- Matthew 1:18-25 - read this passage online here »
- Luke 1:26-38 - read this passage online here »
I appreciate a good mystery. A story is called a mystery when the plot involves a crime or some other event that remains puzzlingly unsettled until the very end. Among the best writers of such mysteries, in my opinion, are authors such as Charles Dickens, Edgar Alan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov, Earle Stanley Gardner, P. D. James, Ian Fleming, John le Carre and Ray Bradbury. You no doubt have your own list. Do you remember some of these mystery programs from the past: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Columbo, Dragnet, Hawaii Five-O, Perry Mason, X-Files, The Avengers, Quincy M E, Rockford Files? Among my favourites today are Murdoch Mysteries, Doctor Who and NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigation Service). For me, there is a common approach I need to take for virtually all mysteries. I have to be open and not closed to all the possibilities inherent in the mystery. I have to be aware there is more to understand, more to experience and more to resolve in the story than what I may think at first. A mystery means I had better be careful not to make up my mind too soon, thinking I know all the answers already!
Dietrich Bonhoeffer challenged our respect for the mystery in life itself when he wrote:
“The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty. A human life is worth as much as the respect it holds for the mystery. We retain the child in us to the extent that we honour the mystery. Therefore, children have open, wide-awake eyes because they know that they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not yet finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery, as we do. We destroy the mystery because ... we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with the mystery.”
This morning we heard two passages from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that are filled with mystery. This mystery challenges us to respect it and to honour it. That means we dare not dismiss it as if there were no mystery. My constant prayer is to allow the child in me to respond with awe to this mystery that holds and surrounds us with love and hope.
Where is the mystery in these two passages? It is in at least three places. The mystery is in the conception of Jesus. The mystery is in the name of Jesus as “Saviour.” The mystery is also in the name of Jesus as “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.”
It was not a mystery to Joseph and Mary 2,000 years ago how a baby is conceived! (Nor is it to us!) Under normal circumstances, a baby requires a man and a woman to engage in a sexual relationship. But today there is also artificial insemination when a doctor intervenes! That’s what was so intriguing about how Jesus was born. Both Joseph and Mary knew that neither one of them had begun such a relationship with each other even though they were engaged to be married. Mary also knew she had not been with any other man at all. That was part of the struggle Joseph had at first when he learned Mary was pregnant. At first her pregnancy meant to him (and to anyone else who would find out she was pregnant before they were lawfully married) that Mary had committed adultery and, therefore, could be stoned to death as permitted by law. And even though Joseph properly married Mary, there still seemed to be some rumours whispered around the community that Jesus might have been born illegitimately. I am of the belief, however, that Mary was telling the truth even if it left her vulnerable to innuendo and gossip about her supposed misconduct.
But both Matthew, Jesus’ disciple, and Luke, the physician and historian, would have believed both Joseph and Mary as well; otherwise, they would not have made themselves or Mary or even Jesus vulnerable to ridicule by writing matter-of-factly about these details of Jesus’ birth. Why draw more attention to Mary, Joseph and Jesus by adding these circumstances in writing? It only made the possibility of people believing the worst about Mary’s behaviour more widely known. Why would Matthew and Luke include this information in their Gospels unless there was something important here? Otherwise, it would only create an unnecessary embarrassment in the Christian community.
Part of the mystery of Jesus’ birth is that the virginity of Mary was assumed by both Matthew and Luke -- and the Early Church. But the virginity of Mary was not their primary focus. They also did not suggest that this conception of Jesus was the most important thing about Jesus. It was simply a matter of fact to them – Luke telling of Mary’s experience and Matthew of Joseph’s experience with both accounts converging on this point. But, in fact, no other New Testament writer talked about the conception and birth of Jesus as being unusual. Most, like the Apostle Paul, focused on the death and the resurrection of Jesus as more significant for their readers. I appreciate theologian N. T. Wright’s observations about this mystery:
“But to those who have come to some kind of faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, whose minds are thus opened to God being uniquely present in [Jesus], there is a sense of appropriateness, hard to define, easy to recognize, about the story Luke and Matthew tell. It isn’t what we would have expected, but it somehow rings true.” [Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone, SPCK, Great Britain, 2002, p. 11.]
Both Matthew and Luke clearly focused their attention on God’s Holy Spirit. It was the intervention of the Holy Spirit of God who caused Mary to be pregnant. Twice Matthew said she was going to have Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Luke recorded that the angel said to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” and “God’s power will rest upon you.” So the birth of Jesus involved connecting humanity with the power of God’s Holy Spirit. With all that we experience about Jesus in the Gospels, does not this connection of the human with the divine “ring true” in our hearts and minds?
The mystery is also in the name Jesus. The name “Jesus” is a Greek equivalent of the well-known Hebrew name Joshua. It comes from two Hebrew words that mean “Lord” and “save.” So when the choir sings the introit “Jesus Stand Among Us” at the beginning of many of our worship services, as a community of faith, we are calling on the “Lord who saves” to stand among us here, in this place, in his risen power!
Christmas is about the salvation that God planned for humanity through Jesus. What does the Church mean when we say “Jesus saves”? Well, to be saved still normally means to be rescued from something, from some condition or from someone. And the Scripture teaches -- and the worldwide Church has taught for two millenniums -- that Jesus saves his people from the condition and consequences of their sins.
Throughout the Gospels, “save” is also very much connected to healing and justice. There is a wonderful sense that God’s saving work encompasses the whole of life. For instance, when the disciples’ boat was about to capsize, they wanted “salvation” [Matthew 8:25]. When Jesus was on the cross, he was taunted about saving himself [Matthew 27:40]. When Mary sang her song of praise (The Magnificat) in Luke’s Gospel, she declared God as her “Saviour” who would bring down the high and mighty, lift up the lowly, fill the hungry and send the rich away empty. The mystery of God again comes to the forefront in this complete reversal of fortunes. We merely have to ponder how God used the mystery inherent in a young peasant girl of no particular fame or fortune, from a small and insignificant village in the Middle East, to bear the Saviour of the world as a hint of what is to come. And, yes, there is the social justice message and ministry of Jesus on behalf of those who are oppressed and powerless and poor. And there is ultimate hope for those who experience more than their share of suffering in this life. As the Church, you and I are the heart, the hands and the feet of Jesus in the ways we care for those who are poor and on the margins of society.
But there is more than that when we talk about Jesus being the “Saviour” of the world. This kind of “saving” is something only Jesus could do.
At the heart of the word “save” in the Gospels is the sense of personal salvation. Listen to Jesus when he says: “For whoever wants to save their own life will lose it; but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” [Matthew 16:25]. That’s the hope of the remarkable mystery in realizing we cannot save or rescue ourselves, in accepting Jesus’ death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and in giving our whole lives to Jesus Christ in response.
As a researcher and physician, Francis Collins' credentials and accomplishments are well-respected in the scientific community. He headed up the Human Genome Project before serving as the director of the National Institutes of Health in the United States. In 2007 he wrote a New York Times best-selling book called The Language of God. It weaves together the story of his work as a world-renowned scientist and his journey from atheism to faith in Jesus Christ.
Although Collins is thoroughly committed to rational inquiry and the scientific method, God used a few people and the majesty of nature to cause Collins to consider the meaning and the mystery of Jesus Christ in his life. As a gifted medical student, Collins thought it was “convenient to not have to deal with God.” But, then, after one of his patients told Collins about her faith, she asked him: “What about you? What do you believe?” In Collin's own words, he said: “I stuttered and stammered and felt the colour rising in my face, and I said, ‘Well, I don't think I believe in anything.’ But that suddenly seemed like a very thin answer. And that was unsettling.”
Then after a long period of searching, which included serious questioning of a pastor, reading C. S. Lewis and observing the beauty of creation, Collins finally responded to Jesus Christ. This is Collin's description of that life-changing encounter:
“I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.” [Francis Collins, The Language of God (Free Press, 2007), p. 225]
My friends, this is experiencing the Christmas hope! This is coming to believe in the name of Jesus who was born to save us from the consequences of our sins so we can experience God’s amazing grace and forgiveness.
The mystery of God is also in the name of Jesus as “Immanuel” -- “God with us.” Matthew wants us to connect the Virgin Mary with the young woman Isaiah the prophet speaks of in Isaiah 7:14: “The Lord himself will give you a sign: a young woman who is pregnant will have a son and will name him Immanuel.” Matthew says the son who is born to Mary “will make come true what the Lord had said through the prophet” [Matthew 1:22] and her son will be called “Immanuel,” meaning “God is with us”!
Christmas is all about “God with us.” It is about the Incarnation. But “God with us” is more than simply a theological statement. Incarnation is God doing the really astounding and unthinkable! Incarnation is God taking humanity on himself by becoming human in Jesus of Nazareth. And “God with us” is more than that.
Immanuel – “God with us” -- is a promise. A promise given from the beginning of creation. A promise given to Abraham and his descendants. A promise of redemption expected throughout all the years of history. A promise now fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Immanuel – “God with us” -- is redemption. God with us is good news – the gospel! The gospel story is that God has identified completely with humanity in order to redeem us. “Immanuel” (God with us) explains “Jesus” (The Lord who saves).
Immanuel – “God with us” -- is mission. If God is with us by sending Jesus the Son, the Son is with us we carry on the mission of healing, caring, loving our neighbours and calling people to ponder Jesus Christ for their lives.
You may not be familiar with Clarence Jordan’s The Cotton Patch Gospel. Jordan recast the stories of Jesus by bringing them to the life and language and culture of the mid-20th-century southern United States. Listen to how Jordan put Jesus’ words in the final verses of Matthew, Chapter 28: “As you travel, then, make students [disciples] of all races and initiate them into the family of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit [that’s baptism]. Teach them to live by all that I outlined for you. And you know, I am right in there with you -- all the time -- right to the [end].”
Immanuel – “God with us” in a promise is the way Matthew begins his Gospel. He ends his Gospel with “Jesus with us in mission.” How full of hope is that for all of us!
The mystery of God calls us to ponder the mystery of Jesus. Romans 8:31 and 32 declares for the entire world to consider: “If God is for us, who can be against us? Certainly not God, who did not even keep back his own Son, but offered him for us all!”
We do not say our New Creed every week. But I have a sense it may be appropriate to say it together now – as a witness to one another that God is with us in the promise of redemption and Jesus is with us in salvation and through the Holy Spirit in loving mission for the world. Turn to page 918 in Voices United and please stand as you are able.
A New Creed
We are not alone,
we live in God's world.
We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus,
the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others
by the Spirit.
We trust in God.
We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God's presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.
Thanks be to God.
May this be so for you and for me.
Rev. Chris Miller
December 12, 2010
OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
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