Sermons

Fri, Dec 25, 2015

Pregnant possibilities

Sermon for Christmas Day
Series:Sermons

The row of Christmas cards sitting atop our buffet is bright, cheery, and colourful.

There are pictures of Christmas trees…

presents…

doves…

dogs––

including some who are wearing Santa hats––

and old fashioned-looking snowy English scenes.

But there isn’t one card that depicts a nativity scene…

or even alludes to it.

In fact, when I was shopping to buy cards this year…

I had a hard job finding any myself.

Mind you, I don’t think that I saw any nativities in the…

admittedly few…

shopping centres that I have visited in recent weeks.

Now I don’t mention that by way of whinge or complaint––

this is not going to become some pulpit thumping, “Let’s put Christ back into Christmas” rant.

Far from it.

I mention it simply by way of observation.

We live in a secular society––

a secular society in which the disconnect from our religious roots and traditions grows annually.

Noting, similarly, the decline of the traditional children’s nativity play…

in a recent opinion piece for the ABC…

Natasha Moore––

from the theologically-conservative “Centre for Public Christianity––

asked:

“Expunging the story of the birth of Christ from Christmas is in essence, I suspect… a strange mix of over-sensitivity and insensitivity. Are people genuinely offended by it, or only ever worried that others might be offended?”

On the whole, I’m not sure that “offense” is the main issue here.

Nor does the problem stem from some supposed inability, as a culture, to handle myth…

and to get past the simplistic premise that ‘it has to be literally true or it has nothing to say to us’.

Unfortunately, it’s Christians who seem to have most trouble with that.

Natasha Moore inadvertently even admits to that herself:

“I happen to be a Christian, so I do think the story…is true; or, more accurately, I’m Christian because I think it’s true”.

It’s actually Christians, generally, who are wedded to a literal historicism…

and who don’t know how to handle myth.

But, in the case of the Christmas story…

the disconnect and, perhaps, embarrassment…

at least partly arises from the problematic nature of the story itself.

Leaving aside all of the historical and scientific problems––

of which there are many

but which I don’t want to go into this morning––

there are actually some serious theological and ethical problems with it.

Take what is for many a central idea of the story––

the notion of the ‘virginal conception’.

What does this actually say to us?

If we take this literally, how can we then affirm the full humanity of Jesus?

What, then, does that do to so many theories about the meaning of his death and resurrection?

If we take this literally, does it not imply that human sexuality is inherently dirty, bad, or wrong?

Sadly, that has been true for so much of Christian history…

and look where that has got us?

If we take this literally––

that the all-powerful God…

via the Holy Spirit…

impregnated a poor, powerless, pubescent girl––

are we not, legally speaking, dealing with statutory rape?

The implications and corollaries just get messier and messier!

 

Of course, the whole idea made sense within the medical mindset of the first century.

They didn’t understand about reproductive biology.

Back then…

babies weren’t understood as the product of the mother’s egg and father’s sperm…

and the fusing of two unique DNA strands.

Rather, to their way of thinking…

a baby grew from the father’s seed…

which was simply impregnated in the mother…

who was, literally, just an incubator––

the whole process akin to planting a seed in the soil.

So, if Jesus was God’s son, then God––

and no human father––

had to do the implanting.

In the end, the idea of the virginal conception wasn’t driven just by ‘biology’…

but also by theology.

Drawing upon ancient Greek mythological thought…

of the gods siring offspring with human girls…

in order to create great men––

men like Heracles or Hercules…

or Romulus, the founder of Rome––

the author of Luke’s Gospel was trying to stake a claim about Jesus…

one that would be immediately understood by his intended readers.

Through this story he claims that Jesus’ birth was special…

extraordinary…

miraculous.

Which, of course, simply proved that Jesus was great…

and reinforced the author’s claim––

made throughout his Gospel––

that Jesus…

rather than the Emperor…

was the bringer of peace and the saviour of the world.

He was, truly, of God;

He was, truly, God.

The story of the virginal conception of Jesus is a theological claim…

wrapped within the primitive and un-scientific worldview of the first century.

There is nothing historical or scientific about it.

And it’s a story that is, quite simply, completely unhelpful for us today.

 

So, if we put it aside, what are we left with?

 

We’re left with a Jesus who was…

to put it simply…

quite normal.

He was a normal child…

conceived in the normal way…

and––

notwithstanding the legends and myths surrounding his birth…

and all of our romantic reconstructions of that––

he was probably born in a pretty normal way to two normal parents.

And yet, as an adult…

those who knew him…

those who experienced his ministry…

and those who reflected upon his life…

all affirm that, in some special way, God was with him;

and that, through him, we truly saw and experienced God.

If we put aside the myth of his miraculous birth…

then we have to affirm that the incarnation was not…

in a sense…

a product of his ‘DNA’.

It was something that arose out of his full, normal, humanity…

but that…

somehow…

he was more open to…

more attune to…

more able to channel and make manifest…

the nature of God.

But it also means that, in a sense, he could…

literally…

be any one of us.

Or, more precisely, any one of us could be him.

The problem with the theology of the incarnation…

when we tie it to some unique, miraculous conception and birth…

and make Jesus, somehow, “special”…

is that it lets us off the hook.

It allows us to wallow in a sort of passive, spiritual narcissism…

because…

ultimately…

it’s not up to us to save the world.

That’s what Jesus did…

and does…

because he was “special”.

But if Jesus was, essentially, just like us…

or any one of us could manifest God as he could…

then we can’t just sit back navel gazing…

and expect someone to do it all for us.

All of the things that are said of Jesus:

that he came to bring peace on earth…

to all people, regardless––

that’s up to us;

freeing the oppressed and overturning the institutions of oppression––

up to us;

dealing with wealth disparity and the way that it enslaves the poor of the world––

up to us;

making the broken whole…

and embracing the excluded, the ‘other’, the alien, and the despised––

up to us.

Ultimately, it’s all up to us.

Because, all of us…

in our humanity…

incarnate God––

perhaps not in the same way or to the same extent as Jesus.

But maybe…

in the end…

that says more about the limits of our imagination…

and our inability to grasp the true meaning of the Christmas story. 

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