Born of the Virgin Mary

Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Advent
Text: St. Matthew 1:18-25, NRSV (Series A)

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, AMEN
Mary of Nazareth was pregnant out of wedlock. In our contemporary society in these United States, four out of every ten live births takes place without the mother and father being married. In some communities, it would be accurate to say that illegitimate birth is actually the norm, and that the nuclear family as an ideal, and certainly as a lived reality, as been simply discarded and swept away. We’ve reached the point at which sexual immorality is so common and so widespread, that most of us almost take it for granted. That’s a very sad commentary on our society.
But one of the spin-offs of that fact is that the contemporary reality makes it very difficult — except perhaps for our grandparents’ generation — to have even an inkling of understanding for the situation Mary faced in first-century Palestine. The common penalty prescribed by Jewish law for pregnancy outside of marriage was to be stoned to death, both for the mother and for the father, if he could be identified with certainty. The penalty of shame and abhorrence by the community was bad enough all by itself. We can say what we like about how “negative” or “judgmental” such attitudes were, but the simple fact is that Western civilization preserved those attitudes until very recent times; and so long as those attitudes were preserved, the institution of the family was held to be sacred and worthy of every protection. Since we have jettisoned any and all disapproval of just about any and all behaviors, with fornication and adultery heading the list, we have, as a culture, watched the institution of marriage slide steadily down the tubes toward dissolution and extinction.
Joseph and Mary were “betrothed.” The NRSV says “engaged,” but that translation may be a bit mmisleading for us, since betrothal was a much stronger bond and commitment than engagement is in our society. Betrothal, as the legally binding promise to marry, actually constituted the first part of marriage itself; in Galilee, the law held that a betrothal had to last one full year. During that time, the couple was considered by the community to be legally married, but the marriage could not be consummated until the day of the formal wedding and the great feast and celebration that accompanied it. Throughout the time of betrothal the couple was to prepare for marriage, get to know one another more deeply, and both were to remain virgins until the marriage.
The background to the birth of Jesus in today’s Gospel is frustratingly sparse with its details. St. Matthew is out to make a single point: Jesus is the Son of God, born of a Virgin, and sent to save us from our sins. Beyond that, all the elements we would look for in a modern novel are tellingly absent from the text, and I know my own curiosity is enormous about the things not reported here. Fortunately, from St. Luke’s Gospel we know how the Archangel Gabriel brought the news of Jesus to Mary, and what the Virgin’s faith-filled and humble response was. But once the virginal conception had mysteriously taken place within her by the “overshadowing” power of the Holy Spirit, St. Matthew simply tells us that Mary “was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” And then he moves on to Joseph’s private decision to “divorce” her, to break off the formal betrothal. Meanwhile, our minds are screaming, “How did Mary tell Joseph about this? What words did she use? How did Joseph respond at first? How come he didn’t believe her? Did they argue? Did Joseph become hurt and angry? After all, he knew he wasn’t the father! Did Joseph storm off in a huff, or was he so deeply wounded that he sort of skulked away like a dog that’s been severely chastised?” We learn that Joseph was a sensitive and honorable man, and that he had resolved to divorce Mary very quietly to avoid as much public scandal as possible. But that’s all we’re told about his state of mind. We want to know all the interior psychological goings-on, whereas Matthew’s first-century readers didn’t care about that; they wanted him to cut to the real meat of the matter: the Identity of Jesus of Nazareth as Son of God and Savior of the world. The passage is really about that theological and earth-shaking truth, and not about the more petty concerns of Mary’s and Joseph’s feelings. Those are important only insofar as they contribute to the insight of WHO JESUS IS. And, really, that’s the crucial concern for us, too; and we’ll just have to be content to ask St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin what they felt on earth when we’re finally with them in Heaven!
The central affirmation of our text — it occurs two times — is that Mary’s child is “from the Holy Spirit.” That is, the Child of Mary has no human father, but has been miraculously conceived in her womb by the Spirit of the living God Who issues forth from the Father, so that Jesus of Nazareth has no father except God the Father Almighty. Having God directly as His Father, Jesus is Himself God: He has a full and complete divine nature from His Father, and He has a full and complete human nature from His mother. Jesus is God, and Jesus is Man. The way to speak of Him most accurately would be to call Him the God-Man. Fully human and fully divine, Jesus is absolutely unique, and is absolutely uniquely suited to be the Savior of the world. For this is not any ordinary human being, but the ultimate fulfillment of the promised Emmanuel, “God with us” in the flesh, in love and intimacy — with us in the most deeply personal way that those words could possibly ever indicate. In Jesus God has embraced our lot completely, with nothing left over —- with the one exception that, where Adam and Eve and all their descendents have fallen headlong into sin, selfishness, and rebellion, Jesus Christ as true Man has (as St. Irenaus wrote in the late first century) recapitulated all that tragic history of the human race, and at every point of our defeat Jesus has won victory. And He has done this for us in two ways: 1) first, as our Substitute, offering to the Father what we are not able to offer; and 2) secondly, as our Master and Forerunner, Who is blazing a path of love and obedience and praise toward God which you and I are called to imitate and follow, by the power of the Holy Spirit. And this is the predominant message St. Matthew wants us to receive from our text today; and the evangelist’s aim duplicates that of the Holy Spirit, Who inspired Matthew to write as he did and what he wrote.
An angel came to Joseph in a dream to reassure him that Mary had in fact told him the truth, that the Child she was carrying was the Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit. This must have been a very powerful and vivid dream to allay all of Joseph’s misgivings and suspicions. (I wish the same angel would visit some of the members of the Jesus Seminar and some apostate seminary professors all over the country and convince them that the Virgin Mary and the Word of God are not liars — especially the infidel idiot who claims in a recently published book that Jesus’ birth was the result of a love affair between Mary and a Roman soldier, and that she concocted the story about the angel and the Spirit of God to cover up her sin! I dare anyone to find anything anywhere in Holy Scripture that supports such a point of view! Maybe in Playboy or in Hustler, but not in God’s holy Word! Nowadays, dear Christians, it’s not the Grinch who tries to steal Christmas, but the liberal so-called “theologians” who have thrown overboard the truth of the Gospel!)
The divine messenger delivered to Joseph the very Name that God the Father had planned for all eternity for His Son in His human Incarnation in time. “She (Mary) will bear a son, and you are to name Him JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins.” The Name of Jesus would have been pronounced in His native Aramaic (spoken in Galilee) as Y’shua; in Hebrew as Joshua; in both Latin and Greek as Iesu. The original name means “Yahweh saves,” “God is Savior.” From before His birth, therefore, Jesus is designated “Savior.” His very name means that. He comes to save His people from their sins. Everything else that He does — His miracles, His teachings, His works of wonder and compassion, His words of comfort and of challenge — all is subordinated to that one end, that single all-consuming goal: to save people from their sins. He didn’t come to be a super-star, an entertainer, one philosopher among others, a mere teacher or a traveling sideshow of miracle-working. He came as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He came as the only One Who, through His suffering and death, could bring about our forgiveness and reconciliation with the Father. For as a Man, He offered to God what we have never been able to offer Him because of our sinfulness: a perfect, loving, faithful, and spotlessly obedient life, and a pure and perfect sacrifice in death. As God, His life and sacrifice took on cosmic dimensions; and since the life of God is of infinite value and infinitely holy, His one offering of Himself, from cradle to cross, sufficed to atone (or pay the penalty) for all the sins of all people, in every time and place.
Beloved, we can barely even conceive with our limited reason and understanding that the Incarnation of the Son of God has truly taken place. The how of it its utterly beyond us. But perhaps the why of it is the one thing we can grasp, in at least a limited fashion, knowing as we do the dark impulses, the selfishness, the subterranean caverns of greed and egocentricity and pride that lie below our surface personalities. We know that those depths are “open wide and laid bare to the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do,” and from our own personal records of abysmal failure in grappling with these realities we have learned the salutary lesson that only God Himself has the power to deal with our sin. In an age when self-help books top the charts, and every sort of guru or scheming Ph.D. has published a book or 20 and holds expensive seminars at Radissons or Ritzes, all of them proclaiming that you can indeed perfect yourself, physically, morally, and spiritually; and for whatever little outside help you need, there are advanced seminars and a whole army of trained psychics, guess what? WE STILL HAVE TROUBLE WITH SIN: PLAIN, OLD-FASHIONED SIN AS IDENTIFIED IN THE TEN COMMANDMENTS; WE ARE STILL BURDENED WITH THE INSUPORTABLE ENCUMBRANCE OF OUR SELF AND OF OUR OWN SELF-BETRAYAL BY DISOBEYING AND TURNING OUR BACK ON GOD, AND DARING TO THINK THAT HOLINESS OF LIFE IS EITHER A FAIRY TALE OR AN INHERENTLY UNACHIEVABLE GOAL. And so we find ourselves stuck, mired in the inevitable depression and nausea that sin brings in its wake — and yet “forbidden,” as it were, by the spirit of the times, to turn to the only possible, everlastingly stable Source for cleansing from sins of the past and for genuine and lasting renewal of life today and tomorrow. Church, this is nothing new! This is the predicament of humankind since the disaster in Eden! You are not alone in your need for freshness, peace, and new joy and meaning in life! The fact is, just as the Christmas carol proclaims, “Christ was born for this, Christ was born for this!” Christ was born for YOU!
Look, for a God Who is all-powerful and all-loving, the Virgin conception of Jesus was something easily and simply done — while from our perspective it is a great and natable miracle. And in the very same way, no doubt for many of us here today, our problems and the challenges we face in life seem to be huge and insurmountable. But for the Lord God, they assume their true value only when measured against His omnipotence — His all-powerfulness. For us, just as for Mary and Joseph, the answer is to surrender our problems and concerns into the Lord’s very capable and loving hands. The answers He brings to our prayers, His response to our trust, may sometimes surprise us. After all, Joseph and Mary could hardly have expected the Son of God to be born in a stable. But God infallibly worked out His plan for our salvation. As the Angel Gabriel said to Mary in Lk. 1:37, “For with God nothing shall be impossible.”
Our God is with us, Emmanuel. Nothing we ever go through is byond or beneath His understanding. Nothing life can throw at us can separate us from His love. “I have loved you,” He says, “with an everlasting love. I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
If you and I will continually surrender to the Holy Spirit Who makes that promise (and all the promises of God’s holy Word) real and precious to us, and Who brings us to truly believe them, then truly all of life — even the rough times — is nonetheless built on a foundation of trust, of joy, of security, of hope, and of divine power. Then we can proclaim with St. Paul, “I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.” And then our Christmas celebration will be a celebration of God’s daily presence and reality in our lives, and not only of that holy Birth of of Son of God in distant Judea. AMEN.