Tuesday, December 24, 2024, Christmas Eve
“Why A Virgin?”
Psalm 110:1-4; Isaiah 7:10-14; 1 John 4:7-16; Matthew 1:18-25
Hymns: #371 “O Come, All Ye Faithful”; #361 “O Little Town of Bethlehem”; #368 “Angels We Have Heard on High”; #386 “Now Sing We, Now Rejoice”; #374 “Gentle Mary Laid Her Child”; #364 “Away In a Manger”; #363 “Silent Night”; #380 “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
Central to the Christmas story is the blessed truth that our Lord Jesus was born of a virgin girl, a girl who had “never known a man.” Why was that necessary? Why is it so important for us to believe? Why does our Christian faith depend so much on the fact that the virgin birth is true? Church, it’s because “what happened with Mary” saved our lives and changed the world.
God our Father promised, right from the beginning, that the birth of our Savior would be marked by an unmistakable sign, by something that’s never in history happened before, or will ever happen again. And for His sign, God chose that most intimate expression of human love; the “expression”, unfortunately, that is also the source of so many of our troubles when we get the thing wrong or use God’s gift improperly. If people would keep that good Commandment about “thou shalt not commit adultery,” how many of the problems, in our relationships and in society, would we be free from? Divorces, broken marriages, broken homes, children raised without two parents, diseases, abuse, abortion. Those things wouldn’t happen if we used these bodies of ours as God intended them to be used.
When the devil came into the garden to tempt our first parents to sin, it was the holiness of intimacy that he was aiming to destroy. He was going right for the jugular, as it were, going right for the heart of our deepest love and dearest emotions. When Adam and Eve fell into sin, they brought sin into the human equation, and ever after passed their sin on to their children. Every act of intimacy between a man and a woman has now became also a passing on of sin and death.
It was the ultimate “wrench in the works” for humanity. Love ever after came with a risk, and with the knowledge that whomever you love, or choose to love, you’re going to lose them one day. Love became mingled with the pain of loss, love always with a backdrop of sorrow, an unbroken chain of tragedy passed on from generation to generation. What happened with Mary is God breaking the chain!
“This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about,” Matthew’s Gospel says. This is how it happened. This is what God did. Jesus’ mother Mary – so young, a teenager, barely more than a child – was engaged to be married to that man named Joseph. They were engaged, they were betrothed, they were promised to one another. There hadn’t been a wedding, or a wedding night, yet. And “before they came together” – and we know what that means – “she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.”
Angel Gabriel had told young Mary that “the Holy Spirit would overshadow her,” and that the child inside her would be “of the Holy Spirit.” But no one was going to believe her. Not her parents, not Joseph, not the people of their little town. Since Adam and Eve, there’s only been one way to “come to be with child,” and everyone’s mind went right to the worst. The penalty for adultery and unchastity in Joseph and Mary’s day was death. Joseph could have, quite legally, had Mary denounced, and stoned to death in the public square.
Joseph, good and righteous man that he was, thought to do all he could to spare her. He was looking at embarrassment and scandal and public disgrace, for himself, and for his family and hers - the things that usually happen in situations like this. His best solution was to divorce her quietly and send her out of town. God was doing something amazing, something that had never been done before, but who was going to believe it? A virgin with child? Who ever heard of such a thing?
Joseph, it seems, decided to sleep on it, hoping he’d know in the morning what in the world he was going to do. Then an angel of the Lord – the same angel Gabriel who’d appeared to Mary – appeared to him that night in a dream. When God wants to send a message from heaven, or intervene in the affairs of men, He can do it in a way of His own choosing; He’s God, after all. To Mary He sent a real and visible and glorious angel. At Jesus’ Baptism, and later to St. Paul, He spoke in an audible voice from heaven. Jesus Himself was God in the flesh, whom mother Mary could hold in her arms, and who the disciples later could see and feel and touch.
In Joseph’s case, God chose to speak to him by an angel in a dream. Whatever works! He can speak to us in any way He so chooses still today. Maybe in a vision or a dream, but most likely in His Word when we open it up, or when we pray. You’ll hear Him if your heart is open to listen. Again, whatever works, whatever it takes to get our attention, God will do it.
God’s angel, speaking to Joseph in his dream, assured him that what Mary was claiming, crazy as it sounded, was true! "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” Joseph, Mary the girl! The child in her isn’t the result of a sin, but of a divine miracle. It’s God breaking the chain! Every human being since Adam and Eve has been conceived and born in sin, and has died because of sin. And now one perfect human being, one holy, God-conceived Son of God, has come to live without sin, and to make a perfect sacrifice for your sake and mine. One perfect baby, one perfect Lamb, to take away the sin of the world.
The angel says to Joseph, “Your wife will give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” The name Jesus means “the Lord saves;” and the people He’ll save – His people – are you and me, and everyone who’s ever been born into this world in the natural way. Jesus died for all of us. Some will believe God for the Christmas miracle and praise Him for it; and some will deny there can be miracles at all. And that is sad.
The first Chapter of St. John’s Gospel says this about Jesus: “He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
All this took place, our Gospel says – the angels, the holy Conception, the virgin birth, the stable and the manger, the shepherds and wise men and all - to fulfill what God had said, what God had promised, through His prophet Isaiah 700 hundred years before. Here’s the sign for you to look for. Here’s the miracle that will tell you that the chain of sin has been broken, the miracle that will tell you there’s hope for the world and hope for us all, despite the mess we humans make of things: "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" --which means, "God with us." God with us. God beside us. God come to be with us. A real holy infant, in real flesh and blood, lying in a manger. A real Savior, a real and living Son of God, bleeding on a cross for the sake of our sin. A real Resurrection. Real hope. Real forgiveness. Real life.
So Joseph woke from his dream, our Gospel says, and did what the angel told him to do. He took Mary home to be his wife. And just so you and I and everyone can be sure that the child was of God, and not from Joseph, “He had no union with her until she gave birth to Son.”
This amazing miracle, this Christmas miracle, this divine and unique and wonderful virgin birth, is how we’ve been saved. “This is how God showed His love among us,” St. John says: “He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.” Lord, may our hearts be “quiet chambers kept for Thee,” as we celebrate the birth of Your holy Son. In Jesus’ name; Amen.