First Friends Meeting
Matthew 1:18-23
‘This Can’t Be’

When I was in high school, I had to read Moby Dick for my Junior English class. It was great, but I was a slow reader (I still am) and wasn’t getting through it fast enough. Finally, with time running out and an exam coming, I went out and bought the Cliff Notes to the book. I hate to admit that, especially with Lincoln here. Anyway, with that handy little booklet, I was able to find out how the rest of the story went, more-less. I also learned about some of the literary symbolisms going on in the novel – things I would never have guessed at. It was cheating, really. I took the short-cut to the meaning of the book. And such short-cuts never really get there. It’s never the same as working through the full texture and scope of the story itself.

I think the Quaker aversion to creeds amounts to the same thing. A creed amounts to a Cliff Notes version of the New Testament. You got your virgin birth, your crucifixion, your resurrection, your return and last judgment – all the high points and low points of the gospel reeled off like a check-list. It’s all true enough to the story – but really, it’s utterly false, a distortion of the story’s truth. The story itself, not the distillation of certain conceptual nuggets, breathes the Christian faith. It’s the story itself – just as it’s life itself, our own lives, that we have to grapple with. Whatever faith we can muster, whatever understanding we can piece together, comes from the warp and woof of living our lives before God and alongside one another, day by day. To live by a Christian creed is to make the least of not just the Bible but your own life. Real faith is where your story and my story come together around the old, old story.

Which brings us to the old, old story Mariah just read for us. We’ve heard it so many times. It’s tempting to say to ourselves, Oh, right – the virgin birth. We hear the story enough to recognize the distilled concept, and at that point, we stop hearing the story. We either shake our heads in disbelief and think, here we go again. Or we affirm the concept in stubborn belief. Or perhaps we consider that this virgin birth thing may be true, but in some symbolic sense. I’m not going to agree or disagree with any of those conclusions. But I want to simmer in the juices of that story a bit more this morning.

A month ago, Bonita gave a message on the story of Jonah. She remarked that the part about he big fish functions like “a giant red herring” for many people. It can throw us off the trail of the story. We get hung up on the impossibility of such a thing happening. Bonita suggested that the raging sea and the big fish may be understood as symbols. Ancient story-tellers often used such images to imply deeper truths. The stormy sea and the big fish symbolize the emotional and spiritual upheaval that overcomes Jonah as he flees from God’s calling. In any case, the overall story of Jonah is much more important, much more interesting (and more troubling) than the part about the big fish.

In a similar way, the concept ‘virgin birth’ can function in the Christmas story like a red herring for us. It can throw us off the trail. The story tells us very simply that Mary “was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” Now the Bible has stories of women becoming pregnant well after the age. Like Sarah, Hannah, and Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth. But this is another matter altogether. The ancients were not stupid! They thought differently from the way we do today, but they had a great subtlety of their own. The first hearers of this story would not say, oh, sure, with child from the Holy Spirit. They would say, that can’t be! And Matthew lays this on us very abruptly. Matthew doesn’t have the conversation between Mary and the angel Gabriel that we find in Luke. Matthew sets us up beautifully. First he runs us through all those ‘begats’ – from Abraham to Joseph. This one begat that one, and so on. Centuries of men and women making babies the time-tested way. Then all of a sudden, Mary is “found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” Huh?!

Well, that’s what Joseph said. This can’t be! We don’t hear what Mary, his fiancee, said to Joseph, to explain her situation. But imagine his consternation, his indignation, his devastation, his humiliation! But Matthew tells us that Joseph was a righteous man – not self-righteous, which is a very different thing. He didn’t want to expose her disgrace to the community. People could do very nasty things to a woman in that situation. He decided the best thing to do was just quietly call the whole thing off. Joseph is a decent guy, trying to do the decent thing to someone he thought he knew, thought he loved. But something happened. Some kind of dream, some kind of message from the other side told him to believe Mary’s story, whatever it was. More than to believe in Mary’s story, to believe in Mary. Yes, he was humiliated. Yes, he was would have to share in Mary’s disgrace before the community. But he came to this experience with a basic humility (his willingness to do the decent thing) that allowed him to hear the good news hidden in this very bad news. The miracle hidden within the disaster. It’s a humility that can shrug off humiliation. If we just say ‘virgin birth’ we don’t see the real miracle going on here.

Luke’s gospel gives us Mary’s side of the disaster. But the nature of the miracle is the same. When the angel told Mary the amazing news, it wasn’t in Sunday School. She didn’t just say, oh, right, I’m going to have one of those ‘virgin births’. Now, as Luke tells the story, when the angel finishes speaking, Mary simply answers, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” But somewhere between the angel’s news and her response, Mary experienced the end of the world. The end of her life as she knew it and expected it to be. Hey, I’m engaged to be married! I’m supposed to have a normal life, like my friends! This can’t be! This will plunge me into a disgrace I’ll never live down.

If Joseph is a portrait of humility overcoming humiliation, Mary is a portrait of grace triumphing in disgrace. Her ability to say ‘yes’ to the angel is only by the grace of God, just as Joseph’s righteousness was not self-righteousness but the gift of God. Together, they are the miracle. Or rather, together, they make space for the miracle. The miracle is “Emmanuel, God is with us.” When we consider the kind of child Jesus is, Joseph is every bit his father!

I suppose ‘virgin birth’ is also a code-word in another sense. It stands for two understandings of God that we can never put together. The New Testament gives us God in the form of a baby, born in a stable. It gives us God in human form, as vulnerable as we are, who finally suffers as badly as anyone can. The Old Testament gives us God who is so vast, so totally Other, so beyond this world and all our categories, that to look upon this God is to die. Moses is the only human credited in Hebrew Scripture as having even glimpsed God. And even then, we are told, Moses only saw God from the back, and going away. Many of us simply prefer God as a warm and milky infant. What’s the connection between the two, the unimaginably Other God and the irresistibly intimate God? The Lord of heaven and earth, the Ancient of Days, becomes a baby laid in a feed trough? No, this can’t be.

But Moses saw the awesome God the same way Mary and Joseph became parents to the warm, fuzzy God. We are told that Moses was the meekest man on earth. His meekness allowed him to survive seeing God. Likewise, we saw how Joseph’s humility carried him through terrible humiliation. And we saw how Mary’s simplicity to God’s grace carried her through her disgrace. God’s awfulness and God’s intimacy come together in people like that.

People like us, in our better moments. Each of us knows something of the truth of this unbelievable story. It comes to us in those moments when something mysteriously carries us through the unthinkable events, the total humiliations, the utter disgraces that befall us. Things that may or may not be our own fault. It comes through moments when the world as we know it falls apart, the normal life we expected becomes a very strange journey. It may come through our own failures, or experiences of being betrayed. It may come when others disappoint us or when we lose them altogether. It comes in those moments where we say, oh, this can’t be!

Maybe this old, old story is like that old joke, about dear Aunt Jane who thinks she’s a chicken. Uncle Bill would talk her out of it, but he needs the eggs. Well, surely, it can’t be. But the alleged miracle in the story describes a miracle we do experience now and again. And we do need the eggs.