Christmas Eve, 2012

How big is God? How small is God? The story of Christmas is that God Almighty was born as a human baby. The Creator of the universe, who can hold the earth in his hands, was held in the arms of his mother and laid in a manger. In Christmas, that is the miracle, the mystery, the awesome wonder.

How big is God? Sometimes we think that God is too big to be in our everyday lives. We feel that God created the world and set it in motion and then left it to run on its own. Or we feel that God is too big and too busy to take care of our little problems, or even the big problems of this world like war and climate and earthquakes and disease and violence. We feel that God is too big to care.

The opposite problem is that we make God too small. We may feel that he has no power to take care of the problems of this world; and so neither can he take care of my personal problems.

Or we minimize God and his authority. We say that God is only concerned about whether or not we keep the Ten Commandments. God is only about love and good feelings. We only need God when we need something done that we cannot do ourselves, like healing or guidance or for cursing someone we hate. We only need God to take us to heaven when we die; but while we are living we want God to let us do what we want to do. When we treat God like that, we treat him like a pagan idol that we control.

We make our plans, and when we think God is too big to fit into our plans or too small to fulfill our plans, then Christmas is just tinsel and decorations and discarded wrapping paper.

The Gospel Message of Christmas is that Jesus was born and laid in a manger. In Jesus Christ, God became just the right size to fit into our plans, to fit into our lives. He became just the right size to save us. He came as a baby so that we can learn to love him. Later as an adult, he was just the right size to save us. He was just the right size to fit on and to die on the cross, and yet, as God, he was just the right size to take the sin of the world upon himself.

How big is the love and mercy of God? It is big enough that he made himself small for our sake. His love is big enough to come into our small lives. His heart is big. That is the message of the manger.

Christ became small in order to make us big. Our short lives on earth become eternal in heaven. Our shortsighted concern for only ourselves becomes big to see the concerns of others. Our hearts become big and so we pray for big things. We pray for peace. We pray for the evangelism of the world. We pray that everyone in the world can have a truly merry Christmas. That is why God Almighty became the Baby in the manger.

Amen.

Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church

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