A very sound painting by Francisco Rizi
A scientist decided to have an argument with God. Not,
perhaps, the wisest thing to do.
“Look”, said the scientist. “We know how life was
created. We’ve worked it all out. All you need is some earth with the right
kind of clay in it, water, free radical molecules, and ultraviolet light. Mix
it all together and you get life. In fact, I can do it right now, I’ll show you!”
“Alright”, said God. “Go on then.”
So the scientist bent down and started gathering together
a pile of earth. “No, no, no”, said God. “That’s cheating. Get your own earth.”
That little story illustrates the difference between
making something and creating. We can all make things. It involves assembling
different parts into something new, or changing one kind of stuff into another.
So for example you can take dried fruit, flour, butter, sugar, eggs and brandy
and make a Christmas cake. But you can’t create one, in the sense that the
Christian tradition understands creation. That is, you can’t create a Christmas
cake out of nothing. In fact none of us can create anything at all. We cannot
call anything into being where nothing exists. We can only change what already
exists.
The fact of existence is something that we accept,
because it is there. There is earth and life, there are people and Christmas
cakes. But we cannot explain existence. There is no process by which nothing
can become something. So the fact that there is something rather than nothing
confronts us with a mystery. And the Jewish and Christian traditions refer to
that mystery by the word “God”.
That is what the creation stories of Genesis do, those
grand dramas of epic myth at the beginning of the Bible. They point us to the
mystery called “God”. God, they say, is that which is beyond and beneath all
things, giving existence where otherwise nothing would have existed at all.
This truth of creation undergirds the whole Christian
understanding of human history and salvation. It undergirds the whole story of
God coming in to the world to save us, taking on our human nature in Jesus. The
Gospel writers knew this, of course. And we can see it in today’s reading from
Matthew’s Gospel, because the story of the birth of the Messiah is a creation
story.
This is perhaps more obvious in the original language,
Greek. The Greek word for “birth” is “genesis”. So today’s Gospel reading opens
with the words, “The genesis of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way”. That
immediately points us to which other part of the Bible we should have in our
minds when we read the first chapter of Matthew: the Book of Genesis. In fact
Matthew’s gospel begins with the words, “The Book of Genesis of Jesus Christ” –
referring to the genealogy of Jesus that then follows.
And Matthew tells us that Mary is with child “from the
Holy Spirit”. This too recalls Genesis:
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the
earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep,
while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
That “wind from God” is the Spirit of God, bringing into
being what was not. And it is just the same with Mary. Mary is the virginal
depth, the new formless void, over which the Holy Spirit hovers to bring into
being something new.
The meaning is clear: in the birth of Jesus, something
new is being brought into existence in the way that only God can bring
something new into existence. The birth of Jesus is an act of creation: new
creation, in fact. St Paul calls Jesus the “new Adam”. “Adam”, in the Hebrew
creation story, means “humanity”, and stands for the whole human race. In
Jesus, humanity is created anew. In his conception we are present at a new
beginning.
This is why the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Jesus
matters. It is not a puzzle about biology, but an affirmation that something
new was happening. The birth of Jesus does not continue the same old humanity
which has been around since Eden: divided, fallen, sinful, seeking God but
unable to rise to him. The birth of Jesus begins a new humanity, and comes
about in a new way. It is not the “same old same old”. So the birth of Jesus
happens in a way that only God can bring about, because it is an act of
creation. This does not make Jesus less human, but rather more so. The new
humanity, begun again in Jesus, is humanity without the fall, humanity as it
always was meant to be.
But Jesus, of course, according to Christian teaching, is
both human and Divine. His human nature was created at his conception in the
womb of Mary. But from that moment the Divine nature of the Eternal Son, who
had existed with the Father before creation began, was indissolubly united with
that humanity. From the moment that Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary, the
Divine was united with the human; humanity was deified. Human nature, joined
with God, in one person.
We might ask, that is all wonderful for Jesus, but how
does it save us? Well the good news of our salvation is that what Jesus is by
nature we can become by grace. Jesus is the pattern and beginning of the new
humanity, the new “Adam”, in which we all come to share by grace as the Holy
Spirit renews our nature in the image of Christ. As our old human nature dies,
the new human nature of Christ comes alive in us more and more.
That death and rebirth is signified in the sacraments of
the Church, in Baptism and the Eucharist. At the font we declare that we have
died with Christ and been buried with him, so that we also might rise with him
to new and eternal life. The prayer of blessing over the waters of the font
speaks of the Holy Spirit hovering over the deep at creation, as we come to the
font to share in the new creation in Christ.
And the Eucharist of course is the sacrament of the Body
of Christ: or, to paraphrase, the sacrament of the new human nature in Christ. Through
the Eucharist we become what we receive: the Body of Christ, the new humanity,
joined with the Divine nature. The Eucharistic prayer expresses the
understanding of the Church about the nature of this change when it says:
Grant that by the power of your Holy Spirit, and according
to your holy will, these gifts of bread and wine may be to us the body and
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That is a creation prayer. The Creator Spirit is invoked
that something might come to “be”.
The transformation of bread and wine into the Body and
Blood of Christ, and the transformation of human communities into the new
humanity in Christ, are acts of new creation. And they flow from the one
definitive act of new creation, which was the conception and birth of Jesus
from the Virgin Mary.
The great good news of this Advent season, the good news
that Mary bore, is that the creator and the redeemer are one. The power which
called the universe into existence out of nothing at all, is the same power
which is redeeming us in Christ.
Therefore we can be absolutely sure and certain of that
good news. Our redemption is sure and unshakeable. In Christ we are being made
new. In Christ we are being united with the Divine nature. And no power in all
creation can prevent that, for it is the creator himself who is bringing it
about.
No power, that is, except our own freedom, for we cannot
be saved against our will. So Advent is a time for us to choose, once again, to
receive God’s grace, as did Mary. To co-operate with his loving purpose to save
us in Christ and unite us to his Divine nature. For this, Jesus was born, and
for this we look forward in hope and rejoice.
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