The God of Small Things
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord, December 25, 2025
How extraordinary it is that tonight the most extraordinary thing becomes ordinary. The God of all becomes small, helpless, and accessible in the form of a newborn in a manger and in a stable. This is the revelation that saves us. He becomes small because we are small and he fills every ordinary thing with light.
He comes not with strength as some expected, or with the power of a conqueror, or an angry deity, but with the weakness of a child dependent on his Virgin Mother's milk. God becomes small. If we wish to see him, we too must become small or, rather, recognize our smallness.
Meister Eckhart goes even further in his mystical way saying, "God cannot come to visit us unless we are not home." Yes, that small.
When Zaccheus climbed the sycamore tree to see Jesus as he passed by, the Lord looked up, saw him, and said, "Zaccheus, come down from that tree. I am down here, not up there." Salvation began for Zaccheus then moment he climbed down the slippery trunk. He says the same to us. Not up there. Down here before your very eyes. The Lord's mysterious descent into human flesh opens to us two identities: God's and ours.
God shows himself to be the humblest of all. He has taken on the form of a servant not because he was ever anything other than a servant. His nature is to serve and to love. Ev erything God does. Just for love.
For he is and forever will be a servant, a lover, a friend, a companion, a merciful caregiver, the Shepherd who never stops looking for the lost sheep. Humility is what he is and service is what he does.
I recently heard a lovely description of the Holy Trinity. It comes directly from the Gospel and letters of St. John the Beloved Apostle. He describes God as love, as light, and as spirit. The Father is love. The Son is Light. The Spirit is the Holy Spirit. Where in the Gospels is he described as anything frightening? Tonight the Light comes and we are bathed in his effulgence.
The scriptures are interpreted through the eyes of the beholder. Only when the interpreter is angry does God appear angry. Only when the reader is judgemental does God become the inexorable and vengeful judge. To see the scriptures as they are we must set aside our prideful minds and enter into the sacred silence where God reveals himself as he truly is. To come down from our trees and meet him on the ground frees us from the raging chaos of our thoughts so that we may enter the stillness of his temple, the heart. That is why God speaks through the Psalmist saying, "Be still and know that I am God." As Jesus descended and Zaccheus climbed down, we also must descend into humility, into stillness, into silence.
If we really want to know Him, we must come to love stillness. Coming down from the heights of our greatness we will meet him where he is, here and now, small and meek, loving and kind, tonight as a little child. We, too, are children. His children. And we will always be. Unfortunately, we have mostly forgotten this. How sad, for only children can see him as he is and hear him as he speaks.
Stephen Mitchell, author and poet, published a book of Psalms freely adapted from the Hebrew. I recommend it. Somehow he manages to share with us the soft heart of the small God, the infant Son. Here is his version of Psalm 93 for your Christmas meditation.
"God acts within every moment and creates the world with every breath. He speaks from the center of the universe in the silence beyond all thought. Mightier than the crash of the thunderstorm, mightier than the roar of the sea is God's voice speaking in the depths of the listening heart."
Tonight God comes to the world with an open heart. He brings the warm hug that the cold world has been waiting for since the beginning. The one safe place where even death becomes an ally. And we have come to welcome him, to embrace him, to learn of him. The whole world gathers around his cradle tonight as God reveals himself with a human face so that we can gaze into his eyes and rest from our incessant labor and see him as he truly is and us as we truly are. He is the Eternal Servant and Lover of all. He is the Sabbath rest and we are invited to join it.