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 7th 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.
[1] Torrance, Thomas F.; Incarnation:
The Person and Life of Christ; Robert T. Walker, Ed.; InterVarsity Press,
Downers Grove; 2008; p. 101.
