I must have told you about the man who is on his first parachute jump. The instructor says: "you just jump out of the plane, the chute automatically opens, you land in that field - there'll be a nice cup of tea waiting for you."
The man is sceptical. "What if the chute doesn't open?" "No problem. You pull the emergency chute cord. Another parachute opens, you land in that field - there'll be a nice cup of tea waiting for you."
The man jumps. Nothing happens. He pulls the emergency cord. Nothing happens. As he plummets to earth he's muttering to himself: "Bet there's no cup of tea either..."
Today I want to speak about the virginity of Mary, the mother of our Lord. When I was studying theology in the 60s and 70s, ‘the virgin birth’ was a hot topic of debate and you would often be asked whether you ‘believed in it’.
The theologian Rudolph Bultmann had been busy ‘demythologising’ the Gospel in the 40s and 50s and the virgin birth was one of the doctrines that had gone out of the window.
Modern people couldn’t believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, the argument ran, so rather than have it as a stumbling block, it should simply be removed.
And what has this got to do with the man with the parachute? Well, if neither of your parachutes has opened, then debating whether or not ‘there is a nice cup of tea’ is rather pointless.
Put the other way round, if you believe that God, the creator of all, entered the space time continuum, and came to our tiny planet, and implanted himself within a foetus in a womb in Palestine over two thousand years ago, then in comparison, the virginity of Mary is a miracle of small matter.
To use Jesus’ own metaphor in a different way, why swallow a camel and then strain at a gnat.
On the other hand, there is no spiritual merit in believing a hundred impossible things before breakfast.
Do we need to believe in the virgin birth?
Richard Hooker was a very early Anglican theologian at the end of the 16th Century. He famously gave the model of a three-legged stool – Scripture, Tradition and Reason – as being the balanced way of considering theological questions.
So let’s apply this to the virgin conception of Christ.
Scripture, such as that read today in the Gospel, the most important leg for Hooker and for the church down the centuries, seems to point to the virginity of Mary, although it is not an absolutely solid case.
Tradition is certainly on the side of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is in the two most important creeds, the Apostles’, and what we shall say in a few minutes, the Nicene creed. Indeed, the perpetual virginity of Mary, something I shall come back to in a moment, was established in the Lateran Council of 649.
And the third leg, Reason? Well yes, I and many others see the doctrine as eminently reasonable. The conception of Jesus, from our limited point of view, was a supernatural act.
If he was and is truly God and truly Man, then Mary provides his human lineage, and God the Holy Spirit provides his divine DNA, if you like.
We shall say in the creed in a moment: “and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” And some of us will bow to acknowledge the awesome miracle of the incarnation, the graciousness of God in coming among us as one of us.
The doctrine is part and parcel of the mind-stretching, miracle of the incarnation. I hardly think it makes that miracle any easier to believe, if we don’t have to believe in a virgin birth.
The perpetual virginity of Mary, Mary ever-virgin, is a much harder doctrine to defend. It certainly has tradition on its side, even Luther and the protestant reformers adhered to the dogma.
But a plain reading of Scripture does not seem to support it. Mention of Jesus’ brothers has to be explained by saying they were in fact cousins, or Joseph’s children by a previous wife who had died.
And as for Reason, I and many of my colleagues would say that it is not reasonable to expect Mary to have remained a virgin throughout her married life.
This brings us on to the final point which we might call the cultural icon of the Virgin Mary.
Whether she remained a virgin or not, the enduring image of Mary in art, music and popular devotion, is of a pure young woman who willingly submitted to the incredible will of God.
And in this, she touches both on our common humanity and on our immortal longings for God.
In our common humanity there is a recognition that as sexual awareness grows there is some ‘loss of innocence’ – and we hardly know what we mean by the phrase.
It is not about some mediaeval concept that sex is bad or polluting, it is rather to do with the realization that the world is more complex and our relationships more messy than childhood might have led us to believe.
Our sense of wonder becomes dulled, our expectations of life take disappointment into account.
We can never look at life through the simple, and in some senses, pure eyes of childhood again.
And yet in Mary, especially with the child who is God on her lap, we have a picture of the miracle of innocence regained.
It’s captured in the Christmas Carols:
I syng of a maydenOr again:
That is makeles;
Moder and mayden
Was never non but she;
Wel may swych a lady
Godes moder be.
There is no rose of such virtueAnd in this most powerful icon, we see ourselves as we long to be: pure, full of wonder, intimately in touch with God our maker and sustainer. We see trust and calm contentment – the sleeping cat in the bottom left of Barocci’s picture on the front cover.
As is the rose that bare Jesu;
For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space; Res Miranda – what a wonderful thing!
We see too, our immortal future, and somehow this young woman’s faith helps us to believe. She is like us and draws us out in faith to gaze upon her son in wonder and worship.
And then, the Blessed Virgin Mary encourages us to echo with her and all the saints through the ages:
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Luke 1.38
Carols
I syng of a mayden1. There is no rose of such virtue As is the rose that bare Jesu; Alleluia.
That is makeles;
Kyng of alle Kynges
To her Son she ches.
He cam al so stylle
There his moder was
As dew in Aprylle
That fallyt on the gras;
He cam al so stylle
To his moderes bowr
As dew in Aprylle
That fallyt on the flour;
He cam al so stylle
There his moder lay
As dew in Aprylle
That fallyt on the spray;
Moder and mayden
Was never non but she;
Wel may swych a lady
Godes moder be.
2. For in this rose contained was Heaven and earth in little space; Res miranda.
3. By that rose we may well see That he is God in persons three, Pares forma.
4. The angels sungen the shepherds to: Gloria in excelsis deo: Gaudeamus.
5. Leave we all this worldly mirth, And follow we this joyful birth; Transeamus.
6. Alleluia, res miranda, pares forma, gaudeamus, transeamus.
