Sermon for December 19th (The Virgin Mary)

Do you ever feel like, as a Christian, there are a lot of things you HAVE to believe? Just little things that you are supposed to agree with, like it or not? And it’s not that you don’t necessarily believe them, but they seem inconsequential or silly—you don’t understand them. And we figure that it really doesn’t matter if we believe everything. I mean, we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ, right? Not how pure our doctrine is or how much we agree with the church party line.

The doctrine or belief in the virgin Mary fits in this category for many Christians. It’s written in the Bible, we confess it in the Apostle’s Creed, but it certainly doesn’t seem like a very important thing to believe. I mean, it’s her own business whether she was a virgin or not when she had Jesus, right? Who cares! Jesus was born, the Savior of the world! That’s what matters. We could care less about Mary and her past activities.

There are a lot of people who question whether Mary was actually a virgin or not. Did you know that? And in the face of so many questions, it’s easy to say, “Who cares! It doesn’t really matter! Believe whatever you want to believe. It doesn’t affect much.” But, you know what? That is a trap. By the end of my message today, I hope that you see that it actually does matter. What you believe about this matters a lot. And why is that? Because like many doctrines of the church that we don’t think are very important, what you believe affects your faith in Jesus. It’s part of the foundation. Sometimes, we don’t realize how central some peculiar doctrine is to our faith until everything begins to crumble around us and we can’t figure out why. The doctrine of the virgin Mary is one of them so we’d better talk about it.

First, you need to know some of arguments AGAINST the doctrine of the virgin Mary. I want you to understand the issues involved. There are three categories: scientific, historical and grammatical. You can probably guess the scientific problem with a virgin birth: Babies do not just show up out of nowhere. Scientists know how a baby is conceived and, if you don’t know, you might need to ask. To put it simply. In order for a baby to be created, you need something from a mommy and something from a daddy. Two human beings make a human baby. It’s very simple science.

Knowing this fact (that all human babies need something from a mommy and something from a daddy) some scientists argue that Mary might have THOUGHT she was a virgin, but maybe she just hadn’t had “the talk” yet about the birds and the bees. They didn’t have to take health class back then, so, perhaps, she was just ignorant. Of course, other people don’t give her the benefit of the doubt and just argue that she must have simply been lying. She isn’t the first young woman, they might point out, to maintain her purity in the face of obvious proof to the opposite just to not get in trouble with her parents or, in this case, her fiancée.

Then there is the historical argument. In the book “Christology” by Hans Swartz, he writes that throughout history, “many important figures were allegedly born of a virgin even if their parents were well known.” For example, Ra, the Egyptian Sun-god was supposed to be a virgin birth, so were all the heroes in the Greek and Roman pantheons such as Perseus. Other important historical figures were said to be virgin births such as Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. Had you ever heard about these so-called virgin births before? And what do with do with information? Were the Christians just copying the idea from their neighbors?

Swartz points out a problem with comparing these different examples, “In the Near Eastern and Hellenistic context there is always a sexual element present, a divine marriage, for instance, in which a divine male in human or other form impregnates a woman.” For example, the Greek god Zeus was said to take the form of a swan and has a romantic encounter with a lady named Lena. As the story goes, they create the beautiful Helen of Troy—the face that launched a thousand ships. But Swartz points out, “There is no clear example of virginal conception in world or pagan religions that plausibly could have given first-century Jewish Christians the idea of the virginal conception of Jesus.”

What does all that mean? It means that Jesus’ conception, the concept of a virgin Mary, is unlike any other historical examples. So, either the biblical writers were really bad at copying from other stories or else they weren’t copying anything at all.

Finally, there is the grammatical argument. There are some who have argued that the word translated “virgin” from today’s Isaiah text is actually better translated “young woman” or “maiden” . Therefore, these scholars would argue, it is not necessary to believe that Mary had to be a virgin in order to fulfill this prophecy, she just had to be a young woman, which she was. Some argue that the only reason the earliest Christians thoughts she was a virgin was because they were mistranslating what Isaiah really wrote. However, I am always skeptical of these translation arguments. I mean, if it “could” be translated “young woman” it also “could” still be translated “virgin”. Since people 2000 years ago were probably better at both their Hebrew and Greek than I am, I tend to think that since the church has believed she was a virgin for two centuries, that’s probably still the truth today.

Well, those are the main arguments AGAINST a virgin birth. Some of them may be more convincing to you than others. The fact of the matter is that the virgin birth has always been a problem for good reason—it was a miracle! I mean, that’s kinda the point isn’t it? God appears to have wanted it to be difficult for us to fathom since he never did it before or has done it since. All we have got is the biblical evidence. S what do you believe and why does it matter?

Just to make it clear, the virgin birth is not about Mary’s purity; it’s about Jesus’ divinity. Jesus’ divinity is at stake here, not Mary’s reputation. Why do I bring this up? Because I think even people in the church have gotten this confused. Sometimes I think that it sounds like the fact that Mary was a virgin made her more “holy” than other women. But that’s not the point. A married woman is just as “holy” and beloved in God’s sight as Mary. This isn’t really about Mary at all! It’s all about Jesus.

In order for Jesus to be truly God and truly a human being, Mary must have become pregnant through the power of God, through the Holy Spirit. She would have had to be a virgin or else Jesus isn’t God—pure and simple. And is Jesus isn’t God, then he’s just another guy who died in history. If God himself was not born in the flesh, then God could not have died in the flesh or been raised from the dead and that means our faith is just in some popular guy in the first century. Jesus’ death means nothing if he is only human. Jesus death means something only when he is the
innocent, sinless, spotless, lamb of God sacrificed for your sins.

In the Old Testament, in order to be assured of the forgiveness of your sins, you had to sacrifice a lamb without blemish to God. When the laws of God were broken, blood had to be spilt and the lamb would take the place of you. Instead of you dying for your sins, a lamb would be sacrificed on your behalf. But you had to do this over and over and over again in the old sacrificial system. Lots of dead lambs in exchange for a forgiven you. This was a shadow of things to come.

But when Jesus died, God did something new. According to the book of Hebrews, Jesus was the spotless lamb of God and “He sacrificed himself for our sins once for all, when he offered himself.” No more dead lambs! Jesus Christ, the only human being who did not deserve to die because he had no sin, had to die in order for us to see the truth of our sin and the possibility of our salvation. God had to sacrifice himself, in the form of his only Son Jesus, in order to make us holy and acceptable in his sight. The book of Romans says, “Just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.

Jesus had to be more than just a human being, but also truly God. And in order to be truly God, his mother had to be a virgin—there is no other way around it. So why does the virgin birth of Jesus matter? Because if Mary wasn’t a virgin, then Jesus isn’t God and that means you will die and that’s the end. But I have good news for you: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all who believe in him may not perish but will have eternal life.” When Jesus was born, God was born. He was called Emmanuel-God with us! God was born and died for you, so that you might live in heaven forever. Is it hard to believe? Yes. Unfathomable, unlikely, impossible. Of course! It takes faith in God’s Word against the scientific, historical and grammatical arguments that may be going through your head. But does it matter? Yes, it does. Especially for you. A virgin Mary is the difference between your death and your eternal life. That’s something worth believing in. Amen.