Virgin Birth
AM: Psalm 132 • Isaiah 63:7-16 • Matthew 1:18-25
PM: Psalm 34 • 2 Chronicles 6:12-17 • Ephesians 3:14-21
If the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke had never been written, we would have no biblical account of Jesus’ birth. The gospels of Mark and John don’t mention the events that gave rise to our celebration of Christmas. Neither do the Epistles or the rest of the New Testament. But those chapters were written, and their accounts of Jesus’ birth give us some of the most powerful poetry in the Bible and an affirmation that the child born to Mary is indeed the Messiah, the Son of God. But they also advance a claim that has become a shibboleth, a kind of linguistic password to tell who is in and who is out of the Christian faith. I am speaking, of course, about the story of the virgin birth, or, more precisely, the virginal conception of Jesus.
We know Luke’s birth story very well. We hear it read in church on Christmas Eve and some of us have read it aloud at home during our families’ Christmas celebrations. Matthew’s version—our gospel reading for today—is much shorter but equally dramatic. Unlike the Mary-centric story in Luke, it is told from the perspective of Joseph, who finds himself in a difficult situation with regards to the birth of Mary’s child and who, “being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”
Mary and Joseph knew where babies come from, but both had been assured by angels that something very different was happening here, and that the child was “of the Holy Ghost.” Nevertheless, they must have had questions! What must their conversations have been like during the months of Mary’s pregnancy, and after?
We too have questions. We are creatures of the Enlightenment, after all, and that cultural heritage doesn’t leave a lot of room for miracles. Furthermore, while there are many miracle stories in the Bible, this one in particular has become a lightning rod. Beliefs among Christians about the birth stories (and Biblical texts as a whole) range from strict literalism (fundamentalism) to metaphorical narratives (liberalism), and points in between. However we may read the Christmas story, I do not believe it was intended as a shibboleth. I do not believe that God intends for us to spend our days arguing about who is inside the tent and who is not.
As I was preparing this reflection, I reread parts of a little book entitled The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, by New Testament scholars and theologians Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright. The book’s eight sections focus on major themes in Christology, with chapters by Borg and Wright on each. The two have quite different interpretations of the Bible. Neither is a strict literalist, but in general Wright accepts the historicity of miracles, most especially the miracle of the resurrection, while Borg reads the Bible stories as “metaphorical narratives.” Remarkably, the two are good friends. In the introduction they tell us that they began their work on this book by sharing eucharistic worship at Lichfield Cathedral in England, after which “the plan for the book took shape within the framework of participating together in morning and evening prayer at the cathedral during the following five days.”
With this image in mind, it is not hard to see how they could have a civil conversation about matters on which they were deeply divided. In the section on “The Birth of Jesus” and throughout the book, Marcus and Tom called each other by their first names (rather than, say, “you atheist,” or “you fundamentalist”) and showed that they were listening to each other with care and empathy.
Wright ended his chapter with this: “If the first two chapters of Matthew and the first two chapters of Luke had never existed, I do not suppose that my own Christian faith, or that of the church to which I belong, would have been very different. But since they do, and since for quite other reasons I have come to believe that the God of Israel, the world’s creator, was personally and fully revealed in and as Jesus of Nazareth, I hold open my historical judgment and say: ‘if that [the virginal conception of Jesus] was what God deemed appropriate, who am I to object?’”
To which Borg added: “The truly important questions about the birth stories are not whether Jesus was born of a virgin or whether there was an empire-wide census that took Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem or whether there was a special star leading wise men from the East. The important questions are, ‘Is Jesus the light of the World? Is he the true Lord? Is what happened to him ‘of God?’ Answering these questions affirmatively lays claim to our whole lives.”
Written by Bob McMath
Once, as a teenager, I got into some trouble for raising questions about the virgin birth.