Fourth Sunday of Advent
I remember a conversation I had with my friend Ben at the start of my senior year of college. As we traded stories about our summer experiences, I asked him what he’d been up to. That summer, he did an internship as a hospital chaplain at a big hospital in Houston, Texas. He talked about what it was like to be among the sick, the hurting, and the dying, all amidst the backdropped of overworked nurses and doctors and worried family members. “How did you get through all of that,” I asked. I’ll never forget his answer. “When it got really bad, I took a trip up to the 7th floor.” That was the labor and delivery floor. When he became overwhelmed at the enormity of pain and death, he went to the 7th floor. He walked down the hall to the room where all the new babies sleep. He watched the new parents with their faces up against the glass pointing and waving at their babies. He went up there to see signs of hope and joy. He went there to see signs of life and to remember that God is good.
This morning let’s go together to the 7th floor. Amidst all the pain, heartache, and death, let’s gather around the hope and joy of pregnancy and new birth. Let’s gather around the signs of new life as we remember that God is good.
Luke 1:26-38 26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” 34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.” 38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
The God of the Bible is a God of miracles. God does things that defy normality, that seem to go above and beyond the normal rules of the universe. To be clear, God is not only found in the supernatural. God is found in the natural. As we’ve talked about before, God, the Creator, is found when we explore the creation. We are not anti-science, and many of you experience some of your deepest connections to God in and around science. At the same time, God is above and beyond normality. God is a God of miracles, a God of both the ordinary and extraordinary.
A recurrent miracle in the Bible is that of miracle pregnancies and babies. We see this in the story of Sarah, who has Isaac when she is 91, well past the normal age. We see this in the story Hannah who after years of infertility prays for a son and God answers her prayer in the birth of Samuel. We see this in the story of Elizabeth who has John the Baptist in her late age, a parallel to Sarah. The theme of a miracle pregnancy and birth serves to show the power and faithfulness of God. God can do anything, and therefore, even when God’s promises seem unlikely, we can trust that God has the power to fulfill the promise.
I would encourage us all to firmly embrace the truth of the virgin birth. It’s a foundational part of our faith. Many things we spend a lot of time discussing do not show up in early creeds. Many things we talk a lot about do not seem to be things early Christians talked about. But they talked about the virgin birth. It’s cemented in their creeds, with the Apostles Creed being the most famous example. God came to earth through a miracle pregnancy to show both the divine origin of the child and the power of God to do miracles. By affirming this miracle, we open ourselves up to look for miracles today. We position ourselves to see a God that works through natural means but also works at times through supernatural means. May we have eyes to see the many ways God brings new life.
Let’s dig a little deeper on the meaning of Mary. This semester, I had an Egyptian student in class named Miriam. The class was on the Old Testament, and this day’s class centered on how Old Testament themes show up in the New Testament. She came up to me after class and said, “You know that my name Miriam is the name Mary. Miriam is the Hebrew version of the name Mary. It’s the same name.” It’s powerful to think about.
What do we know about Miriam in the Old Testament? Her brother, Moses, was the divine appointed deliverer, yet early in life, he faced great danger. Miriam watched after him and took care of him in his vulnerable moments. You remember the Nile River story, the basket, and Pharaoh’s daughter. Later, Miriam supports and assists Moses and Aaron in the deliverance. The Bible calls her a prophet, and she leads the people in worship after the Red Sea crossing.
Mary comes as a new Miriam. She takes care of the divine appointed deliverer, Jesus. Like Miriam showed up at the key moments of the Red Sea crossing and Mt. Sinai, Mary shows up at the cross and Pentecost. Just as Miriam speaks prophetic words, Mary proclaims the power of God in Luke 1, what we normally refer to as the Magnificat.
Besides showing up a new Miriam, Mary also shows up as a new Eve. In Genesis 3:20, we read, “Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living.” Just as Eve is the mother of all living, Mary comes as the mother of the source of all living. If Eve is the mother of life, Mary is the mother of new life.
Notice also the pattern of reversal at play in the Eve and Mary comparison. Jesus comes to reverse the ways of death and brings the ways of life. We see this reversal throughout his ministry-blessed are the poor, woe to the rich-type of thing. We see the reversal at work in Eve and Mary. Eve does not trust the words of God. She listens to another voice. Because of her sin, there are consequences, specifically pain in childbirth. Fast forward into the future, when Mary receives God’s words, she believes. She trusts. She does the opposite of Eve. She obeys. It’s no accident that her obedience involves pregnancy, the very location of Eve’s consequence. Eve experienced the fall in painful childbirth. Mary ushers in salvation, the reversal of the fall and the healing of the curse, through painful childbirth. Mary is the second Eve, the new Eve, the opposite of Eve.
I want to sit in this experience of childbirth for a second. Pregnancy represents so much uncertainty and change. For women in antiquity (and even in some contemporary contexts) maternal mortality exists as a dangerous threat. In the New Testament era, most everyone knew someone who had died in childbirth. It was one of the main causes of death. It helps us understand a verse in the Bible that has often been confusing to me.
In 1 Timothy 2:15, Paul tells the church in Ephesus, “women will be saved through childbearing-if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” That verse always struck me as odd because the scriptures so often talk about us being saved through Jesus, the cross, faith, grace, and baptism. What does it mean to be saved through childbearing? In her book, Paul and Gender, Cynthia Long Westfall, explains that childbearing is not the means of salvation but an experience where salvation shows up. It’s an admonition to trust that God would save them in and through the pain and mortal threat of childbearing. In Ephesus, the main goddess was Artemis (Diana). Many women trusted and prayed to her to get them through childbirth. To become a Christian meant leaving idolatry behind. This made many nervous. How will I make it through childbearing without Artemis? The answer: Jesus is greater than Artemis. Yes, the pain and threat of childbirth is a ramification of the fall, but Jesus moves everything towards healing and curse reversal. Jesus would be with them and get them through it. Jesus, born of Mary, changed how they viewed all things, including pregnancy and birth. New life is possible. New life often comes through times of pain and struggle. Pregnancy, an experience fraught with both hope and concern, struggle and excitement, teaches us so much about life, and about Jesus.
As a young child, I remember my first experience witnessing a birth. It was not a human birth. Rather, one of our cows delivered a calf out in the woods behind our house. We only had a couple of cows. It was a hobby of my parents, not a business. My parents had been tracking the pregnancy of this cow for many weeks. Earlier in the day, my dad got the sense the birth was nearing. It was a cold February day. The birth occurred during the night. We ventured into the woods with lanterns and flashlights. We wanted to give the mother space, yet we wanted to make sure she was okay. She seemed in great pain, and this concerned me. It seemed so painful, even violent. Yet it seemed to wondrous and beautiful at the same time. As she gave birth to the calf, it began to snow, not a big snow just some flurries. We named the calf snowflake. At that age, only about age 6 or 7, I had never seen something that was such a powerful blend of struggle and victory, pain and joy.
On a much higher and greater scale, this is the experience of humans. There’s beauty and excitement for sure, but there’s also concern. When I’ve talked to pregnant friends and family members, I’ve seen this-the mix of worry and hope. As a man, it continues to be outside my personal experience, yet I’m drawn to what mothers have shared with me about their experience. I can’t think of anything that embodies the fragility and struggle of hope more than pregnancy and birth.
The apostle Paul agrees. In Galatians 4:19, he does what no man should ever do. He compares his pain to the pain of a woman giving birth. But perhaps we can forgive him and listen to what the Spirit wants to say through him in the statement, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” Paul writes to those he’s mentored in the faith. He baptized many of them. He’s walked alongside them, through highs and lows, as the Spirit has made them more and more like Christ. And Paul says, all of that is painful, but you do it because of the hope of new birth. The joy of new birth makes the struggle worth it.
Could it be that our experience in 2020 has been like childbirth in this way? Could it be that pursuing Christ likeness in all the craziness this year has been painful like delivery? Like pregnancy and childbirth, can we say that the joy of new birth makes the struggle worth it?
That’s what Mary embodies for us. She is the new Miriam, the new Eve, and forever shapes the way we think of pregnancy and childbirth. What was once a sign of the curse is now the sign of the new creation. The Son of God is born of Mary. Our hope is call caught up in her pregnancy, and when we go to the manger, when we hear her cries and the cry of baby Jesus, their struggle gives way to our joy. God has come to us. If God came once, God can come again.
Together, we find ourselves in a type of spiritual pregnancy, waiting for new birth and waiting for new life. Paul sums it up like this in Romans 8:22-25. “22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”
Metaphorically speaking, we have felt the pains of childbirth this year as the creation groans for its redemption. We have learned more about patience than any of us wanted to learn. At times, the pain has threatened to overwhelm us. In these moments, it’s important to go to the 7th floor and see the baby. It’s vital that we gather around the manger. It’s central that we visit the nativity and see a tired, depleted Mary with a smile of satisfaction and joy as she holds Jesus. When we go to this place, we experience what my friend Ben experienced years ago. We see signs of hope and joy. We see signs of life, and we remember that God is good.
Family, hope comes at the end of the pain. Joy comes at the end of the struggle. We are not alone in this world. God came to us. God is with us. God will come again. Let us wait patiently together with great hope and with great joy. Merry Christmas Acklen.
