The Grand Miracle

It is December 24 as I write this and I find myself unavoidably contemplating the Christmas holiday and what it means. Christmas falls on Tuesday this year, so yesterday was Sunday. The sermon was in regard to the virgin birth of Christ and how many folks in our world have difficulty with the very idea of miracles of any kind, let alone something like the virgin birth of Christ. Newsweek, in their usual anti-faith fashion, had as their cover story last week an article by a skeptic that was focused on how there are other non-Biblical stories about Jesus' childhood that are commonly rejected and so the virgin birth would also be rejected if it hadn't been repeated so many times. The article concludes that holidays and religion are fine for those who want them, but don't take them too seriously. To that I would say, to borrow from Scrooge: Humbug!

This is not to say that the virgin birth is not an issue. It is part of the Christian faith, and the faith most definitely involves miracles. As C. S. Lewis has said, it is indeed one Grand Miracle. Christmas,to me, gives us a glimpse of that thing that Lewis calls the Grand Miracle: the Incarnation of Christ. However, it is not the Virgin Birth that is the heart of that Grand Miracle. The Virgin Birth strikes me as primarily the pathway or mechanism. The miracle itself is much bigger than that, and those who gag at the idea of the Virgin Birth seem to me to have missed the point. For the God of the universe, who is outside of nature and beyond nature to take on flesh and enter into His own creation to make Himself known, and not just to make Himself known but to experience death in order to conquer death, that is a far greater miracle than for a virgin to conceive. Lewis calls this taking on of flesh, the Incarnation, the Grand Miracle because all the other miracles of the Bible either point to this, demonstrate it, or result from it. It is the heart of the issue. God became man to rescue man and to make God known. That is the specifically Christian miracle. Other religions have the occasional healing or other miracle here and there, but nothing like this. And the resurrection of Christ, which is rightly a matter of great focus in Christianity, depends on this Grand Miracle.

The virgin birth is, of course, consistent with this matter of the Incarnation of Christ. That God would come into this world through a pure vessel and would be different from all other men is required. But that is not the main issue. The issue is whether there is in fact someone much greater than nature, someone who is outside of the natural world and yet enormously concerned about this world and its people. And the issue then is whether that Someone did in history step into this world to save us from ourselves.

This is much greater than simply a virgin birth. Coming by means of a virgin birth is a small matter in this context. To reject Christianity based on a virgin birth seems to me rather like rejecting the idea of freedom and democracy because you don't like the foreign policy of America. It misses the point. If you are to reject something it should at least be on the basis of its central teaching.

That entire story of the Incarnation is what Christmas celebrates. It is indeed a Grand Miracle. In the midst of the tragedies of the world around us it reminds me that Christ also experienced tragedy and overcame it as a foretaste of putting tragedy behind us for good. And so I get a small glimpse of the Grand Miracle each year at Christmas. I hope you do as well. Merry Christmas!