'Born of the Virgin Mary': why the Church confesses the virgin birth

At the Parish Eucharist on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, 24.12.23

Luke 1:26-38

“The angel said to [Mary], ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you’.”

Every Christmas, we hear it at our carol services: “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary”.

Every Christmas, we sing about it in our carols: ‘Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child’, ‘Late in time behold Him come, Offspring of a Virgin's womb’.

Every Sunday, when we gather for the Eucharist, we declare it to be part of the Church’s faith in the Nicene Creed: ‘was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary’.

At Baptism, at Confirmation, and daily at Morning and Evening Prayer in the Church of Ireland, we profess our faith in it, in the summary of the Christian faith that is the Apostles’ Creed: ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary’.

Proclaimed in the Gospels of Saint Luke and Saint Matthew, it was part of the faith confessed by Christians from the earliest times. Ignatius of Antioch, a Christian bishop, theologian, and martyr, who lived in the few decades after the writing of the New Testament, put it this way: “truly born of a virgin ... truly nailed up in the flesh for our sakes" [1].

“Truly born of a virgin”.

This is part of the faith which binds us together as Christians - which unites us to those who have gone before us in the faith, and those who, across the globe, confess the faith with us today. It is integral to the Christian faith, set forth in Scripture and the Creeds. And it cannot be set aside in the Christian proclamation of Christmas.

But why? Why is it that, at this season, we celebrate - in words from our Prayer Book - that the Son of God “was made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother”[2]? Why is it that in the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds - used at nearly every service in the Church of Ireland - we confess faith in the virgin birth of our Lord? Why is it, as we have read on this Christmas Eve, that Saint Luke - at the opening of his gospel - sets before us the truth that Jesus Christ was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary?

Perhaps it is a good place to start by saying what the virgin birth is not about.  It is not about by-passing the normal experiences of pregnancy. The Son of God became truly and fully human.  That means Jesus grew just like us in His Mother’s womb, over nine months; dependent upon her, flesh of her flesh.  It means that Mary’s experience of pregnancy was like that of any other mother: she would have known morning sickness and tiredness.

And there can be no intention that this teaching of the virgin birth is a rejection of human sexuality, procreation, and parenthood: these are all good gifts of God in creation. 

So this is what the virgin birth is not about: which only emphasises the ‘why?’. Why - if the normal experiences of pregnancy were not by-passed, if this is not judgement against human sexuality and procreation - why was Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary?

This is where we turn to the angel Gabriel’s answer to the understandably perplexed and confused Blessed Virgin Mary: “The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you’”.

The words are deeply evocative, pregnant with profound meaning, rooted in the Scriptures of Israel, the Scriptures of the Old Testament. 

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you”: this echoes the very opening words of Genesis, when the Spirit of God blows across the face of the deep, heralding the life and light God will bring out of the darkness [3].

“The power of the Most High will overshadow you”: when Moses, the greatest of Israel’s prophets, encountered the glory and majesty of God on Mount Sinai, we are told in Exodus that the glory of the Lord descended upon - ‘overshadowed’ - the mountain [4].

These are the most majestic, holiest, defining events in the Scriptures of Israel - the beginning, when God creates; Sinai, when God is revealed to Israel.

So when we are told that the angel Gabriel uses these same words to Mary, it says that this is the new majestic, holy, defining event - for the Child Mary carries is God present, making new, redeeming … as God was at the beginning, calling all things into being; as God was at Sinai, revealing himself in grace and power.

It is of this that the virginal conception and birth of Jesus is a sign. A sign to make us stop, be still, behold, and wonder. A sign pointing to the meaning of this birth, of this Child, of the events of the life of Jesus of Nazareth: God with us, present, making new, redeeming.

As Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says of the virgin birth: “It tells us, with great vividness, that the real miracle is the fact of Jesus himself” [5]. 

We believe in the virgin birth because it is a sign of who Jesus is: God with us; present, making new, redeeming.

This is why we sing in our carols ‘Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child’, ‘Late in time behold Him come, Offspring of a Virgin's womb’.

This is why we confess in the Creed we are about to say, ‘was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary’.

This is why we hear Saint Luke proclaiming at the opening of his gospel, “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary”.

When we confess that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary; when we celebrate this in the carols and liturgy of Christmas; when we hear it proclaimed afresh at this season in the accounts Saint Luke and Saint Matthew give of the birth of Jesus -  we are being called again to joyfully behold God present with us, making us anew, redeeming us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

May this deep and abiding joy be ours on this Christmas Eve, as we prepare to gaze upon the Christ Child in the Crib, celebrating the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary.

[1] Epistle of Saint Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, 1:1-2, Lightfoot's translation.

[2] Preface for Christmas Day, and seven days after, in Holy Communion One, Church of Ireland Book of Common Prayer 2004.

[3] See the New English Translation of the Septuagint, Genesis 1:2: "a divine wind was being carried along over the water".

[4] NETS, Exodus 24:16: "And God's glory descended upon the mountain".

[5] From Rowan Williams' sermon 'Born of the Virgin Mary' in Open to Judgement: Sermons and Addresses.