Behold the Bridge
Matthew 1:18-25 and John 1:1-5, 10-18
Back in the day, pastors were grilled on their theology before they could be ordained. In the mid-twentieth century, when theological debates raged, the examinations were more fierce. One of the perennial points of contention revolved around the virgin birth of Jesus: was Mary a virgin or not? Some said she was, some said she wasn’t. So it was no surprise when an old timer got up from his pew to ask of the 20 something seminary graduate, “Young man, where do you stand on the virgin birth?” Having been trained in the latest and greatest of critical, skeptical scholarship during his years in the seminary, the young man entered into a discourse about how the virgin birth is not mentioned in either Mark or John but only in Matthew and Luke and so he had his doubts. The old timer queried back, “Young man, do you believe God talks to people.” Taken aback, and a bit surprised, the seminarian answered, “Well, yes, I suppose I do.” “Son,” asked the old timer, “how many times does God have to speak to you before you’ll listen?”
*****
For
many people, the doctrine of the virgin birth is one of the more difficult
beliefs in the Christian Faith, and when the Apostle’s Creed says “conceived by
the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary,” what is known as the Incarnation of
God in human form, some folks find this difficult to swallow. I don’t blame them. It’s a difficult doctrine. I disagree with them, but I don’t blame
them, for the difficulties with this part of the Creed, “conceived by the Holy
Spirit, born of the virgin Mary,” are both biological, biblical and
theological.
First,
there are some who wonder about the biology.
Modern science tells us about how babies are made. Babies can be made the old fashioned way or
in a test tube but, either way, to make a baby requires both ovum and sperm,
male and female. Biologists have made
it quite clear that this is a both/and not an either/or equation. So some folks are stumped by how it can be
that Mary, though a virgin, though only providing one half of the biologically
necessary material, could have conceived.
What was the structure of Jesus’ DNA?
What kind of genetic material lived within his cells?
Okay,
these are all good questions, but, seriously, the folks asking these questions
need to shake themselves. In response,
I have some questions for them? Do they
believe that God is the Creator? Do
they believe that God created the universe, all that is seen and unseen? If so, what’s the problem? So half of Jesus’ DNA comes from the Holy
Spirit; doesn’t it make sense to think the God who created the heavens and the
earth could figure out how to work the whole “DNA Dilemma”? Granted, I have no idea how this worked. I have to accept it on faith as a Mystery of
God’s providence. However, once one accepts God’s agency in this, the universe,
everything else is just detail work. Some might argue that God does not work
through such capricious means, and ordinarily they would be correct; however,
this is an extraordinary event: the unique, once in all eternity Incarnation of
God in human form – God can be forgiven if this one time he chose to go outside
the ordinary, biological laws that govern life.
Second,
there are some who wonder about the biblical stories of Jesus’ birth. They
point to some alleged discrepancies.
For instance, some people suggest that before Jesus’ birth, Matthew has
Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem while Luke has them living Nazareth. But this
misreads Matthew which says only, “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem….” This
verse only talks about where Jesus was born, not where he lived prior to birth
or what brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem.
This alleged discrepancy is merely a difference between Matthew and Luke
in which Luke describes a broader, fuller picture of Joseph and Mary’s journey
from Nazareth in the Galilee region to Bethlehem in the Judea region, while
Matthew is silent about their journey.
Still others argue
that Matthew has the Holy Family flee to Egypt while Luke has them visit the
Temple when Jesus is 40 days old. This alleged discrepancy is, once again, a
mere difference in the way Matthew and Luke tell the story. It is a well known fact that Jesus was not
born on December 25th – I hate to burst your bubble but it’s
so. The ancient Church chose the
December 25th date because it was the date of a large pagan festival
to the Sun God in the Roman Empire. When Christianity became the official
religion of the Empire, the Church substituted a celebration of the Jesus’ birth,
as the S-o-n of God, for the pagan festival of the S-u-n God.
Messianic Jews
have shown that Jesus’ birth probably occurred in late September or early
October. They figure this out by noting
when Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, would have performed his time of
service in the Temple; they can figure this out because the priestly schedules
were all based on set weeks of the Jewish year, kind of like having a time
share on a given week. Zechariah and
Elizabeth, based on when Zechariah’s service schedule was over and he could
travel home, would have conceived John the Baptist in June. We know from Luke’s Gospel that Elizabeth
was six months pregnant when Mary visited her soon after Jesus was conceived. Following the math, we arrive at a late September,
early October birth for Jesus.
Now, here is where
this gets interesting. The Jewish
historian Josephus tells us that Herod, who Matthew tells us tried to kill the
baby Jesus, died late in the Fall of 4 B.C., or right after the time of Jesus’
birth. Given this, it is easy, easy to
see that Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt at Jesus’ birth, heard of Herod’s death
and returned to Jerusalem. Some people might wonder, “All that happened in 40
days?” Well, yeah, even in the ancient
world Egypt and Israel bordered each other and shared well traveled trade
routes. Six weeks is plenty of time for
all that to have happened. This alleged
“discrepancy” is a mere difference in the way Matthew and Luke highlight
different facets of their narrative.
Third, some folks
have theological issues with saying that Jesus is both fully God – “conceived
by the Holy Spirit” – and fully human – “born of the virgin Mary.” The unease that some folks express over the
Incarnation comes from the fact that it gets abused so easily. I share this
unease. Do you know there are Christians who argue that Jesus could have spoken
Swahili as a baby because “after all, he was God.” This is ridiculous. It is
just this kind of thinking that leads me to insist that we change the words of Away in a Manger from “the little Lord
Jesus no crying he makes,” to “the little Lord Jesus much crying he
makes.” What baby never cries? Jesus was fully human! Jesus was a baby! Jesus cried!
*****
For a variety of
reasons the Incarnation, “conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin
Mary,” has been a stumbling block for believers both ancient and modern. Why, then, did the ancient church insist
upon its inclusion in the Apostle’s Creed?
Why, then, should it matter to us now?
Does it really matter what we
believe about the Incarnation? I
suggest to you that it does matter what we believe. It matters because this doctrine of the Incarnation reveals to us
the heart of God.
The Incarnation
reveals to us God’s heart. One of the
most famous verses in all of Scripture is John 3:16: “For God so loved the
world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not
perish but have eternal life.” This is
the message of the Incarnation: God sent God’s Son, not just a prophet, not a teacher,
not a guy who was only a man. God’s
Son. Why? Because God wants the world to be saved. Why?
Because God wants people to have life!
Why? Because God so loves the world. The Incarnation puts to the test
and finds wanting all theologies that claim to be Christian by proclaiming a
harsh, judgmental God. The God who
would send his Son into the world because of a great and abiding love cannot be
the God waiting in heaven ready to zap the human who steps a foot out of line.
If Jesus is not fully human, fully God, if Jesus is not conceived by the Holy
Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, if Jesus is not the incarnation of God in
human form, the Word made flesh, then this verse, “For God so loved the world,”
has no meaning. And if this verse has
no meaning, how can we be assured God loves us?
The Incarnation
reveals to us God’s heart. It shows us
not so much what God wants to do so much as it shows us what God wants to
be. Or, more precisely, where God wants to be: with us! The angel Gabriel proclaims to Joseph about
the child Jesus that he will be called, “Immanuel.” In Hebrew, Immanuel literally means, “God is with us.” We all need someone by our side when we face
the trials and tribulations of life. A
friend in a hospital bed, or in a hospice bed, wants to know there is someone
there. When we visit a friend in a
hospital bed, we don’t necessarily need to do
anything; simply being with them is
enough, holding their hand is sufficient.
To be with someone is to convey a great love. To know that God is
with us is to be assured of the greatest love. But if Jesus is not fully God as
well as fully human, if Jesus is not conceived by the Holy Spirit as well as
born of the virgin Mary, if Jesus is not the incarnation of God in human form,
the Word made flesh, then this truth has no meaning, for God is not with us but only a prophet, only a teacher, only a man.
The Incarnation
reveals to us God’s heart. John Calvin,
one of the spiritual forefathers of Presbyterianism, once said that God condescends to our human understanding
in revealing himself in Jesus. Calvin
understood that we cannot understand everything about God; God is too majestic,
too mysterious for any human to comprehend.
Any God that is fully understandable by mere mortals is not the Lord God
Almighty! So God sent Jesus in human
form to show us the Father. We cannot
know everything about God, but all that we can know about God is found in
Jesus.
It’s kind of like
what my obnoxiously loud brother did when my children were toddlers. They were just only meeting their Uncle
Dallas and were frightened by how loud and intense his voice was. For those of you who watched the old Seinfeld, Dallas was a “close
talker.” He didn’t have kids of his
own, so Laura and I coached him to back away and settle down. What Dallas did
was lie on the floor next to the kids and not say anything, just observe.
Eventually, because he has condescended to their level, accommodating to their
needs, the kids would turn to him and start to climb on him and get to know
him. In a similar way, if Jesus is not
fully human, fully God, if Jesus is not conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of
the virgin Mary, if Jesus is not the incarnation of God in human form, the Word
made flesh, then there is no condescension; there is no revelation of God that
we can comprehend.
The Incarnation
shows us the heart of God. God desires
of Jesus that he be the bridge between God’s divinity and our humanity. Jesus, as the God-human, brings God’s
divinity into human existence and brings our humanity into the person of
God. Only one who is human can fulfill
the obligations of sacrifice necessary to save all humankind from our sins;
only one who is divine can bear the weight of all humanity’s sin. Only the God-Human can bring us together;
only one conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary.
*****
You know, one doesn’t have to believe in the virgin birth to be a Christian. Sure, it has always been one of the foundational beliefs of the church; after all, it is in the Apostle’s Creed; but the virgin birth was not something the New Testament Christians insisted the early converts accept. No, for the New Testament Christians, the belief that “Jesus is Lord,” was the essential belief. But my question to the doubters and skeptics is this: why would the New Testament Christians belief that Jesus is Lord if we was only a prophet, only a teacher, only a man? Surely the New Testament Christians saw in Jesus the person of God in human form; given that this is so, how did Jesus-Man take on the mantle of deity? Or, perhaps a better question is the one the New Testament consistently seeks to answer: how did Jesus-God take on the mantle of humanity?
Perhaps
an even more penetrating question is found when we ask what is at stake if we
reject the Incarnation, reject the deity of Jesus implicit in “conceived by the
Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary”?
It seems to me that if we reject the Incarnation, we must also let go of
our assurance of God’s love for us found in John 3:16. If we reject the Incarnation, we must also
let go of the assurance of God’s presence with us found in the name “Immanuel.”
If we reject the Incarnation, we must also let go of the revelation of God’s
personhood found in Jesus’ condescension to our fallen humanity. If we reject the Incarnation, who will be
our bridge to the Father?
What a price we pay for not believing. Credo ergo sum.
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