And week after week, we share in eating the body of the same baby. We proclaim him as Lord. We confess him to be, in the words of the Nicene Creed, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made. And make no mistake, "through him" does not mean "through the Father" - it means through Jesus. "All things were made through him," John's Gospel begins by telling us, "and without him was not anything made that was made."
We can easily picture Jesus in the manger, Jesus going about preaching, Jesus showing the Kingdom forth in story and in miracle, Jesus scourged and crucified, Jesus risen from the tomb. And we can know the friendship and support of Jesus at the right hand of the Father, ever living to make intercession for us. It is fitting the two pictures together that gives us real difficulty.
In the early centuries of the church's life, no end of people could be found who declared, wrongly, that Jesus was two separate persons, the heavenly person filling the ordinary, earthly one at his baptism, and leaving it at his death. The idea of God entering life as a baby, and giving up life on a cross, did not fit in with either Jewish or Greek notions of how God should behave.
But as Christians we must believe that God indeed came as one of us. This is why the church insists that Mary was "the mother of God" - not to make a statement about Mary, but to make it clear that the child in the manger was indeed God. (Mary was indeed blessed, but we do well to focus our thoughts on the generous One who was the source of her blessing!)
God knows us through and through. Not only are we formed in our creator's likeness, but God has shared in our life, has been born, has grown up, and has known how painful, and yet how glorious, it is to give ourselves in the service of others.
The tiny baby is our guarantee of this. Nothing and nobody is too weak, too small, too vulnerable for God to share its weakness. When all else is gone, God is there. There, in the manger, helpless as we are - God with us. Emmanuel.
HD