Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary
The Presbyterian ordination process is rigorous. It requires three years of seminary, proficiency in Greek and Hebrew, understanding of the basic flow of Scripture, a commitment to reformed theology, church internships and several months of chaplain work at a hospital.
It is rigorous for good reason: gospel ministry is important. The most intimidating part of the process, however, is the oral examination in front of an entire Presbytery. You stand before all the pastors and at least one elder from each congregation in the region and they are free to ask you any question about anything that they want to know.
Part of the examination includes reading a personal statement of faith. My statement included the lines: “Jesus was and is fully God.” And “Jesus was and is fully human.” If I remember correctly, one of the pastors asked me what I meant when I said that Jesus is still fully human? I don’t recall my exact answer but I’m guessing it had something to do with Jesus’ resurrection being a bodily resurrection. That is, Jesus had a body after he was raised from the dead. He was still human. He ate food. He walked around. Thomas touches his hand and his side. He is not a ghost. Whatever the “new heavens and the new earth” will be like, it won’t be a bunch of spirits floating around in the clouds. Like Jesus, we will have a physical body. We will still be human. In fact, we will finally be fully human.
More on that in a few weeks when we get to Jesus’ resurrection and ascension and the life everlasting. But for now, what is the significance of Jesus’ birth?
The Word Became Flesh
After the Creed declares Jesus is God’s Son and our Lord, it describes his birth, Jesus "was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.”
Whether you believed Jesus was born of a virgin or not used to be a litmus test, like other miracles, as to whether you were a conservative or liberal Christian. There may be places where this is still the case. But the argument has always seemed silly to me. I realize that some people have trouble with the miracles of the Bible but for whatever reason they have never been an obstacle for me. If God is God and the center of our faith is that a man died and three days later came back to life, then all the other miracles, including Jesus’ birth, don’t seem that far-fetched. And if you aren’t yet sure that Jesus came back to life, then none of this other stuff really matters anyway. Begin with the resurrection.
Throughout the Biblical story there are extraordinary births. Abraham and Sarah are well past childbearing age when they have Isaac. Moses should have been killed the moment he was born and shouldn’t have survived his personal boat trip down the Nile. Hannah is unable to have children until God hears her prayer and answers; her son Samuel begins the next stage in Israel’s history. Naomi should have remained a widow and without descendants were it not for the loyalty of the Moabite Ruth and the generosity of Boaz - their great, great grandson David, eventually becomes the king to whom all other kings are compared, Jesus himself comes from Boaz and Ruth’s line.
In fact, one way to read the Old Testament is to see it as one long genealogy leading to Jesus (see Genesis 3:15 and the seed of the woman; one question the Old Testament is asking is who is this descendant that will one day finally crush the serpent’s head? He is not from the line of Ishmael but Isaac, not from Esau but Jacob, not from the eleven other brothers but Judah, etc.).
I realize the Hebrew Scriptures are a lot more than that, but they certainly are not less than that. This is why Matthew begins his story of Jesus with a genealogy tracing back to Abraham all the way to Joseph and Mary and Luke begins his with a genealogy going even further back to Adam.
It is not a surprise then, that the birth of Jesus is surrounded with unusual circumstances. The birth of Jesus is where the whole story was heading. History is not random. One of the carols we sing at Christmas has the phrase “when with the ever circling years/ comes round the age of gold” (“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”). But the story of Jesus’ birth makes the exact opposite argument - history isn’t ever circling, it is shaped by the promises and fulfillment of God. No less so today.
Jesus’ virginal conception to the (likely) teenager Mary is less scandalous than the larger idea that somehow, in Jesus, the Creator God became part of the creation. As Philip Yancey notes, “God emerged in Palestine as a baby who could not speak or eat solid food or control his bladder, who depended on a teenage couple for shelter, food, and love…a mule could have stepped on him.”
I heard historian and theologian Michael Horton this week on a podcast suggest that when John writes, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:1-2), that idea would have sounded familiar to most Greek philosophers and thinkers at the time. Almost everyone believed there was some rational, all-powerful wisdom behind the creation of the world. The crazy idea comes in verse 14 - “The word became flesh, and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14 MSG).
God’s Son is Mary’s boy. Paul says it this way, Jesus “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8).
We’ll reflect more on Jesus’ suffering and death in the next two installments, but we don’t have to get to the cross to begin to wrestle with the reality that Jesus “humbled himself.” He was fourteen once. He probably had pimples, and his voice cracked, and he would have worn braces if they were a thing, maybe even headgear if he was born in the 80’s.
The world, and much of the church with it, worships power. Trusts in power. Vies and clambers for power. Votes for power.
Jesus turns worldly power on its head.
Jesus has a noble pedigree to be sure, from the line of David is a repeated theme, but he is not born in a palace. Joseph and Mary are poor - they bring doves to be sacrificed and not a heifer. His first crib is a feeding trough. For about thirty years he lived in utter obscurity in a rural town in a minor province of the Roman Empire. He held no degree, likely worked with wood or stone, and invited fishermen, tax collectors, and several women (unusual at the time) to be his core group. He tells most people in the gospel stories not to spread news about him (Mark 7:36, at least, at first. “Go and make disciples of all nations” expands that a bit).
The kingdoms of this world come with bombs and bulldozers. Jesus invites us to trust that mustard seeds pack the bigger punch.
As I have said in previous reflections, Jesus shows us what God is like. Jesus brings God near. Jesus also shows us what humanity is intended to be like. It is true that human beings, created in the image of God, were instructed to fill, subdue and rule over creation in Genesis 1:28. And Jesus, the true “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 3:15), shows us what it means to rule. Not with an iron fist or an iron throne but with loaves of bread, reckless grace and a crown of thorns.
He was and is fully God and fully human.
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