It’s Advent in Virginia and, it may be cold outside, but both of our daughters have fevers. I just finished putting down Miriam (adopted, 9 months old); but Allie (wife, 33) will have to put her down at least once more with the dexterity of Indiana Jones finessing an ancient bust from a booby trap (Raiders, ‘81).

Next, is Hannah (IVF, four (and a half) years old) with whom bedtime requires the negotiating skills of one of the Pawn Stars (not Chumlee). Tonight I managed to talk her down to two books before bed, but she told me I could pick one of them, but then rejected the one I picked. I stood my ground. She cried. I gave in. Ugh.

Don’t judge me! At least she said some of the prayers tonight! We do a short evening prayer thing together every night (okay, at least once a week). Hannah doesn’t usually say the prayers. Sometimes she sings the songs. Other times she just leaves the room (bye, Felicia!).

I can’t blame her. And I won’t fault Miriam for walking out on Jesus either when she’s of “the age of dissent.” Their associate pastor Dad only preaches once every 6-8 weeks (not bitter) which means he has lots of pent up theologizing that sometimes (especially around the holidays) gets visited on the kiddos. Like this year, I went ahead and wrote my own Advent devotional for them. It’s narrative-based, and covers all of the Old Testament up to the birth of Christ (a little extra, I know).

Now, if you’re reading Fleming Rutledge’s Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ, then you’ll know that if I were worth my salt, I’d be pumping my kids full of high-octane apocalyptic these days. Coming judgment, Already, Not yet. Once and Future. All that good stuff. But, I’m thinking, if you’re four, you need the basics first (the temple curtain being torn in two matters more once you’ve learned what’s behind the curtain).

To my credit, there are two “days” spent on Isaiah texts in the Colby Family Advent Devotional (© 2018). But I’ll admit I left out the part about the virgin conceiving and bearing a son. It’s Isaiah 7, to be specific, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (that is, “God with us”).

Look, we’re just as sex-positive as the next millennial snowflakes but we pick our battles! We sing Christmas carols; but we don’t linger on the line “Lo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb.” Our policy is honesty, openness, a scientific terminology, but we’re in no rush to cover virginity as a subject with our daughters, so we’ve skipped it for now.

It can be hard to be a father of daughters in a world where Kavanaugh, Cosby, and the Commander in Chief are setting the bar for acceptable conduct towards women. It’s an even harder subject when you can remember enough of college to know we’re all villains capable of (and guilty of) the kind of stuff only mentioned in locker rooms. Can we raise our daughters to be strong, aware, vigilant, and still preserve the bliss of their naïveté?

That’s also why it’s probably weird that I, a dude, am writing a post on the virginity line in Isaiah 7. This passage, adopted in Matthew 1, has done untold damage to our cultural understanding of sex as something that automatically lands you on the naughty list (as if you weren’t already there). It’s done even more damage through the church’s veneration of virginity and cultic focus on sexual purity.

Meanwhile, as any commentary written after 1970 will tell you (cough, sexual revolution, cough), Isaiah probably didn’t even mean “virgin” in the way we use it today. It’s probably better translated “young woman.” Isaiah’s prophecy was not that God would be performing a miraculous birth by impregnating a virgin. It was that a child would be born in the midst of war-torn Judah! That’s the miraculous good news!

It was the Syro-Ephraimite war of the 8th century BC. Things were bad. Real bad. The miracle God was working had nothing to do with sex. It had to do with war. God was promising not only the survival of the people, but new birth in the midst of death. A child would be born and before that child was old enough to sing “Santa Baby,” the people would be returning to a time of plenty. They’re being shaved (not saved, shaved) by the Assyrians, says the LORD (read Isaiah 7, it really says that), so they’ll be as hairless as a baby’s bottom when they receive this new life birthed by God in this young woman.

But, what do you think Matthew meant? That’s where the “virgin” translation really comes from. That’s the Greek word used. And, to be honest, virgin (as in someone who hasn’t had sex) probably is what he actually meant. I’m with Fleming in her late-in-time acquiescence to the doctrine of the virgin birth because we both have come to know God as one perfectly capable of self-conceiving in the body of a virgin.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Annunciation, 1898

But, does this mean God prefers a virgin? By no means. If we make these texts about virginity, we’re focusing on the wrong part of the female anatomy!

The good news in Jesus Christ is that God is not a hymen of holiness in the heavens, untouched, unmoved, impenetrable. Neither Isaiah 7 nor Matthew 1 are extolling the “virtue” of virginity. Rather, they are pulling back the curtain to reveal God as the universal uterus of unmerited grace. That’s right, God is the uterus from whom all blessings flow.

Think about it. God’s identity as the creator of life is revealed in the command to those who bear the imago dei: “be fruitful and multiply.” To bear God’s image and reveal God’s glory is to make babies. In fact, according to my oldest Jewish friend (Jason, 40 something, eighth-Jewish), Jews don’t number the 10 commandments like us because “be fruitful and multiply” is actually commandment #1! Think Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth… God has always been making things, especially babies! Especially babies born from barren women!

Beyond literal childbirths, the uterine metaphor is an effective analogy for much of the Bible’s narrative of divine action in the world. God is always bearing into being that which was not, and then re-birthing it, re-creating it.

I don’t even think it’s too far to say it’s what’s happening on the cross. The crucifixion, in its horror and gore, in the cries of the One forsaken in our place, are the work, the labor, the contractions of God With Us. The rupture of the heavens, the tear of the temple curtain, the piercing of Christ’s side releases the eternal gush of Grace: the water of Baptism and blood of the Eucharist. Sorrow and love flow mingled down as Caesar’s centurion performs the cesarean section of our salvation.

Okay, maybe that last sentence was “pushing” the metaphor too far (see what I did there?). But you get the point! The proclamation of a child born to us, a son given us, the doctrine of the virgin birth, none of these can rightly be interpreted as a divine judgment on sex, or God’s “preferential option for the pure.” That’s stupid.

These texts reveal a God who is not, as it turns out, a slut-shaming, purity-testing, divine vaginal wand. Rather God is, through these women, doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves! We have as much to contribute to our salvation in our virginity or lack thereof as a fetus contributes to being born! And if you’ve ever seen what a fetus offers it’s mother for her labors, even in health class, you know it’s mostly mucus and shit!

Isaiah 7 points to God at work in the world to create anew from the nothing Israel has made of its faithfulness. And Matthew 1 points to God now self-conceiving in order to assume every aspect of human sin and bear it all the way to rebirth in resurrection.

So it’s no surprise that we Methodists talk about our salvation as the new birth. Neither should it be a surprise that we say in our Eucharistic prayers to God, that, “through Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, You gave birth to your church.” And it’s no wonder that throughout all of Christian history at least some part of the church has always baptized people (infants and adults) in the nude, so they emerge like slippery newborns, carrying nothing with them but their own naked need.

So, dear reader, if you hear a sermon this weekend extolling the virtues of virginity on what is often celebrated as the Marian third Sunday of Advent, feel free to correct the preacher. He’s focusing on the wrong part of the female anatomy. Tell him not to worry, it’s reportedly a common mistake.

But what of Advent? If all of this has been accomplished, our sin born on the cross and our salvation birthed in resurrection, what is Advent? What of the pain and suffering still around today? The infertility of the church? The miscarriages of justice? The stillbirth of  our righteousness? Not to mention literal infertility, miscarriages, and stillbirths? What of the persistence of sin after the resurrection? What is this time between the times?

Paul, in Romans 8, actually offers us three uterine analogies for the already/not yet. My wife and I have experienced a little of each.

Number 1: With Hannah, we had all our plans for a nice natural birth. We took the classes. We held out against the epidural as long as we could. My wife is quite petite (and smokin’ hot); but I’m of Norse heritage, and thus  in 9 months Hannah, our little IVF embryo, grew into a massive ten-pound Viking-baby in utero. So, labor was rough, and Hannah ended up taking a cesarean short-cut.

But when she came out she wasn’t breathing. We thought she was dead. She wasn’t dead… but she wasn’t breathing. She was quickly intubated and then spent 10 days in the NICU as the largest baby any of those NICU nurses had ever seen.

Paul calls it birthpangs. Birthpangs. The sufferings of this age, the continuing pain of sin in the world, at all levels, it’s birthpangs. It’s all creation groaning in childbirth as God re-births creation by the same Spirit that was in Christ Jesus. The journey from labor to actually leaving the hospital is a long one. Our Advent life is as if a child has been born for us, and yet we are still waiting to be released with him from the NICU. Until then we are on life support, remaining under the care of another until we are made well.

Number 2: With Miriam, we were adopting. We had waited 3 years for her. That was bad enough. The call that she had been born (for us!) and we would be her parents was a huge rush of relief. But, from the day we got the call to the day she came home, was three weeks. It may not sound like much; but to me they were three excruciating weeks. Allie was in “nesting” mode the whole time. I, on the other hand, experienced what I can only explain as wrath.

I was wrathful at the distance between me and my child. She was ours, dammit! She was ours, and she should be home with us! I wanted to destroy, no, burn everything in my path to bring her home. But the principalities and powers of this present evil age (aka the State of Maryland) hadn’t surrendered her into our custody yet.

It was only last week when we got the word that Miriam is now officially “ours.” We finally opened the paperwork from the lawyers tonight. We had known she was our daughter from the day she was born, but it took somewhere between three weeks and nine months for the powers of this world to officially recognize our custody of her.

Paul calls it “awaiting our adoption as children of God.” He says that this age is one where the powers of the world have not yet yielded. They have not yet recognized our adoption as co-heirs with Christ, adopted children of God. And so God is filled with wrath, and coming in judgment, for finalization, to claim us as adoptees, and to establish our forever home.

And finally, Number 3: Before Hannah and Miriam, before we had even started saving our pennies for these two costly, priceless children, we were notified of our low-fertility. We did not experience miscarriages or stillbirths as many have (including couples on both sides of our family). We lucked out with Miriam and Hannah; but we still remember that moment of reality, realizing we were not capable of making ourselves parents without help.

And yet, we were sure, deep down, we would be parents of a large family some day, even if “our kids” would only be the ones we teach in Sunday School someday—only “ours” by virtue of our baptismal vows. We were crushed; yet we had that assurance.

That’s the third image Paul gives us for this Advent time, the assurance that Christ is the first born of all creation, the first born from the dead, and, thanks be to God, the first born of a large family. That is what our faith is… an assurance of things hoped for, even if yet unseen.

“Nativity,” Brian Kershisnik, 2006. https://www.kershisnik.com/w-o-r-d-s/2017/7/7/nativity-an-essay

I think that’s what Fleming’s book has helped me synthesize this year. Any right observance of Advent must stare honestly into the war, destruction, pain, corruption, and sin in our world and in our very bodies. But, we must do so acknowledging that the only way we have eyes to see this as sin is because we have been reborn in Christ. We see the world that walks in darkness for what it is because our Light, in Christ, has come.

And so we light candles, and read Bible stories to children, even children that are not our own, in the assurance that the Risen Christ, born of a virgin in Bethlehem, is the firstborn of all creation, and one day the powers and principalities will recognize this, like it or not, and then they too will be placed for adoption, and welcomed into this large, multigenerational, dysfunctional family, held together by grace.