“Your God’s not big enough!” Preachers always like to say junk like that.  Certainly it’s true, but I never hear anyone say, “Your God’s not small enough!” And I suspect that our God really is too big, especially for Christmas.  The huge God who is older than time, who is before the creation of matter, who makes billions of stars in millions of galaxies, the massive God who actually knows whether we are naughty or nice and judges the hearts of all humanity - I suspect that that gigantic God is too big for Christmas.

Take a minute to be shocked and alarmed by this:  The inconceivable, Almighty, All knowing, and Omnipresent God becomes conceived as an utterly powerless fetus, with zero brain activity, and confined to one solitary place in time and space, in an oppressed Judean Town in the hill country of Palestine, in the womb of a young Jewish peasant girl.

And now here is the microscopic God.  Here is the embryonic God.  Here is the God that is small enough to fit through a birth canal, small enough to fit within cradled arms, small enough to fit within humanity.  This is a mystery that angels still scratch their heads over.  Because, just as difficult it is to grasp how huge our God is, it’s also next to impossible to grasp how incredibly small our God is – how humble our God is.

But as soon as the shock and wonder wear off I immediately think, “Well, what good is this little God? I want the galaxy maker!  I want the human heart judger!  Now that God can really get stuff done around here.  I could really get some hope behind that God.”  But instead we get a year’s supply of God’s dirty diapers.

Now enter Mary’s song – the magnificat.  Remember that in St. Luke 2?

Somehow, I’m not sure how, but somehow, while Mary was separated from her embarrassed fiance and shipped off to her secluded cousin’s house, somehow she sang these words, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”  What a weird thing to say about God.  I’ve always thought it odd, “My soul magnifies GOD.”

A few years ago I got my little nephew a magnifying glass that electronically connects to a TV screen for Christmas.  It was amazing how close it brought us to whatever we put under it.  We could see with crystal clarity the fibers of the carpet and the dimpled peel of an orange, and the skeletons of dead bugs.  It was so fascinating that we played with it for hours.

When I thought about that magnifying device Mary’s song start to make sense.  Mary had to “magnify the Lord” because God was becoming so microscopic.  In order to look at an unplanned pregnancy in first century Judaism, which would have caused her to be shamed and ostracized by her entire community, hypothetically punished by death according to Jewish Law, and then to be able to say about that scandal, “From now until the end of time every generation of people will call me blessed”, rather than cursed…  Mary must have used magnifying glass.  In order to look at a year’s supply of dirty diapers and say, “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty”, one must use a magnifying glass.  In order to look at Jesus strung up between two thieves on an device meant for public humiliation, torture, and death and then say, ”Surely this man was the son of God”, one must use a magnifying glass.

That seems like a big jump to go from Christmas to Good Friday. They don’t seem to have too much to do with each other. But under the magnifying glass the incarnation and the crucifixion are no different.  For the sake of loving us, God becomes very small in the cradle, on the cross.  And this is what it looks like when God comes close:  humble and vulnerable.  That’s not what I would do about the world’s desperate hopes.  That’s not what I would do to bring about peace on earth.  But it’s what God is doing in Jesus Christ to bring about God’s dream for mending your family, your relationships, the environment, nations at war… and all of Creation.  Now that’s really difficult for me to see.  I need a whole new lens for Christmas.

God, as a generic distant galaxy creator who lives light years away is pretty easy to believe in.  Most the world believes in that big distant God.  But the little God, the Jesus-God, that one is next to impossible to believe in.

So here’s my Christmas prayer:

“Hey Big God,

if you are giving out presents this year, how about wrapping up some “little-God magnifying glasses” for all of us with poor “God-eye-sight”… I think I remember you calling it “the Holy Spirit” or something like that.  That would be great.  Thanks.”

Merry Christmas everyone.