God is faithful, the Word, the Word of God becomes flesh, but not in the ways we might expect. God gets to us by becoming an infant, small and vulnerable, needy and dependent. In a world where rulers are used to getting their way by decisive means, at the point of a gun, with wads of cash, or an entourage of support personnel, God is determined to reveal God’s love to us in the most astonishing, least expected of ways. Yet it is only by becoming just like us, small, tender, and vulnerable that God shows us what it means to be truly human and so we can stop our weary efforts at being God.

In Jesus the God who stands beyond time enters time, the God who is infinite becomes finite, the God who is all-powerful becomes all-vulnerable. The God whose womb bore the world is born of Mary’s womb to bear the good news of peace on earth. God becomes small.

Because we cannot work our way up to God, God becomes small for us, a living, breathing, tangible means of grace bundled in a young girl’s arms. The King of kings is born in a stable with a few lowly shepherds as guests of honor. The gift of Christmas is God’s love for the world and the package is flesh and blood, the most powerful force that the world has ever known. God becomes small.

To receive this child of truth faithfully and fully, we must, my friends, reshape our thinking; we must turn aside from the big, boisterous, and hard-edged ways the world normally operates; we must focus on the vulnerable and tender. God becomes small redeeming God’s world. The salvation born in Bethlehem’s stable cannot be earned but only received like a young mother astounded by the gift of new life.

The child that comes is truth and grace. Jesus enters our shadowy world to be our eternal light. Jesus enters a world overrun by senseless noise to sing the melody of peace. Jesus enters the world as a testament to the small and quiet ways in which God goes about redeeming God’s creation even though our world is overly-consumed by the big and the powerful. Jesus comes to your life and my life as a priceless gift – the only gift that really matters. God becomes small.

Henri Nouwen, Catholic priest and theologian, wrote about the powerless of the Christ-child in this way: Jesus is God-with-us, Emmanuel. The great mystery of God becoming human is God’s desire to be loved by us. By becoming a vulnerable child, completely dependent on human care, God wants to take away all distance between the human and the divine. Who can be afraid of a little child who needs to be fed, to be cared for, to be taught, to be guided? God has become the all-powerless, all-vulnerable God who completely depends on us. How can we be afraid of a God who wants to be “God-with-us” and wants us to become “Us-with-God”?

God becomes small that we might become God’s children, loving and caring in the world. God becomes small, good news for the entire world and the whole of creation. “Glory to God, in the highest heaven, and peace on earth, to those with whom God is pleased.”  Amen.