Do-Over

This is a sermon about the Virgin Birth and second chances. It was preached at St. Mary's Church in Franklin on December 20, 2020, the fourth Sunday of Advent. The Gospel lesson appointed is Luke 1:26-38.

The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ... For nothing will be impossible with God."

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Do you ever wish you could have a “do-over”? That word, Do-Over, reminds me of playing Four Square at Camp Hardtner, the Episcopal summer camp for our state. Four Square at Camp Hardtner ain’t your grandkid’s Four Square. It’s not like what they play at the elementary school down the street. Four Square at Camp Hardtner—only played with a volleyball—is a serious athletic competition. There’s no “shoe shines” or “cherry bombs.” The play is fast, and there are spikes and dives and little drop shots you can hardly ever reach in time. With that level of competition, there are also arguments. Did the ball touch the line or not? I remember some of those arguments getting heated, until a counselor has to intervene. There was a trick that could be pulled, though—I’m a little embarrassed to admit. If you mess up—if you let the ball bounce twice in your own square before you hit, if when you hit the ball the contact lasts a little too long to the point that you could be accused of holding it, or if the ball is right on the edge of the line and it’s questionable that it stayed in bounds—if you mess up, all you had to do was argue that you didn’t and argue your case to the bitter end. People will disagree, they’ll say you’re out, go to the back of the line, but you just keep saying you didn’t. Eventually, you can say it: “Do-over!” If you contest the call then the call is contested. And if we can’t agree what happened, just play the previous round over again. You bought yourself a free ticket to keep playing the game. Sometimes I wish I could do that in life, just shout Do-Over! and get a fresh chance to try again.

Some people will say they wouldn’t do anything different because without their mistakes they wouldn’t be who they are. I’ve never been convinced about that. My thinking is that learning from mistakes, really growing from them, just means that if you were back in that same situation you would do it differently. But then when the mistake is an actual sin (not all mistakes are), that adds a whole other layer. Sins damage us. They prevent us from being who we are. They prevent us from being who we’re meant to be. If we could undo our sins, we wouldn’t be losing who we are; we would be recovering who we are.

I think I’m getting at a common experience. How many people have woken up in a fog one morning, thinking back on the night before, wishing they could have a do-over? Think of all the awful words said to family members, but once you say them you can’t take them back. Jobs ruined, marriages destroyed, children scarred, bad habits begun, minds polluted, life-changing accidents, life-ending accidents—human beings inevitably wish, and should wish, they could have do-overs. It goes all the way back to the beginning. And I have no doubt that Adam and Eve, our Scriptural ancestors, sat together for quite a while in bitter silence, dumbfounded by what they had done. Now they’re expelled from paradise. Worse, God has become a stranger to them. How they must have wished they could go back in time, have that conversation with the Serpent all over again, say what they should have said, done what they should have done, and avoided this catastrophe that will haunt them and their children and their children’s children.

When Luke tells us the story of a young virgin who suddenly finds herself pregnant, in some ways he is telling us that Adam and Eve’s wish is, in a way, coming true. The Virgin Birth is a really interesting miracle. On the one hand, for Christians (and non-Christians) who have struggled with the faith, the Virgin Birth has often been one of those beliefs that has given them the most trouble. And yet, it’s in our Baptismal Creed! Jesus “was born of the Virgin Mary.” Which is to say, this story from Luke’s Gospel about a young virgin who is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit is essential. It belongs to the very essence of the Church’s story about Jesus, and without it we’re telling a very different story, one that ceases to be the Good News that is ours to share.

Part of the problem is that this story about a virgin conceiving by the power of the Holy Spirit is misunderstood. We tend to think that the importance of the Virgin Birth is that it shows us that Jesus is the Son of God, that God is his Father rather than any mortal man. There is a hint of truth in that. We should be clear, though, that Jesus could have had an earthly father, Mary and Joseph might have been married and known each other and become one flesh, and that itself would not have stopped God the Son from coming among us as a human being. The early Church didn’t immediately jump to Jesus’s divine Sonship, though. Instead, the early Church, when it thought about our Lord’s birth from a virgin, was less interested in what that meant about Jesus’s divinity and more interested in what it meant about his humanity.

This may be surprising, given the Gospel lesson. After all, when Mary asks how on earth this could possibly happen, the angel Gabriel answers her: “ The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” Gabriel is explaining the big news that he has just given to this very confused young woman. She will have a child. Even though she’s not married, even though she’s never been with a man, she’s going to have a baby, a very special baby. This is his destiny: he will sit on David’s throne. He will be a new David for God’s people with a new Kingdom. That makes sense to me. David, after all, had some real problems. There were certainly moments in David’s life where he was thinking to himself, I could really use a Do-Over right about now (in fact, his repentance—his sincere desire for a do-over—is the greatest example he leaves for us). But Jesus’s destiny is even bigger than David. He will reign over the House of Jacob. Jesus will be a new Jacob, a new Israel. A new Jacob sounds pretty good, too. Part of David’s problem is that he has his great-great-grandfather Jacob’s faults coursing through him. But the whole people of God will be given a fresh start in this little boy. That’s big stuff. It’s Mary’s question that brings out just how far reaching God’s plans are for this child. He will be called Son of God.

Well, there it is! The Virgin Birth by the power of the Holy Spirit tells us that Jesus is the Son of God, God himself, the Second Person of the Trinity! “Son of God” certainly does mean all of that, but it’s a bit more complicated. First, in the Bible that phrase, “the Son of God,” is often used to refer to Israel’s king, even if that particular king is not the Second Person of the Trinity. But then as Luke’s Gospel goes on, he tells about Jesus’s birth and about the little we know from Jesus’s childhood, and then we hear about Jesus’s baptism, when the Father speaks over Jesus coming up out of those waters, saying, “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased!” Then Luke does something strange. He gives us Jesus’s genealogy, going back through his foster father, Joseph. It’s a strange thing: right in the middle of this story, right after the Father has just called Jesus his Son and right before Jesus goes into the wilderness so that his trust in his Father can be tested, Luke pauses the story to give us Jesus’s family tree. Joseph’s line goes way back. He is the son of David, who ultimately is the son of Abraham, and eventually he can be traced back to the point at which he is the son of Noah and beyond. Finally, Luke traces Jesus’s ancestry back to the very beginning. Jesus, through his foster father Joseph, is the son of Adam. And who does Luke say Adam is? Adam is “the son of God.” So when Gabriel tells Mary that Jesus will be called Son of God, yes, he is the Son of God in the way that we know and love. But Gabriel is also saying that Jesus isn’t just a new David, although he is. Jesus isn’t just a new Israel, although he is. Jesus is a new Adam. Adam’s failed destiny is going to be put back on track in Jesus. The original wrong that has cast its shadow over every human being since it first happened is going to be made right. In Christ, all of humanity is about to get one big do-over.

Now, I say the Virgin Birth is much misunderstood and part of it just has to do with our struggle to wrap our minds around this idea—and you’ve heard of it, I’m sure—called Original Sin. Original Sin is tricky. It’s hard to grapple with. What does it mean? Original sin has something to do with the way we’re all born with sin or born under sin, but how? I don’t think original sin means that your guilty for something you didn’t do. You’re not guilty for someone else’s transgression. The children aren't guilty of their parents' transgressions, but that doesn't mean there's no cost whatsoever. It turns out we are all in this together, more than we like to think. Human beings are all sons of someone, daughters of someone, children of certain parents. This is a hard thing for us, but the failings and the struggles and the sins that hold our parents captive unfortunately tend to manifest themselves in the lives of their children. The struggles of the parents in subtle and strange ways become the struggles of the kids. There’s something merciful about this: if you are a parent and your child is struggling with something, there’s a good chance that you are seeing yourself reflected in your child. That’s part of what makes it so frustrating, even though it gives you, the parent, a chance to repent. So we have generational struggles, we have generational problems stemming a long way back, but what do you do when the very first human being drops the ball? We live under the shadow of the failures of our very first parents. Original Sin is kind of like a crossword puzzle that humanity is trying to work, and we got the very first answer wrong. How do you come back from that? You can work at it. Get creative, and you might even luck into a few right answers along the way. But at the end of the day, you’re not going to solve the puzzle—unless you go back to the very beginning.

That’s what Jesus did. In Jesus Christ, we have a new Adam. We get to go back to the very beginning. The very first sin, the very first betrayal of the trust and responsibility that the Lord had invested in us as his image bearers—all of that is going to be revisited in Christ, the New Adam. He’s born of a virgin. He’s born—he’s fully human, taking on himself everything that is ours. But there’s a sense in which he stands outside of those generational struggles. The shadow that Adam’s sin casts across all of humanity, it doesn’t swallow Jesus up like it does us. He’s not gripped by the sins of David or the failings of Jacob, even while he claims them as his forebears. Instead, he is a new David and a new Jacob because he is a new Adam. And like Adam, he didn’t not come to be through the normal processes that brought the rest of us about. He was formed out of the soil of Mary’s womb, just as Adam had no earthly father but was gathered out of the soil of the garden. The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, just as the Lord once breathed life into the first man. That’s what God is doing in Christ. He is fully human in all of the ways that we have failed to be. As it happens, this points us beyond his humanity and prods us to ask, how on earth can One Man overcome every failing of the human race? As the angel Gabriel reminds Mary: "Nothing will be impossible with God."

I asked you if you ever wish you could have a do-over. In Christ, it’s yours. Jesus goes back to the beginning so that every mistake, every sin, can be made right. Our Lord goes back to One Across, writes in the correct answer, and from there proceeds to correct every other mistake as well, so that the whole puzzle can be fixed. Every mistake is righted in Jesus Christ. Every memory that leaves you cringing, thinking, Oh my goodness, how could I have done that? They're all revisited in the Lord--an embarrassing process, but a liberating process. Every time you think, How could I have said that colossally idiotic thing and hurt this person I care about so much? Is that me? Am I that kind of person? Jesus goes back through every bit of it, going back to the very root of humanity, then through the generations of our families, into your life, into all of the details of your life—Jesus goes back through it all. Have you seen that happening in you? Have you opened yourself up to that kind of grace? Of course, we haven’t done as we should, but Jesus has. Amen.