G. Archer Frierson
Austin Seminary Board of Trustees
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Advent Devotional for December 23
• Matthew 1:18-25
“Now the birth of Jesus took place in this way ...”
Such a pedestrian beginning. Don’t we know the way births take place? Isn’t every one of us born according to pattern, with the same soaring joys at sexual union, the same hooded flame of hope and expectation, the same strain of growing belly and arched back, the worried nights through false contractions, the screams of pain and rending, the sweat-soaked exhaustion after mother and child, so long one, are now and forever two?
Does the birth of Jesus not take place “in this way,” too? There are, of course, angelic voices reassuring Joseph against the shame of premature pregnancy. There are biblical precedents, harking back into the prophecy of Isaiah, to hopes of a God-with-us, and suggesting that, like that young woman of distant memory, Mary bears the sacred future in her womb. There are affirmations of obedience and assertions of abstinence, and the beginnings of controversial doctrines that believers will argue about for centuries.
But isn’t this the real story, contained in this first line? The birth of Jesus took place. God enters the warp and weft of human life in the most ordinary way. God does not overwhelm us with heavenly floodlights and the angelic choruses while all the kings of the world doff their crowns in obeisance. God does not split the skies—to say nothing of the eardrums—with pronouncements of transformational glory. Some of that may come in due time, but not yet. Here at the beginning there is a birth. Just a birth. Like any other birth. And it took place in this way. Our way. The human way.
Advent is the time for hoping, and perhaps also for secretly dreading that those hopes are too grand, too enormous for accomplishment. Behind the angel’s announcement there lurks the worry that this world is so besmirched by sin and sorrow that even God cannot scrub it clean. We spend these days expecting the spectacle, even as we fear a flop. But what comes is a child. The birth of Jesus took place in this way.
Reverend Dr. Paul Hooker
Associate Dean for Ministerial Formation and Advanced Studies
For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the Presbyterian-Reformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God's people.We hope that you are preparing the way for the Lord in your life as you read these meditations and prayers. And, we hope this Advent season is a meaningful one for you. Please know that Austin Seminary’s dedicated, diverse, and loving community of faith is not complete without you. Did you know?
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