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.
I was just having a similar conversation with several people - each of whom holds a leadership position in our congregation or who has contributed something of particular note to my own theological development. My suggestion that we not insist upon this doctrine as a church but offer it up as a part of our tradition and as an understanding that can be taken from scripture was met with - something less than hostility but far afield of grace. This seems to me to be a doctrine which spans more space on the theological spectrum than simply "the right." Yet, in our day and age when the mystical has become expected and even welcome, I also pause to wonder how significant a barrier this is? In some cases, most certainly its implausibility can lead to disbelief, while in others it may not even register. I agree with much of your analysis though, and know that you have much support from the scholarly community and within the text itself.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughtful comment! Once in an orientation gathering for those new to the church I said that we were a diverse group theologically and that, for example, not everyone in our church believed in the Virgin Birth. A woman demanded to know who it was who didn't believe. Yikes! But I think some of the push back you describe may be more about an emotional comfort than a theological position. And, yes, there is something to be said for mystery.
DeleteI was in a discussion today about the birth of Jesus. Some people wanted to claim that some verses in the Gospels say that Joseph was Jesus' father. This is not the case when you actually look at what these verses say.
ReplyDeleteMatthew 13:55 "Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?"
John 6:42 "They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
The context of these verses do not say that Joseph was Jesus' father, but that the people speaking consider Joseph his father because they were ignorant of his actual origin. As part of John 6:42 says at the end of the verse "How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?" Yet, in fact, Jesus said that he did come down from heaven. How? The virgin birth. As we say in the Apostles Creed, "he, (Jesus) was conceived by the Holy Spirit (not Joseph) and was born of the Virgin Mary"