“She Was Much Perplexed”


Sermon preached by John C. Hall on December 18, 2005
Text — Luke 1:26-38

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.


Someone said to me once, “I could never be a Christian, because I can’t accept the virgin birth.” The virgin birth was a deal-breaker.

Actually, I’ve heard this sort of complaint a number of times, and I always wonder: What if I said, as if I had the authority to say it, which I obviously don’t: “Okay, just for you, we’ll take the virgin birth out of the story. Will you join the church and start pledging?”

Things like the virgin birth, or miracles in general, are held up as reasons to stay away from church, and when people say things like that, another thing I want to say, and I sometimes do say it, is “You don’t need to tell me, or justify to me, why you’re not into church. It’s a free country.” I’ve never been one to try to “muscle” people into church. Persuasion never seems to work unless there’s a part of a person that wants to be here in the first place. I figure, if they’re supposed to be here, God will get them one way or another, just as God got us.

But the virgin birth is an affront to reason, and it was an affront to reason even back in Jesus’ time. In fact, that’s why it’s in the story. The details of conception, and chromosomes, weren’t known then, so it wasn’t quite so huge an affront as it is today. In ancient times, there were many stories about special God-men (and it was usually “men”) who were born to virgins. The point was: these special human beings — in this case, Jesus — didn’t come into the world in the usual way.

In the ancient mind, a seed of a baby was planted in a woman by a man. The woman was the incubator. They didn’t know that mothers contributed half of the genetic material. They didn’t know there was such a thing as genetic material.

The point is: Jesus didn’t have a human father. His father was the heavenly father, and that made him different.

What would our reaction be if someone claimed today that a baby was born from a virgin mother? I can see that as a headline on a tabloid. Would you think, “It must be the Son of God”? I doubt it. We’d want to know what chromosomes this child had. If it were a male, we’d want to know where he got the Y chromosome. The Y chromosome comes only from the father.

But they didn’t know about chromosomes in the 1st century, and we don’t have Jesus’ chromosomes to look at today.

So what do we make of this virgin birth? What use is it? Do we need it? Would it be a better story without it? Imagine a church voting on this: “Resolved, that the doctrine of the Virgin Birth be removed as an article of the Christian faith.” I doubt that such a resolution would make it very far. And if it passed, I doubt it that would get more people to come to church.

The virgin birth is an article of faith, part of the tradition of Christianity, because it’s a signal that the things of God aren’t something we’re supposed to understand.

There are things in life we can and need to understand: the rules of common etiquette. When you’re interviewing for a job, don’t show up in tank top, chewing bubble gum. It’s useful to understand why it’s better to eat rice and vegetables than pizza and potato chips. It’s useful to understand why credit card debt is a bad idea.

But life isn’t all about understanding. The most important things in life are things we will never understand. They have no “earthly father” so to speak. They’re beyond our reach. We couldn’t predict them, and we can’t account for them.

I never thought I’d realize the meaning of Christ’s death through the death of my own mother. I can’t explain what happens to us when we gather in a place like this week after week to sing, and pray, and how or why God speaks to us through an experience like this.

I never thought the Soviet Union would just collapse. I never thought apartheid in South Africa would end without major bloodshed. I never thought Ariel Sharon would get Israel out of the Gaza strip.

I’m sure many of you can think of things that have happened in the world or happened in your life that you can’t explain. Have you ever been led or pushed or forced in a direction where you never planned to go, or wanted to go?

It’s good that we can’t explain everything. A world where everything could be explained would not be a less interesting world.

The “virgin birth” isn’t about Jesus’ chromosomes. It’s about the phenomenon of Jesus’ life — everything he said and did. How did the life of a Jewish peasant change the world? By any conventional measure, Jesus was a nobody. He died as a criminal. Who could have anticipated what would become of his life?

Here’s a question for all of us. I ask it of myself. How open are you to things you don’t understand? How open are you to the “vertical” dimension?

We’re all free to stick with things we can understand, things in the horizontal dimension, on our level. But a person of faith is a person who is willing to go down pathways we don’t understand, sometimes pathways we don’t want to go down, sometimes pathways we dread. We need to “wade in the water” as we say in that famous baptism hymn — to wade into waters we will never understand.

Today’s Second Hour is about paintings of the Annunciation. The angel told Mary, “The Lord is with you.” You’re going to give birth to God. It’s a very odd message. It wasn’t clear to Mary what it meant. When she heard it, she was much perplexed. “How can this be?”

We are often perplexed. Life is perplexing. Life is dangerous. It gives us many things we’re not sure we can handle. It gives us many things we never wanted.

I think the virgin birth says to us, among other things, “perplexity is okay. Go with it. Let it have some space in your life. You should be perplexed. It’s the way things are.

The virgin birth is a signal that many things in life are beyond our control, beyond our understanding. But that’s okay. Whatever happens to us, whatever kind of annunciation or announcement we get, whether it’s about a pregnancy or a terminal illness, we can be sure of one thing.

God is doing something with our lives that we will never understand.

The mission of First Church is to engage and support people in worship, learning, fellowship, and service, so that all may find in our community the Spirit of the living Christ.  We are an Open and Affirming Church: All are welcome into the full life of our community regardless of their race, age, gender, nationality, marital status, economic situation, mental or physical ability, or sexual orientation.