I sat in the School of
Christian Learning—sort of an adult Sunday school—listening to Dr. Jeffrey
Siker speak. He’d been imported from
Loyola Marymount University to present four lectures about Bible interpretation
on Sunday mornings before worship at 10:30. Because he’s a New Testament
scholar and faithful Christian with a sense of humor, I respect him a lot.
But then he said, “I don’t believe in the Virgin birth.” That got my attention. I knew that the birth narratives—shepherds,
wise men, etc.—appear in only two of the Gospels, and that all four accounts of
Jesus’s life were written forty to sixty years after his death.
Jeff was saying, however, that most scholars believe that
the “baby in a manger” story was added as legends grew after the death and
resurrection. The savior of the world
needed an impressive birth to match the end of the story.
It made sense, and I felt my eyes swell with tears as I
sat in my folding chair taking notes. I
love the angel coming to Mary, the humble birth, the shepherds, and the Magi
from the East. Surely the Creator of the
universe, who chose to enter a human body to reach out to creatures “in God’s
image” on planet Earth, could have pulled off a few miracles at birth as well
as at the end of Jesus’s life. But did they
actually happen? I could feel my years
of belief in these gospel truths slipping away, and the loss hurt.
Of course the date of December 25 was completely arbitrary,
a product of Christianity’s marriage to the Roman Empire, but I prided myself
on keeping the Christ in Christmas. I
never told my kids there was a Santa Claus; instead we read accounts of the 3rd-
4th century St. Nicholas. I
allowed them a pagan Christmas tree, but we also set up a creche scene of
wooden pieces representing the shepherds and sheep, cow, donkey with Mary and
Joseph, camels, Magi, and angels, all surrounded by votive candles. The cow had to stand by the manger, awaiting
the rest of them, while the baby Jesus was hidden until Christmas Eve.
Was all that just a lovely legend, like jolly St. Nick
and the reindeer? I pondered it in my
heart for seven or eight years.
In December, 2017, Los Angeles County was attacked by
unseasonal fires and as Advent began, smoke crossed the skies day and
night. A few days later, however, I
noticed two rather bright stars setting in the west an hour or so before dawn. Instead of rolling over to go back to sleep,
I got up to look out the window and find out which stars had emerged through
the big city glow and smoky haze. It was
the left shoulder of Orion with the less-bright right shoulder directly beneath
it. To their left the three stars of his
belt twinkled, and further left, Sirius, the dog star, shone brilliantly.
O holy night, the
stars are brightly shining… A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices…
I stood in wonder.
It
came to me: whether the Magi and shepherds and virginity of Mary are true or
not, still the birth occurred. Each
birth is an enfleshment of God’s spirit.
The birth of Jesus was a miracle, like all births, but uniquely heralded
by stars and chorused by angels, whether or not exactly as described in Matthew
and Luke. God’s reign on earth came
closer to us when the one who said “The kingdom of God is near” took his first
breath.
For many more This I Believe stories, see https://thisibelieve.org/
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