By stating that Jesus is “born of woman”—this Mary (as both St. Matthew and St. Luke attest)—St. Paul insists that Jesus is most emphatically human, the “firstborn of all creation. That this Mary is at the same time a virgin prevents the birth of Jesus from being reduced to what we know or can reproduce from our own experience.
Life that is unmistakably human life is before us here, a real baby from an actual mother’s womb; there is also miracle here, and mystery that cannot be brushed aside in our attempts to bring the operations of God, let alone our own lives, under our control.
The miracle of the virgin birth, maintained from the earliest times in the church and confessed in its creeds, is, in Karl Barth’s straightforward phrase, a “summons to reverence and worship….” Barth maintained that the one-sided views of those who questioned or denied that Jesus was “born of the virgin Mary” are “in the last resort to be understood only as coming from dread of reverence and only as invitation to comfortable encounter with an all too near or all too far-off God.”
–Eugene Peterson in God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas ed. Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe (Massachusettes, Paraclete Press, 2007), p., 5
Merry Christmas to you all. And to celebrate some Christmas themed photos. First a window from Hambledon, Hampshire… pic.twitter.com/JogNvXFUS3
— English Churches (@EngChurchPics) December 25, 2023