1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word this glorious Christmas Day is taken from John 1; Ex. 40, and Titus 3. It’s entitled, “Infinite Gifts in Finite Wrappings,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. When you awake on Christmas morning, you know that the stocking hanging by the fireplace doesn’t contain a new car, and by the size of each box under the tree you know a whole host of things that can’t 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 that an infinite amount of cookies won’t fit into your stomach. A thing can hold only what will fit inside.
3. It’s been said, “The finite is not capable of the infinite.” It seems a good rule of thumb. A new car, a whole host of things, a gallon of milk, and an infinite amount of cookies simply can’t 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 God is “big” enough to make himself small. For the truly Infinite, he who was before space and time were, and who is, and who is to come—the infinite can be where it pleases Him to be and do what it pleases Him to do there.
4. It is not only at Christmas, of course. He once put his glory in the tabernacle of old, over the Mercy Seat, between the cherubim (Exodus 40). His name is wonderful (Judg 13:17–18). His name is above all names, but he gives it in human syllables. He puts it in our ears and mouths, as he made it to dwell in the dust and clamor of old Jerusalem.
5. But all this is perfected at Christmas. For 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 (John 1).
6. John introduces us to Jesus, born of Mary at Christmas and laid on straw, as the God we can see and look, touch with our hands—and seeing him, understand everything God is about. With his human mouth, 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).
7. This mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of Christmas—that in Jesus the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, 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. 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.”
8. It is not that this takes all the mystery out of God, but it does fit all the mystery of God into Jesus. And this changes all the mystery of God we too often worry about—what’s he up to “up there” with his almighty power, into the sort of mystery we marvel at in faith, for we know now that God with all his power is always aiming at what Jesus is about. For “the Word became flesh, . . . and we have seen his glory” (Jn 1:14). And that is a great gift in a small package of swaddling cloth—the gift of faith.
9. But, like other great gifts in small packages, it’s often overlooked among supposedly bigger things. God is bigger than the world, we reason, and Jesus, just one man, a blip in it. It is obvious to the whole world that there is a god. His divine majesty can be known through the greatness of the things he has created (Romans 1). But who is this God, this Creator, and how does he feel about us?
10. This most important knowledge of God, the only kind that fosters faith, we can’t deduce from the Created world. Will you figure the rain on your land makes you good in his eyes or your drought makes you his enemy? Hopefully not, for his Word says he makes the rain to fall on just and unjust alike (Mt 5:45). Does health mean blessedness, and illness and death that you are cursed? No, for Abel lived by faith and preaches and Cain had the mark that none should touch him, but his deed was judged (Genesis 4; Hebrews 11). Men have been known to say, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” (Jer 12:1) and, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years” (Lk 12:19) when the Lord has blessed, but what did they know? As John says, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him” (Jn 1:10).
11. If you want to see God and how he feels about you, if you want to know what promises he’s made, then here in one man the finite does contain the infinite. Jesus, the Word made flesh, so completely contains who God is that there is nothing to know about God that isn’t revealed in Jesus. John writes, “No one has ever seen God, [But] the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (Jn 1:18). And Simeon held this baby and said, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation” (Lk 2:29–30). And even “doubting” Thomas, seeing in Jesus’ flesh the wounds of his cross, needed nothing else; he could say, “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28)! God’s glory, truth, and grace are all stuffed entirely into Jesus, to be seen, grasped, and believed.
12. Jesus puts the infinite in the grasp of our finite minds and fledgling faith. Ideas like glory, grace, and truth come down to earth and take definite form in the person of Jesus: God’s glory, grace, and truth slept in a manger, hung on a cross, were tucked into the tomb, and rose from the dead. God’s glory, grace, and truth are forever in this man risen from the dead for you, and even ascended to God’s right hand to reign for you with infinite power in finite, simple things. What God is up to and how he will do it is no longer complicated, for “the Word is made flesh.”
13. “Make disciples!” he tells his Church. Make me a people for my own possession, to live with me in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. How will we ever do that, we wonder. The infinite God ignores the “rule” of men that “the finite cannot contain the infinite.” He comes and fills a simple thing, a bit of water and a few words, with his infinite saving power, to wash away all sin, to give eternal life in Baptism. What man dares to say God can’t, God says he does. If he can stuff himself into a baby by his Word, “You will conceive” (Lk 1:31), can he not 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” (Mt 28:19). Give them this “washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit . . . so that being justified by [my] grace [they] might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5, 7).
14. And he goes on to teaching, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20). So, the Word made flesh now makes himself words again, to communicate the fullness of him, in the Scriptures preached, in repentance and forgiveness of sins preached to you. If the Word can go in the ear of Mary by the Spirit, take on flesh, and be born a man, surely the Word can by the same Spirit make us new! Finite water and words do contain and deliver infinite forgiveness.
15. Then there is his Supper, in which mere bread and wine, by his Word are made to contain the body and blood of the God man, Jesus Christ our Lord. How can a bit of bread and wine forgive sins and give eternal life and salvation? Our little minds stumble at that, until we admit that this is what the infinite God, wills to do with his body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. If the eternal Word becomes flesh and blood so that the whole Godhead fits in him, he can surely do this if he wills. His bread and wine, his body and blood, his forgiveness, life, and salvation—and he can do with his what he wants.
16. Learn this Christmas, then, not to doubt what God can fit in the packages he sends you. We’ve run off after the world and left behind Jesus, seeming small in the manger or powerless in the darkness on the cross. But in that swaddled flesh is the Word that made it all, the light and life of men—and in that flesh lifted upon the cross is the glory of God revealed to be seen and to save. We’ve spent thousands of dollars and hours in how many ways trying to be made something better, when by faith Jesus we are made children of God, born not by the will of flesh but of God himself. We’ve neglected the little packages in which God saves through His Word and Sacraments in favor of those big packages that always prove empty in the end.
17. But thanks be to God, the one little package remains—wrapped up in swaddling cloth and purple robe and shroud, to be wrapped up for us in Word, water, bread and wine—so we can find the one infinite gift. Jesus, the Word made flesh, testifies that the One who is infinite can be where he wants to be: in his Word and Sacraments. He can do what he wants to do there, that is, 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 that is here in these things. 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 you. This gift be yours to your everlasting joy this Christmas. Amen. Now the peace of God that surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
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