Sermon from December 24, 2006
I read an article about scientists last month. The author wrote, "Whenever I meet with scientists, I'm always struck by their optimism ... (they) believe they are uncovering life's secrets slice by slice, defining humanity's place in the universe, making life better through their mastery of nature's mechanism," (First Things, "The Ends of Science," Eric Cohen, November, 2006, 27).

It's not just scientists that feel that way. We all feel that way about science. The question I want to lodge in our minds is whether our optimism is justified. I am not questioning the value of science. I am questioning the expectations we have of science. I believe it is urgent that we question our optimism. Here are some reasons for that.

The Tottering Idols
Time Magazine ran a cover story last April (Time, April 3, 2006) called "Be Worried! Be Very Worried!" It warned that global warming was bringing disaster upon the earth at a faster rate thought. You may also be aware of former Vice-President Al Gore's documentary on global warming that has received favorable attention.

The debate continues about how much natural climate cycles cause global warming and how much human technology causes it. We don't need global warming to know that our techonology continues to pose serious environmental and human problems.

Environmental pollution is a by-product of the Industrial Revolution, and, if you believe Time Magazine and Al Gore, it now threatens planet earth on a global scale. Science, which provides so much good, also brings about so much evil. At what point will the evil outweigh the good?

The Industrial Revolution was followed by the Quantum Revolution, which disclosed the secrets of the atom. From that has come nuclear power, which runs ships and power plants, and has applications in nuclear medicine. It also gave us Hiroshima and the defining danger of The Cold War. Today, the threat of dirty bombs in American cities and the prospect of nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea once again challenge our expectations: Science, which provides so much good, also brings about so much evil. At what point will the evil outweigh the good?

Now, early in the third millennium of the Christian era, science heralds a new revolution. We call it the Genetic Revolution. I'd like to mention two concerns I have about it. First, whether it was Michal J. Fox in his heart-wrenching, television appearance on behalf of embryonic stem-cell research or Representative Mike Castle of Delaware in lending the authority of his office for such research in this state, they never caution us about the downside of the Genetic Revolution.

All science and its technological applications have a downside. The invention of the combustion engine had a downside, and the ability to split an atom had a downside. What fantasy are these public figures fostering by their silence about the downside of the Genetic Revolution?

My second concern brings us back to the possibility that every one of us needs to consider with all seriousness: Science, which provides so much good, also brings about so much evil. At what point will the evil outweigh the good?

Here's the issue: I wonder if, within the soul of modern man, unspoken but deeply held, there is the belief that science is going to save us from the human predicament of suffering and death. The evidence suggests that science, for all the good it does, now deepens the human predicament of suffering and death on a global scale. Science is a good servant but a terrible master.

What is at stake, what we've all got to see is that we are in a conflict about the meaning of human life. We don't have to belittle science to be on the right side of the conflict; but we will be on the wrong side of the conflict, if we believe that science is going to save us from the human predicament of suffering and death.

Test Tube and Manger
To dramatize this conflict in which we find ourselves I'd like to place side by side two symbols of conception and birth: the in vitro fertilization test tube and the Bethlehem Manger. The test tube will symbolize, not science itself, but the belief that salvation from the human predicament of suffering and death will come from the remarkable powers of science. The Manger will symbolize the belief that salvation from the human predicament of suffering and death will come from the intervention of God into human history.

The Manger symbol takes us to Matthew 1:22-23. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" – which means, "God with us."

Verse 18 gives the immediate context of this quotation from the prophet. This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.

Joseph was unaware of that last part, through the Holy Spirit. He suspected the worst, and verse 19 tells what ensued. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. An unexpected visitor changed his mind.

Verse 20: But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit."

And then, verse 21 points toward that salvation, which comes from God's intervention into human history: "She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."

You can dismiss the story as an old wives' tale, and enough people have done that. Matthew and Luke expressly report the conception as real and miraculous. According to verses 24-25, Joseph believed it: When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

The Church has received this story as the truth and embodied it permanently in her confession of faith: "I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary ..."

If the story Matthew told had stopped with Joesph's actions, it would have been complete; but Matthew didn't stop there. He added the piece we read earlier in verses 22-23. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" – which means, "God with us." Why did he put the conception of Jesus in the context of an Old Testament quotation?

God Gives a Sign
Why don't we look at that quotation in its Old Testament context? The prophet in question was Isaiah, and the quotation comes from Isaiah 7:14. Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

The words are the same as those of Matthew 1:22-23, but the meaning can't be the same. Only Jesus was born of a Virgin. So, what was Isaiah talking about? Verses 5-6 give the immediate context of Isaiah's words. Isaiah said to Ahaz, the Jewish king of Judah: Aram, Ephraim and Remaliah's son (foreign kings) have plotted your ruin, saying, "Let us invade Judah; let us tear it apart and divide it among ourselves, and make the son of Tabeel king over it."

The politics of violence goes far back in the history of the Middle East. A coalition of forces was massing to invade the smaller, weaker kingdom of Judah. Ahaz, the king, was worried. Verse seven summarizes Isaiah's message to the King: Yet this is what the Sovereign LORD says: "It will not take place, it will not happen."

The unspoken question in the king's mind had to be: "How do you know?" Isaiah anticipated that question, and verses 10-11 report a most unusual offer. Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, "Ask the LORD your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights." "King Ahaz, why don't you ask God to give you a sign that the plans of these kings will fail, and God Himself will cause them to fail?"

Wouldn't you like to have a sign like that? "O Lord, give me a sign that 2007 will be prosperous and healthy. Give me a sign that I won't lose my job. Give me a sign that my wayward child will come home again."

Verse 12: But Ahaz said, "I will not ask; I will not put the LORD to the test." How can something that sounds pious be so perverse? If God offered the sign, it would not be testing God to accept His offer. Isaiah lost patience with the king. Verse 13: Then Isaiah said, "Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my God also?"

Now verse 14: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. "If you won't ask God for a sign, God will give it to you anyway." But what did the sign mean?

Verses 15-16 make the original meaning as plain as can be. "He, the promised child, will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right. But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste."

In other words, Isaiah was saying to the king: "King Ahaz, there is a virgin girl of marriageable age whom you know, and who is to marry within weeks. She will conceive and give birth to a child. Watch this child, O king! Before the child knows right from wrong, the threat of foreign king to invade your land will be gone. You can take it to the bank. Her child will be the sign that God is with you and will protect you from this threat. You will be so relieved when the threat is gone that you will glorify God and call the child 'Immanuel,' which means, 'God with us.'"

With this meaning in mind we can now compare the story in Isaiah with the story in Matthew. Isaiah's story of national, political crisis is obviously different from Matthew's story of the personal crisis of a young girl, pregnant out of wedlock. Common to both stories are the words, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. It is what Matthew did with the verse from Isaiah that creates tension and gives insight into the meaning of Christmas.

In Matthew 1:22 he connected the story he told with the story Isaiah told like this: All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. Matthew makes it sound like Isaiah's words were meant to anticipate what happened hundreds of years later with Mary and Joseph. But when we read the story of Isaiah and King Ahaz, it sounds like a story for their time only.

How could Matthew say that Isaiah's words had something to do with Mary's pregnancy? The word virgin referred to an unmarried girl. It was just a coincidence that the words Isaiah wroted matched Mary's circumstances as neatly as they had matched the king's circumstances in Isaiah's day.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
But Matthew did not think the match was a coincidence. He thought it was deliberate. He said: All this took place to fulfill, for the express purpose of fulfilling what the Lord had said. But why did he think that? How could there be a deliberate connection between words written 800 years earlier and Mary's pregnancy?

Matthew makes the connection for us: All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The Lord was the source of those words. In Isaiah's day they fit the circumstances of King Ahaze exactly.

But what if the Lord, whose plans stand firm forever (Psalm 33:11), had in mind a second meaning for those words? You say, "But not a meaning for something that happened 800 years later! Surely, you jest!" Matthew did not jest. He believed that 800 years do not disturb the coherence of God's plans. The purposes of his heart (stand firm) through all generations (ibid). The rise and fall of civilizations do not frustrate His purpose of bringing salvation and blessing to His God-image-bearing race of prodigals.

You say, "It can't be! It's just a coincidence of words!" But look at something. Matthew 2:15: Jesus was there (in Egypt) until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. Verse 17: Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled ... Verse 23: So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene." Fourteen times in the Gospel of Matthew alone, we read this kind of statement. Matthew did not think these matches were coincidental; they formed a pattern that came from the mind of God. And it wasn't just Matthew; the entire New Testament says over and over that events in Jesus' life fulfilled the Old Testament.

The Bethlehem Manger embodied the purpose of God, which goes on working, not outside history, but right down in the ambiguities and dangers and cruelties of history. He who acted before will act again and again through the centuries and on a global scale until He saves His creation from the human predicament of suffering and death.

We come back to the test tube and the Manger. Unspoken but deeply held, which symbol represents the bedrock conviction of your soul about what will save our world from suffering and death? Will it be science with its unintended but inescapable threats to human survival; or will it be God whose plans to save and bless the human family stand firm forever? Choose this Christmas whom you will serve! Trust God to bless the nations of earth. Trust Him to overcome the human predicament of suffering and death!