Luke 1:45-55
This sermon starts with bits of information, I think of them as strands that we’ll weave together before we’re done, like making macrame from individual strings.
The first is prophecy. Nell and Neil have been helping us remember important prophets for Israel during Advent. Today’s scripture reminds us that Mary, mother of Jesus, knew those prophecies. They weren’t just nice words that warmed the Christmas season for her. They were the serious promise that although her world was broken in devastating ways, God still had plans for good for God’s people. She knew those prophecies deep in her heart and she believed they predicted a time when God was going to remake her reality and lift up those who were struggling. They shaped who she was and how she thought about life.
The second strand is the Virgin Birth part of the story. That part isn’t about biology, it’s about politics. First century folk believed in multiple gods who controlled all the aspects of daily life. In addition to ruling earth from heaven, these gods often took human form and interacted with people. Some of those interactions resulted in divine-human offspring, who had superpowers. When a new Roman emperor was chosen, soon after a story would circulate about how he was the son of a human mother and a god who gave him the right to rule the empire. The story of Jesus’ birth isn’t told in the earliest gospels. It appears in Matthew and Luke which were written after Rome conquered Jerusalem. At that moment there was no hope of Israel throwing off Roman rule and establishing a kingdom, but those who believed in Jesus’ way say his kingdom as a way of living in opposition to Rome from within the empire. Their communities were resistance movements that weren’t military but were still committed to a better way of life for everyone – the fulfillment of the prophecy in a hidden kingdom Jesus ruled. So, Jesus also has a story of virginal birth, equating him in importance and power with the emperor. He too had a divine mandate to rule.
The third strand picks up the biology of that story. Mary bearing God’s child is a sweet story that folks repeat especially at Christmas. For some the biology of it is offputting. Jesus can’t be a baby boy without an X and a Y chromosome and the only way we know to have both is physical, not spiritual. In the first century everyone who had a virgin birth story also had a human father. People didn’t understand the science and the stories were about importance, not about physical methodology. For emperors, both their human and divine fathers were true. Those who told these stories didn’t see them as contradictory and they didn’t have the either/or choice we have today – believe it or not choice. Scholars who understand the importance of the story of Jesus being divine also help us understand the reality of Mary’s life. She is a young girl in Nazareth, a city 4 miles from the new Roman town of Sephoris where hundreds of Roman soldiers are garrisoned on a mission to control the villages of Gallilee. Given the status of women in that time, it’s quite possible that Mary is pregnant and unmarried because of rape, by a soldier or a villager. What’s unusual about the story isn’t that Mary is pregnant and in danger because she’s not married. That would have been common. What’s unusual is that both Mary and Joseph see the hand of God bringing a positive outcome of this terrible circumstance.
So let’s bring these three strands together…Mary, in a desperate situation yet with Joseph sticking with her rather than abandoning her to poverty and embarrassment; prophecy promising a better life for those oppressed; a common belief that God was intimately involved in the lives of all people…This amazing young woman claims that her child, conceived under difficult circumstances no matter what part of the story you choose, is going to be the fulfillment of the prophecy and bring hope to her world. She’s quite clear that this infant will bring down the powerful and lift up those who live in poverty and despair. She takes what is a hopeless, life-threatening situation and claims for the child a life-giving future which becomes the hope of all people. Every mother holds wonderful dreams for an unborn child, but this story claims cosmic significance for this mother and this child.
And then here’s the best part…not that Jesus is crowned like the emperor, claiming that power his mother sees for him, but he’s born. A baby. Powerless. And like all babies, miraculous. Then he’s raised by a mother who tells him about the prophecy, who tells him that despite the danger of his conception he’s been blessed with the power of God to do great things. I think we can’t begin to know how much her vision and her hope shaped the man he became and the work that he accomplished. And the starting point for him was his birth, a moment he shared with his mother that changed them both. Someone I read this Advent pointed out that birth is the way we all begin and that it’s a traumatic experience, involving a significant amount of pain and stretching and loss of control that leads to a wonderful new beginning. When God chooses to be part of this world, God chooses birth, becoming human, entering the very beginning of life, with us from the very start.
At Christmas we celebrate that Jesus is born, knowing that the rest of the story tells us that this birth made a big difference in the world. We celebrate Christmas at the time of year when in our hemisphere the earth and the year are turning toward something new – the birth of whatever comes next. I think it gives us a chance to reflect on birth in our own lives. Birth so often comes from something hard – Mary claiming the goodness of her child in horrible circumstances, delivering him in a stable, bringing him into a world that would eventually murder him, and yet believing that his life would matter, that it would change everything.
I invite you to consider with me those moments of birth in your own lives. Maybe physical birth, but more those moments when you encountered something difficult and stretched and made it through to life in some new way. I remember a time after the flood of 1997 when I was pastoring a church without a building and not really a plan. The synod decided that the best thing for me would be to learn about a new movement in the church. That involved going to a workshop in Los Angeles, where I had never been. They had no money to help, but they thought I should go so we found a way. There I learned about what was then called the church transformation movement, growing church out of the people’s experience of the holy rather than the history of the institution. I hated it. It was a stretch toward something I couldn’t imagine, and it was life changing. Or I remember the day they started the IV that would allow chemicals to kill my bone marrow and make space for new stem cells. It was a point of no return, and it led to life.
What are the birth moments you mark in your life? They might be medical -a heart attack, a stroke, cancer – disasters clearing the way for a new way of being alive. They might be mental – depression, addiction, some dark time that brings you to light in a different way. Birth moments can involve family – an addition or subtraction, an unexpected birth or death, a coming out that shifts the way we understand one another and calls us to stretch our love wider. Sometimes birth involves a new job or losing a job or training for a new job. It can involve moving across the country or around the world. It can be learning something new that shifts our understanding of how life works and community functions.
Birth moments are hard and sometimes it takes a while for them to get to the joyful part. The message of Christmas is that God is in the birthing of life, no matter when it happens. Mary’s message to us is that even the most difficult circumstances are filled with the presence of God and that hope is possible. We just hold on long enough to see what can grow from a new beginning.
So as we come to the end of 2024 and the beginning of a new year, I invite you to watch for what is being born in you, what is being born among us. Watch for signs of God’s presence, a light in the darkness, a hope in the brokenness. What comes next may not be easy, but we don’t do it alone. We have each other. We have the strong presence of God. We have the promise that there is always light. In whatever struggle lies before us, whatever challenges we face, there is also hope and joy. Something new is born through us and God is bringing life through it all.