12/25 – John 1:1–3,14 – Infinite Gifts in Finite Wrappings
December 25, 2020
Grace to you in Jesus’ name. Amen.
When you awoke this Christmas morning, you knew the hanging stocking did not contain a new car, and by the size of each box under the tree you knew a whole host of things that could not be inside. Early in childhood, your brain figured out that even on Christmas you can’t pour the whole gallon of milk into your juice glass, and an infinite amount of cookies won’t fit into your stomach, even if you want them to. A thing can hold only what will fit inside of it. (Even if you are an avid watcher of Dr. Who.)
In other words, “The finite is not capable of the infinite.” It seems a good rule of thumb for our meager expectations. A new car, a whole host of things, a gallon of milk, and an infinite amount of cookies simply cannot be where they please to be. So why do we so often reason about God, as if he were an infinite amount of cookies, and rule out His being in packages that seem too small?
The truth is He is “big” enough to make Himself small. Being truly infinite, He who is without bounds, who was before space and time existed, and who is, who was, and who is to come, at Christmas fits into a small manger.
It is not only at Christmas, of course. He once put His glory, which fill the heavens and the earth, in the Tabernacle of old, over the Mercy Seat.1 His name is above all names, but He gives it in human syllables. He puts it in our limited ears and limited mouths, as He came to dwell in the dust and clamor of old Jerusalem.
All this is perfected at Christmas. The Word, John says, who was in the beginning with God, who was God, without whom nothing that was made was made, and through whom all things were made, in whom was life, and the life was the light of men. This Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.2
The Gospel of John introduces us to Jesus, born of Mary at Christmas and laid in a humble manger, as the God we can see and touch. Seeing and grasping Him, we can begin to understand everything about God. With His human mouth, once born and about to die, but now forevermore one person, humanity now taken up in his divinity, this Jesus will say, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8:58)! And he will tell a doubting Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9), and Thomas, “Put your finger here . . . do not disbelieve, but believe” (Jn 20:27). He who hears and sees Jesus hears and sees God as he is, as St. Paul says, “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9).
This mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of Christmas—that in Jesus Christ the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, that when God stuffed himself into Jesus there was nothing left out for us to seek or find or figure out somewhere else—transforms all the mysteries of life under almighty God.
The Word at the beginning who made all creation and governs it still—he was made flesh, to dwell with us, and we’ve seen his glory, seen who he is in himself. The cloud and thick darkness and veil of the tabernacle are stripped away, and we see the glory of God in the person of Jesus, the glory laid in a manger, the glory hung on the cross for sinners, the glory raised from the dead to say, “Peace be with you.”
Jesus, the Word made flesh, so completely contains who God is that there is nothing to know about God that is not revealed in Jesus. Jesus puts the infinite in the grasp of our finite minds. Ideas like glory, grace, and truth come down to earth and take visible form in Jesus. God’s glory, God’s grace, God’s truth are forever in this Child laid on straw for you, nailed up for you, buried low for you, and risen from the dead for you, and even ascended to God’s right hand.
“Make disciples!” he tells his Church. Make me a people for my own possession, to live with me in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. A tall order—how will we ever do that? Here again the infinite God ignores the “rule” of finite men that “the finite cannot contain the infinite.” He comes and fills a finite and simple thing, a bit of water and a few words, with his infinite saving power, to wash away all sin, to give all life eternal, life infinite.
Who dares to say God can’t, when God says he does? God became man after all; the body of Jesus holding all the fullness of the Godhead. If he can stuff himself into a baby by his Word, He can, by his Word make water save? So, “Baptize them,” he says, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Give them this “washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit… so that being justified by grace they might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” Finite water and finite words do contain and deliver infinite forgiveness, an infinite remedy, and an infinite God.
Then there is his Supper, in which the finite and lowly bread and wine, by his creative Word are made to contain the body and blood of the infinite-become-finite, of the immortal-become-mortal, of the God-become-man, the resurrection and the life. How can a bit of bread and a sip of wine forgive sins and give eternal life and salvation? Our little minds surely stumble at that, until we admit that this is what the infinite, unbounded God, wills to do with his stuff, his life, even his body and blood. If the eternal Word becomes flesh and blood so that the whole Godhead fits in him, he can surely do this.
Learn this Christmas not to doubt what God can fit in the packages he sends you, or count them as small among supposedly bigger things. We’ve run off after the big, wide world and left Jesus behind, seeming small in the manger, or powerless in the darkness on the cross. Yet in that swaddled flesh is the Word that made it all, the light and life of men. Thanks be to God, the one little package remains, wrapped up in swaddling cloth, and purple robe and a burial shroud, to be wrapped up for us in Word and water, and bread and wine, so we can have in the finite the infinite gift.
The God-babe in the manger, the Word made flesh, testifies that the One who is infinite can be where he wants to be. Jesus is in his Word and Sacraments. He can do what he wants to do. He wants to save you. Don’t rule God out because you think he’s too big to fit where he’s told you he is. He fits where he wants to, and does what he wants to do. The Word who made all things and became flesh says so. In these little packages we can grasp, all the mystery of God is wrapped up in his will to save, and where those packages are to be grasped, there is the gift of faith. This gift is yours this Christmas, and everyday, both to receive and to give. Amen.
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NOTES
1Exodus 40
2John 1
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