Bloody Stupid God-botherers

Matthew 1. 18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

 ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

[NRSV]

There is much huffing and puffing in Western society about this passage, about its dissimilarities to the account in Luke’s gospel-account, and the absence of such a narrative in Mark (or John, but that’s different again). There is also huffing and puffing of the “shock horror, virgin birth narratives were common in the first century” type, and of the “aren’t Christians silly to believe this imaginary friend fairy tale stuff.” Beneath these critiques is an unspoken or perhaps unrecognized assumption that the early Christians (like their later counterparts) were really rather thick to believe this coddle-pop.

Balderdash! The early Christians weren’t particularly interested in the bio-mechanics of Jesus’ conception. They knew that “parthenogenesis” (virgin birth) stories conveyed deep truth about the ability of God (or the gods) to transcend human expectation. The early Christians were willing to risk their lives not for the arguments about Mary’s sexual experience, which is no-one’s business (as her son makes clear, later, when he reduces to silence those who would stone a woman to death for her sexual activities), but about the ability of God to create resurrection-hope and justice-hope and aroha-hope through the life that passed through her womb. Actually neither they nor I had any problem believing that the God who flung stars across heaven could create (new) life in a virgin’s womb, but the greater issue was that their lives had been transformed from darkness to light by their encounter in worship and fellowship with the child of that womb, the Risen Lord of Easter.