner lives and let ourselves feel hope, let ourselves have faith. 

Paul then says, “Pray continually.”  “Pray without ceasing.”  The primary way we express faith is in prayer.  Hope builds in answered prayers.  Joy grows in answered prayer.  “In everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”  We know we have faith when we look back over our lives and can be thankful for everything that has happened for in it all it is evident that God used these things, both good and bad to make us who we are and to reveal to us who he is.  God’s will is to make us like Christ and in so doing he lets us in on the love that they share, but crosses are involved.  If we cannot see where even in the worst of things God was trying to reveal himself to us, all we need do is ask him and he will show us.  Eventually, we do come to a point when we can say, “let the world fall down on my head, I know God loves me.”

While we wait there are also things that we do together.  The first is not quenching the Spirit, not extinguishing the flames of the Spirit in our midst.  Seeing God lead a congregation and being a part of that inspires faith, awakens hope, and calls forth joy.  Along the way, there will be those whom God raises up in our midst to speak his Word to us.  For us to treat them or their words with contempt would quench the Spirit.  To fan the flames of the Spirit we must work together to discern what is the Word of God for us and then hold fast to that which is good.  Moreover, we must also abstain from every form of evil not only in the way we treat one another but also in our private lives…if there truly is such a thing as a private life in God’s world.  If our inner lives are filled with “my wants, my needs, and my feelings” rather than joy, prayer, and thanksgiving chances are we won’t hear the voice nor the Word it brings to us.  If our outer lives are filled with conduct that would grieve Christ, indeed, we quench the Spirit.  It is a sound inner life and a blameless outer life that God wishes to give us.  This is why we call him the God of peace.  All we need do is cooperate and live according to the purpose he has set aside for us.  God has given us all the time in the world.  It may only last another second or maybe another million years.  But it is his time and it is time to wait on him to do what he does.  So, while you wait whether it be in a line at Fortino’s or on your back in a hospital bed.  Live in his time.  Rejoice always.  Pray without ceasing.  In all things give thanks.  Do not quench the Spirit.  Listen for and cherish his Word.  Shun evil.  The one who calls you is faithful and he will do this. Amen.

Surely, His Salvation Is Near

Text: Psalm 85

When my son William was a toddler one of his favourite things to do was smashing the block towers that Dana built with his little wooden blocks.  He thought it was enormously funny.  Dana would build some elaborate tower and say, “William” and he would turn, see the tower, laugh, and then charge and with one fell swoop of his arm destroy the tower and laugh some more.  Then, the cycle repeated itself.  Over and over this little game went on. 

William really enjoyed that game.  But something happened that put an end to it.  William began to stack the blocks himself.  He’d grab some blocks and leave behind a little tower on the coffee table stacked three high, a little tower on the windowsill, in the middle of the floor and oddly, he didn’t smash those.  I guess his mind hadn’t made the connection between his own building and the fun of smashing.  Smashing is the game he plays when somebody else is building.  Build and smash and build and smash and then, suddenly, he’s building.  It’s amazing how children learn.

Well, Psalm 85 brought to mind for me this building and smashing game.  Actually, that’s the picture the Old Testament paints of the relationship the LORD has with his people.  They are continually going through a similar pattern of building and smashing; except, it is no game.  Rather, it is the reality of the LORD trying and trying to build his kingdom within his creation in and through his people only to have his own people, us included, smash it time and again. 

Psalm 85 reflects a time when God’s people had once again smashed what the LORD was building and it’s a prayer that God would yet build again.  His prayer is essentially: “LORD, in times before you have shown favour to your land; brought your people back from captivity.  So many times you have withdrawn your anger from us, taken away our iniquity, and covered over our sin.  Do it again.  But this time, you turn to us, you, your very self and revive us that we might rejoice with you in sharing your work.  Show us you loving-kindness.  Give us your salvation.”  In that prayer Psalmist pleads the true need of his people.  They need the LORD himself to come and be with them because the LORD’s living presence with them is the only thing that will revitalize his people.  He prays for a new creating word from the LORD to make revitalization happen. 

In verse 8 the Psalmist makes an interesting move.  He goes from praying for the people to praying for himself asking for the Lord to do in him what he’s asking God to do in the people.  He says, “Let me hear what God the LORD is speaking.”  Let me partake of this new creating act that God is speaking into existence.  This was a very wise insight on the part of the Psalmist.  Too often we in the church ask the Lord to do things for others not realizing we need it ourselves.  We need the life-giving presence of the living Lord to flow in us that it may flow through our lives.  Blessed to be a blessing.

But anyway, the Psalmist is praying to the God of salvation to bring salvation to his people and by salvation he means for God in his steadfast love to speak a new creating word, the word of peace.  Peace as the Bible presents it is a really awesome concept.  It is what spontaneously erupts when God himself lives in and among people.  It is a word that describes relationships between people that exudes the steadfast love and faithfulness of God.  Where God lives in his people there is to be no injustice, inequity, poverty, hatred, malice, none of that.  Rather, life is full and fulfilling and the sense of community is rich.

This prayer was answered with the birth of Jesus.  God himself, God the Son became human and set it in motion.  At Pentecost God the Holy Spirit came and gave living breath to the new humanity the Trinity created in Christ.  Now something new has begun to happen.  In, through, and as Jesus Christ something new has begun to happen.  Human beings empowered by the Holy Spirit have begun to build.  Just like when my son had that “aha” moment of realizing he could build the towers, so something new has happened in humanity and we are a part of it. Jesus Christ, God the LORD himself has come to humanity and revived us, made us live anew.  The salvation the Psalmist prayed for has come.  God has spoken the word of New Creation in the Incarnation of the Son and by the gift of his very self, the Holy Spirit, we each can hear, know, and experience God’s peace as it is coming to be…and having heard it, we by the power of the Holy Spirit are made able to build upon it. 

The Psalmist says something else that is interesting.  “Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him.”  I saw something new this week.  I have always read the word “near” as having to do with time as if this verse read, “Surely his salvation is soon to come to those who fear him.”  Well, near doesn’t have anything to do with time.  It has to do with proximity so that the verse reads, “Surely his salvation is in the proximity of those who fear him.”  This means that if one wants to know the LORD, to know salvation, to experience peace, then one can find it in the community of those who know and revere the LORD.  This means that God’s salvation is actively present in this world right now in our midst.  God is assembling the building blocks of his kingdom in the midst of his creation through his people and we are among his people.

“But, wait a minute.” You say.  “God’s salvation is in the proximity of Christian community,...us?”  Yes!  In, through, and as Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit God the Father in his loving kindness has spoken his salvation into us and through us he demonstrates it to humanity.  He has spoken the New Creation that began with Jesus’ resurrection into us and by the power of the Holy Spirit it is at work in us so that through us God is beginning to bring New Creation about until he renders it in its fullness when Jesus returns.  Our works may only be like William’s little three block stacks.  Nevertheless, the Trinity is using us to build now his kingdom of peace here on earth as it is in heaven.

The love of God present in Christian community - community that we share and extend to others at work, at school, at home, and even in the checkout line at Wal-Mart - is like John the Baptist in the wilderness proclaiming that as Jesus Christ God himself has come and is coming with salvation for humanity.  The Holy Spirit filled fellowship that we share is salvation present now.  The Christian faith is not a personal matter of private belief.  It is an act of new creation that God is doing and we are the living proof and proclaimers of it.  The world out there needs the salvation we share in here.  Let us not be shy about it. Let us build with these blocks so that right here in this little corner of Grey County there is peace.  Amen.