The virgin birth, and it is one of the most incredible ideas that was ever introduced to the world. Many of us accept the virgin birth of Jesus on the basis of biblical authority, but we may not understand it. There once was a seventh grade girl whose name is Kristin. She is a very bright and sensitive girl, but she does not understand everything she hears in church. (I am sure that many of us can identify with that!) One day when Kristin was in the cafeteria at school, one of her curious friends asked her, “Are you a virgin?” Well, Kristin was really on the spot because she did not know what a virgin was. But she did some quick thinking that went like this: The only virgin she had heard of was Mary, and everyone knows that Mary had a baby. Therefore, a virgin must be a woman who has had a baby.
Thus armed with that conclusion, Kristin announced loudly to her friend in the cafeteria, “No! I am not a virgin!” As several people nearby registered their shock, one little boy leaned over and whispered in her ear: “Kristin, I don’t think you know what you are talking about!”
Many of us, adults included, do not know what we are talking about when we are talking about the virgin birth, but as I understand it, the virgin birth means that Jesus came from God. He is God’s Son. The emphasis is not primarily on Mary, but on the creative life-giving power of Almighty God. As Reginald H. Fuller, the theologian, expresses it, Jesus is not the product of human evolution, the highest achievement of the human race, but he is the product of the intervention of a transcendent God into human history (Sermons.com, John T. Randolph).
If the virgin birth is rock solid in your beliefs, I invite you to consider this sermon as your minister’s musings. But if you have questions about it, let’s take a journey together. I have to admit I have struggled with the virgin birth. Not that Jesus is God’s Son, that is a truth I hold firmly. Yet this mystery, this divine mystery, of the virgin birth helps to explain the unexplainable.
How do we get from generations of genealogy ending with Joseph, who is not Jesus father, to the incarnation of God- God-with-us?
How can Jesus be both fully human and fully divine?
Before we answer those questions, I need to ask you if you have ever longed, truly yearned for God? A time in your life when you needed God’s comfort and strength. You might have even wondered where God is in the midst of your struggle. Well that is how the Israelites felt. Our Psalm 80 is a communal prayer expressing intense yearnings for a new beginning. This psalm reflects an experience Jews, both ancient and modern, describe as “hester panim” which means the “eclipse of God” or “the hiding of God’s face” (Feasting on the Word, A1, 80). Hester panim is what it feels like when we long for God? God’s face is hidden from us. Our connection with God is eclipsed. We can’t feel or see God. When Cooper was little, he struggled with attention issues. I often said to him, “Look at me” so we could see each other’s face to connect and communicate. That is what we so desperately want with God, that true connection. So we might join with the psalmist who repeatedly beseech God, “Restore us, O God, let your face shine, that we may be saved.” Today we might say, “Help me God, I need to connect with you, show me your face.”
Humanity has longed for God’s face for centuries. As I read the account of Jesus’ birth, I heard the Holy Spirit, the third person of the trinity, as God’s face shining. The Holy Spirit is God’s face shining upon Mary. God’s face shining on humanity. God’s face bringing salvation through the birth of a holy child. For that child to be holy, to be of God then it must not be of man.
That leads us to Joseph. Matthew just spent 17 verses explaining the genealogy of Jesus as coming through Joseph; from Abraham to David, and then David to Joseph. But the virgin birth appears to makes that null and void. Until you read the last line, “and (Joseph) named him Jesus” (25). By naming him Jesus as the angel said, Joseph is claiming him as his son. “By naming the baby, Joseph acknowledges him as his son; in effect, Joseph adopts Jesus, and thus incorporates him legally into David’s genealogy” (F.onW., A1 p.95). By naming him, Joseph adopts him as his son, by naming him Jesus we know the purpose of God’s Son coming into the world-The name Jesus means to save-Jesus came to save us. Jesus did not come simply to save us from our sins, but to embody God with us- Emmanuel.
Emmanuel is God-with-us in the cancer clinic at the local nursing home. Emmanuel is God-with-us when the pink slip comes and when the beloved child sneers, “I hate you!” Emmanuel is God-with-us when you pack the Christmas decorations away and, with an aching heart, you realize afresh that your one son never did call over the holidays. Not once. Emmanuel is God-with-us when your dear wife or mother stares at you with an Alzheimer’s glaze and absently asks, “What was your name again?” (Sermons.com, Scott Hoezee).
In Jesus God’s face shines upon you in those Emmanuel moments. The fullness of God-with-us, is embodied in the virgin birth. In Jesus, God has assumed our humanity. Theologian Emil Brunner wrote, “The central truth of the Christian faith is this: that the eternal Son of God took upon himself our humanity” (Sermons.com, John R. Brokhoff). As the eternal Son of God, Jesus existed before he was born in the manger. This helps me with the fully human fully divine question.
For centuries, the early Christians tried to make sense of the virgin birth, of who Jesus really is. Some argued that with one divine parent and one human then he is no more than a demigod, part human, part divine. But the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, confesses Jesus is “one person in two natures, ‘complete in his deity and complete- the very same- in his humanity’” (F.on W. pg. 94). Jesus existed before he was born of Mary that is why Scripture declares “God sent his Son,” and “In the form of God,…Jesus emptied himself” (Jn. 7:29, 17:3 and Phil. 2:6-7). Jesus was with God from the beginning. The Council of Chalcedon attests “As to his deity, he was born from the Father before the ages, but as to his humanity, the very same one was born in the last days from the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, for our sake and the sake of our salvation” (F. on W. pg, 94).
When all is said and done, the virgin birth, the birth of this holy child, is an expression of love; God’s love. As a visitor shared with me last week, after sharing the hardships of his life, when God’s face seems hidden, in his words it all comes down to “God so loved the world.” He clings to that Scripture as a declaration of hope and love. God so loved the world so that … The birth of this tiny infant, born of God and born of Mary, is the embodiment of love, the incarnation for God’s love in the world so that we might see God’s face.
O God, through the birth of a babe, let your face shine that we may be saved. Amen.
