Was Mary a Virgin? (A Reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Advent)

Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.

Luke 1:34-35

Christianity has a marketing problem.

Our most important marketing problem is that the Christian message has been hijacked by right-wing political groups.

But beyond that, we have a problem with our messaging. Christmas ought to be a slam dunk and it isn’t. In congregations that follow the lectionary, you know what I mean.

Over the first three Sundays of Advent, while the secular world is making spirits bright, we dedicate Sunday morning worship to the Apocalypse, John the Baptist, and John the Baptist.

Because apparently you can’t have too much John the Baptist.

Nothing expresses the joy of the season better than “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Finally, three paragraphs later, Luke says that “with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”

 So it is a relief on the Fourth Sunday of Advent when we finally get to Mary and Elizabeth.

But Mary brings us another problem.

In his wonderful commentary on The New Testament, William Barclay observes that in Mary’s story, “we are face to face with one of the great controversial doctrines of the Christian faith—the Virgin Birth.”

Today, when much of the Christian Church has become captive to the biblical literalism of the Religious Right, it is important to reflect on Barclay’s perspective. When he was writing, in the middle of the last century, Barclay was one of the preeminent biblical scholars, and the very embodiment of orthodox scholarship. His work defined the center of Christian biblical scholarship and theology.

In terms of the Virgin Birth, Barclay declares that “the church does not insist that we believe in this doctrine.”

We may choose to believe it, says Barclay, based on a literal reading of this passage as well as Matthew 1:18-25. And, he writes, “It is natural to argue that if Jesus was, as we believe, a very special person, he would have a very special entry into this world.”

But there are also excellent biblical reasons not to take the story literally. First, the genealogies in both Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’s ancestry through Joseph. Second, when Mary and Joseph finally find Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:48) she tells him that “Your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.” Third, there are other references to Jesus as Joseph’s son (Matthew 13:55, John 6:42). And finally, the rest of the New Testament (Mark, John, and Paul’s letters) knows nothing of this story.

Barclay sets the story in the context of Jewish belief. “The Jews had a saying that in the birth of every child there are three partners—the father, the mother and the Spirit of God. They believed that no child could ever be born without the Spirit.” So these stories are “lovely, poetical ways of saying that, even if he had a human father, the Holy Spirit of God was operative in his birth in a unique way.”

This is more than an academic discussion because it goes to the very heart of how we understand the Bible. The insistence of literalism in this case suggests a literalistic approach to the Bible as a whole. When Christians (especially pastors and Sunday School teachers) insist on a  belief in the Virgin Birth, they invite prioritizing literalism over religious meaning.

And when we focus on literalism, it's easy to lose the meaning altogether.

The meaning of Jesus’s birth does not depend on a DNA test.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Listening to Marley's Ghost

“A Christmas Carol,” by Charles Dickens, was published 175 years ago today. It is a message worth remembering, especially in a time when we seem to value the old Scrooge of greed over the new Scrooge of generosity and goodwill. 

One of the very odd things about our popular culture is that we often seem to have a universal reverence for books or movies that ought to be deeply controversial. And this is particularly true with regard to two of the most cherished productions of the Christmas season. 

The movie Frank Capra movie, "A Wonderful Life," and the Charles Dickens novel, "A Christmas Carol," both present stinging critiques of the worst excesses of capitalism.

In this iconic scene from "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge is confronted by the ghost of his old business partner Jacob Marley who has come back to warn him that selfishness is ultimately self-defeating.

“Jacob,'' said Scrooge, imploringly. ``Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob.''

 “Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,'' cried the phantom, ``not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!''

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,'' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

“Business!'' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'' 

We live in a time in which Old Scrooge's definition of business triumphs over that of Marley's ghost. Dickens tells a story that we need to hear again.

A Craven Madness

For God did not give us a craven spirit, 

but rather a spirit of power 

and of love 

and of self-discipline.
II Timothy 1:7

I have been thinking about the children and teachers who were killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, six years ago today.

But those reflections led me to another multiple shooting.

My guess is that you do not remember the May 23, 2014 killings in Isla Vista, California.

Neither did I.

There are so many killings, it’s hard to keep track.

I came across a reference to Isla Vista as I was researching gun control issues in relation to Sandy Hook.

I found that I wrote a blog post about it at the time, but I still had only the vaguest recollection. The bare facts are that a 22 year old young man named Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others before killing himself. 

In a manifesto he posted on “You Tube,” he called his plan “Rodger’s Retribution.” He said he planned to punish women for rejecting his sexual advances, and men for having more active sex lives than he did.

In the days following the killings, a Facebook “friend” had posted a link to Richard Martinez’s impassioned plea for gun control in the aftermath of his son’s death in Isla Vista, 

In a series of interviews, Martinez had called out the “gutless politicians” whose unwillingness to implement any meaningful restrictions in the availability of firearms was a major factor in his son’s killing. "Why did Chris die?" he yelled in one interview. "Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris' right to live?"

Near that same time, another “friend” posted a link to an article in The Onion. I love the satire in The Onion, but this seemed in very bad taste. Above a picture of grieving college students was the headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” The article is short and it isn’t funny at all.

ISLA VISTA, CA—In the days following a violent rampage in southern California in which a lone attacker killed seven individuals, including himself, and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said North Carolina resident Samuel Wipper, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Why are we unable to do anything? Why are we so addicted to guns? And I know that three of the seven victims at Isla Vista were killed with a knife, so we could also ask why we are so addicted to violence. But guns are the common denominator in mass killings over the years.

As comedian John Oliver once observed, "One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns."

After 9/11 we made drastic changes in airport security. Basically, we search everyone. We won’t allow anything more deadly than a paperclip carried on an airplane. We limit shampoo bottles to 3.4 ounces. We won’t let anyone park anywhere near the boarding areas. We tolerate restrictions that once would have seemed bizarre. And we do all of this to prevent another tragedy.

The total death toll on 9/11 was 2,996. The number still looks horrific. Even one death is too many.

But more than 30,000 people die each year in America from firearms. For the math-challenged, that would be ten times as many deaths every year.

About two-thirds of those deaths are suicides. If you don’t care about those deaths (and many don’t) you can feel free to discount them. Nine to ten thousand per year still seems like a lot, but maybe that’s just me.

And yes, I know people die all the time from all sorts of causes. I’m a pastor. I am well acquainted with grief. But that does not seem to me like a good excuse to do nothing.

We have lost approximately half a million lives to firearms since 9/11. This is madness. To borrow the word shared by Mr. Martinez and the Apostle Paul, this is craven madness.





Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

*Parts of this post were originally published in May of 2014.

In the Bleak Midwinter

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.

Luke 2:15-19

Christina Rossetti was born on this day in 1830.

Every year we sing her wonderful Christmas Carol, “In the Bleak Midwinter.” It was first published in 1872, and simply called “A Christmas Carol.”

As I write this in Rhode Island, it feels like midwinter. And much of the northern half of the United States is caught in a deep freeze. But Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (and Bethlehem, New Hampshire) are very different from Bethlehem in Israel, where the high today will be in the upper 50’s and next week it will be well into the 60’s.

The weather described in the Christmas Carol is very different from the usual winters in Israel.

And, of course, scholars tell us that it is very unlikely that Jesus was actually born in December anyway. We celebrate his birth in the winter because some very clever Christians co-opted the pagan celebration of the winter solstice.

(So in a way it is only fair that the pagans seem to have reclaimed it. Looking at how it has become a celebration of consumption, we may well think that Holden Caulfield was right when he said that if Jesus could see Christmas, he’d puke.)

But whatever our reservations about the loss of true meaning and the departure from the historical realities of Jesus’ birth, we love Christmas.

And we love the carols, and I especially love this one. It is not first on my list, but it is up there.

And within the carol, I love the idea that “heaven cannot hold Him,” and I love the last verse.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am? —
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part, —
Yet what I can I give Him, —
Give my heart.

Of course, most of us who sing those lines in North America are not poor. By global standards, we are rich. Our problem is not that we cannot afford to give something to Jesus, but that we don’t want to. And we make believe we can’t in order to assuage our guilt.

We tell ourselves that although we cannot give something substantial in material terms, we will give our hearts. And by that, what we really mean is that we will feel all warm and fuzzy about Jesus and Christmas and our neighbors—at least for a few minutes in the glow of candles and Christmas lights.

I want to tell myself that this year will be different.

I really will give my heart to Jesus (again).

One of the great tragedies of modern Christianity is that for so many so-called Christians, it all comes down to believing. The only question is, do you believe the right things?

But to give one’s heart is more than believing.

Christian faith is not an intellectual exercise; it is an existential commitment.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.