The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
December 13, 2009
Vol. 12 No. 48

Everything But...

Last Sunday’s baptism of five infants was a grand occasion for the church and demonstrated appropriately that in Advent it all starts with babies. That sounds ridiculously obvious, but babies are not obvious.

Babies do not have to do anything except be babies. They are cute and loveable, and for a moment we might prefer that they stay that way. We do not expect that babies can do anything.

Christmas is for children and our Sunday School pageant proves it by the way the children play the parts. They know that the Christmas Story is all about a baby, for the adults are merely playing the supporting roles. Nobody argues with that, for Christmas is about the babe lying in a manger. Nobody disagrees until we start thinking about it.

Christmas first is about God being intimately with us, Emmanuel is the ancient name. Close to us as breathing, yet distant as the farthest star. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, the precise opposite of a baby who has no power and knows almost nothing. We love the baby Jesus in the Christmas manger, but can’t imagine that there lies the God of the Universe. Our God cannot be so small.

That’s why we Christians are odd - we proclaim the most powerful in the least powerful. God came at the right time, at a specific time, in a real human being. Every one of us is helpless from time to time and doesn’t know what to do - God became one of us babies, not the best and smartest and most competent person in the world. There aren’t too many of those really best kind of people around and usually they have problems! Instead, God begins with you and me - that is the miracle of Christmas - to give us all the power we need.