Christmas

On Mary

December 23, 2019 by Dan Olinger

As my Christmas post this year, I’d like to share some thoughts about Mary.

The first thing I notice about her, which may surprise some people, is how ordinary she is. Like you and me, she has difficulty understanding and even accepting God’s plan. Like any other woman, she’s puzzled by Gabriel’s announcement that she is to have a son (Lk 1.34). I’m not criticizing her; my point is that her response is completely understandable—completely ordinary. At the visit to the Temple for the baby’s circumcision, she’s surprised by Simeon’s exalted blessing over the child (Lk 2.33). When Jesus is 12, she questions his respect for her and Joseph, drawing a mild rebuke (Lk 2.48-49). At the wedding where Jesus will perform his first recorded miracle, she appears to have priorities that her son needs to correct (Jn 2.3-4). And in the most surprising episode of all, Mark, writing under Peter’s direction, seems to suggest that Mary and her other sons thought Jesus was mentally unbalanced (Mk 3.21, 31)—something consistent with John’s direct statement that during his earthly ministry, Jesus’ brothers did not believe on him (Jn 7.5).

Mary appears to respond to her unique situation pretty much as we would. It’s all pretty confusing; there’s a lot she doesn’t appear to understand.

There’s no evidence in the Scripture that Mary herself is immaculately conceived, or that she was perpetually a virgin—as though sex isn’t something really holy people do (Heb 13.4)—or that she is sinless. Yes, she is said to be “full of grace” (Lk 1.28), a statement that has given rise to the idea of a “treasury of merit” into which she and other “saints” have deposited (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1477); but the same Greek expression (charitoo) is used of all believers over in Eph 1.6. We’re all “full of grace,” by God’s grace.

So she’s ordinary, like us.

But.

In her confusion and wonder, she trusts God and consequently pleases him.

When told she’s going to have a child out of wedlock without having done anything wrong, she agrees to the arrangement (Lk 1.38). She knew there would be significant negative social consequences for this; virgin births were no more common in her day than they are in ours. Nobody would believe her. Indeed, 30 or more years later Jesus’ enemies threw his “illegitimacy” back in his face (Jn 8.41).

She treasured Jesus’ words even in confrontational situations (Lk 2.51). After her son’s mild rebuke at the wedding in Cana, she instructed the servants to hear and obey him (Jn 2.5).

She was a woman of grace and dignified accession to the will of God.

And where did that come from?

We don’t know anything about Mary’s childhood or upbringing, but we can see evidences of it in her speech. When we carefully study her most famous statement, the “Magnificat” (Lk 1.46-55), we find an apparently extemporaneous speech astonishingly filled with Scripture: she quotes or alludes to about 19 different verses in 5 different Old Testament books from all 3 of the sections of the Hebrew canon—Genesis and Deuteronomy from the Law, Isaiah from the Prophets, and Samuel and Psalms from the Writings. This in spite of the fact that it was common for Jewish girls in that day to be illiterate, and even if she could read, she certainly did not own copies of the Scrolls, which were prohibitively expensive. Most likely she listened at synagogue—from the women’s section—and committed those passages to memory, deeply meditating on them to the point where she could weave them—artfully—into an extemporaneous expression of gratitude to God in the midst of deep social embarrassment.

With all of our education and all of our copies of the Scripture, few of us today could do something even remotely similar.

Mary kept things in her heart (Lk 2.19, 51). She treasured the words and works of God.

What a rebuke she is to our shallow and reactionary thinking.

What a model for all of us to follow.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

The Names of Christmas, Part 3

December 24, 2018 by Dan Olinger

Part 1 Part 2

So both of the Christmas names—Jesus and Immanuel—highlight the fact of the Incarnation, that God became one of us. As I put it last time, the eternal God the Son added to his (divine) nature, or set of characteristics, and second, human nature, a different set of characteristics.

That’s a unique event. No other person, not even the Father or the Spirit, has ever had two natures.

We have trouble with unique things, because we like to learn by comparing the new thing to something we already know. And when there’s nothing to compare the new thing to, we end up scratching our heads and asking questions that we have insufficient data to answer.

How does a divine person add a human nature? How does any person add any second nature?

The early church spent 400 years trying to figure that one out, and pretty much every theory they came up with along the way was a heresy. Finally, in AD 451, at the Council of Chalcedon, they managed to formulate a statement of what happened—a statement that has stood the test of the centuries since—but they gave up forever the possibility of actually explaining it.

Really—how does a person with two natures live out his life? How does he think? How can he be both mortal and immortal? How can he be both omnipresent and corporeal? How can he be omniscient and yet say, matter-of-factly, “I don’t know when I’m coming back” (Mk 13.32)?

I’d like to make up a story that I’m pretty sure never happened, just to make the point.

—–

An angel shows up in the executive wing of heaven and approaches the receptionist.

“I’d like to see the Son, please,” he says.

The receptionist replies, “I’m sorry, but you can’t.”

Now, that answer has never before been given to that request, so the angel is puzzled.

“I can’t?! What kind of an answer is that?! Why can’t I?”

“Because he’s not here. He’s out of the office.”

The angel is nonplussed, whatever that means.

“What do you mean, he’s ‘not here’?! He’s omnipresent. How can he not be here? That doesn’t even make any sense!”

“Well, it’s a little difficult to explain, but I assure you that he’s not here.”

The angel, perplexed, gives in.

“OK, I’ll play your little game. He’s ‘not here.’ Well, then, ‘where’ is he? I’ll go ‘there’ and see him.”

The receptionist takes a deep breath.

“Well, I can tell you where he is, and you can go there, but even if you do, you won’t be able to see him.”

“Why not?”

Another deep breath.

“Because he can’t talk.”

“He can’t talk?! Are you kidding me?! How can he not talk?!”

The receptionist clears her throat.

“Because he’s a fetus. He’s not going to be able to talk for a couple of years yet.”

—–

As I say, I’m pretty sure this never happened, first, because our imagined angel seems a little impatient for somebody who’s not a sinner, and more importantly, I don’t think any angels were surprised by the incarnation. Oh—and I doubt that the executive wing of heaven has a receptionist, although I can’t be completely sure of that.

But let’s take some time to think about this.

Paul tells us that among other things, the Son is the agent of providence—by him, all things are held together (Col 1.17). As far as I know, there’s no 25^th Amendment in the Constitution of Heaven, whereby a member of the Godhead passes off his duties to another member in anticipation of his temporary incapacitation. So is the Son running the universe from Mary’s womb? as a fetus? as an embryo?

Is it true that “little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”? Does he learn to walk the first time he tries, or does he “fall down and go boom”? Does Mary ever have to correct his grammar? Does he always get A’s in school? Does Joseph ever have to tell him, “Now, Joshua, if you keep holding the hammer that way, you’re going to hit your thumb!”?

My friend, you think you know this person, but there is more to him than you can ever know. He is unfathomable, unimaginable, indecipherable.

And he did this for you. When you were his enemy and determined to stay that way.

Immanuel. God with us.

Merry Christmas.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

The Names of Christmas, Part 2

December 20, 2018 by Dan Olinger

Part 1

Last time we noted what the name Jesus means—and that enabled us to understand what the angel is saying to Joseph in Matthew 1—this baby is Yahweh himself, the one who saves his people from their sins.

God has become one of us.

Now Matthew’s commentary on the angel’s words follows unavoidably:

²²Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, ²³Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

Matthew is writing to Jews, presenting Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. One of the most obvious ways he does this is by citing prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, and showing specifically how Jesus fulfills those prophecies. Note how often he says, “All this was done, that it might be fulfilled,” or something similar—

Here, of the incarnation
2.15, of his time in Egypt
2.17, of the slaughter of the innocents
2.23, of his upbringing in Nazareth
4.14, of his preaching in Decapolis
8.17, of his healing ministry
12.17, of the Messianic secret
13.13, of the resistance by the religious leaders
13.35, of his parables
21.4, of the triumphal entry
26.54, 56, of his arrest, trial, and execution
27.9, of his betrayal
27.35, of the soldiers’ casting of lots

The first prophecy he chooses to cite reveals the second name of Christmas.

Emmanuel. God with us.

I suspect that neither Isaiah nor his hearers understood the prophecy. They probably thought, God is with us, as he has been with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and with David and Solomon, and with our people throughout our history.

Yes, it includes that idea, but the prophecy embraces a much more intimate “with” than that.

He is going to join us, to become one of us. He’s going to be not just present, but identified with us.

In theological terms, the person of the Son, eternally existent with a divine nature, is going to add to his person a second nature, a human one. He’s going to get tired, and get hurt, and die.

And he’s going to keep that human nature forever.

It amazes me that when God created the world, he knew that giving humans the ability to have a healthy relationship involved giving them the ability to choose—and that meant the ability to choose wrong. And that meant the possibility—nay, the certainty—of sin. And God knew that he would never allow his image to be permanently disfigured in such a way—that he would respond to our rebellion justly, with a sentence of death, and mercifully, with the opportunity for repentance and forgiveness. He would do whatever was necessary to be just and to justify—to rescue—his image. And he knew that justice would require an infinite sacrifice, which we would be unable to pay, and which he would be unable to pay either, because the penalty is death, and he cannot die.

So from the very beginning he knew that by creating humans, beings in his image, on whom he could bestow the joy of his friendship, he was committing himself to become one of them.

Forever.

What a commitment that was!

What a God he is!

Next time, a meditation on what happens when God becomes man.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

The Names of Christmas, Part 1

December 17, 2018 by Dan Olinger

PNo, I don’t mean the names of the day. I mean the names that arise out of what we celebrate at Christmas—the names of the Incarnate One.

What we call the Christmas Story introduces us to two names that are new, and meaningfully so. The first one is now so familiar to us that we’ve completely forgotten its meaning—if we ever knew it all. We meet it in Matthew’s account of the birth of the Son of God, in chapter 1—

¹⁸Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. ¹⁹Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily. ²⁰But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. ²¹And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

The first name that comes out of the Christmas Story is “Jesus.” We all know it well today; it’s the personal name of the Son, which he took on when he became human. But most of us completely miss the whole significance of the way it was introduced in Scripture.

To start with, the name has come to us through several languages, and as anyone named Juan or Jean or Johann or Ivan knows, names change when they cross languages. Jesus is the English form of the Greek Iesous, which in turn translates the Hebrew Yeshua, or its longer form Yehoshua, or, as we would say it, Joshua. Yes, Jesus’ name was just Joshua—which explains a bit of translational confusion in the KJV of Hebrews 4.8, where they give the impression that the author is speaking of Jesus giving rest, when he’s actually speaking of the OT Joshua taking Israel into the Promised Land. (See also Ac 7.45.)

Whew.

Where was I?

Have you ever wondered why the angel said to Joseph, “You must call his name Joshua, for he will save his people from their sins”? Have you ever noticed that subordinate conjunction in there, the one that identifies a causal link between the name and Jesus’ saving work?

To us English-speaking readers, that doesn’t make sense—or, more likely, we just sail on past it without even noticing that it doesn’t make sense, because the words are so familiar to us.

But that causal link is in there for a reason. It’s making an important point, one, I could argue, that is the most important point ever made by anyone.

Joseph would have gotten the point—it would have been as plain as day to him, and he would have understood its significance immediately. I suspect that’s why he unquestioningly obeyed the angel’s instructions. He adopted the child, risking—and probably ruining—his reputation in the process. If your fiancée is pregnant, and you marry her and adopt the child, everybody’s going to nod his head and smirk and wink knowingly. Uh-huh. We all know what that means, now, don’t we? And 30 years later they were still smirking when they tried to undercut Jesus’ authority by sneering, “We were not born of fornication!” (Jn 8.41).

Why did Joseph obey, unhesitatingly, when he knew what the cost of that obedience would be to his own reputation, and perhaps to his livelihood as a contractor?

Because he understood the meaning of the angel’s words. He understood the “for,” the causal link.

Because he knew what the name meant.

“Joshua,” you see, means “Yahweh saves.”

The angel said, “You must name him ‘Yahweh saves,’ ”—so far, so good—“because he will save his people from their sins!”

Do you see it?

“He”—the infant—no, the fetus—“he” is Yahweh!

The everlasting God, who makes covenants with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob—and keeps them—who sits high on the throne in Isaiah’s vision, whose train fills the temple, but who reveals himself to Israel by his first name—this God is now a fetus in the womb of a Jewish teenager.

This is much, much bigger than Joseph, or Mary, or shepherds, or wise men, or all of us put together. Nothing like this has ever happened before, or likely will ever happen again.

God has become one of us.

Next time, the second Christmas name.

Part 2 Part 3

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash