Back in 1957, when I was four years old, somebody game me a little book called Henry the Helicopter.  I remember it well because I kept asking my mother to read it to me. It was about a helicopter which sat in a lonely corner of a large airport, where big planes with lots of people on board would take off and land all day. Henry was too small to matter; so he sat day after day in the same corner of the airport. Then, one day a man was stranded on a small island off the coast of the city where the airport was located. The authorities asked the big planes to rescue the man, but they all said, “We need a runway to land.” Then, people thought of Henry. He could land in a very small space and only needed to carry two or three people. When Henry returned with the man who was stranded, everyone cheered. Henry could do what the big planes could not do.If that plot does not sound very gripping, remember it was written for four year olds. But a lot of four year olds must relate to this story, because a revised edition of this book is still in print almost seventy years later. Four year olds are small, and the message is that small people do matter and that small people do things that big people cannot do. That is also, I believe, the message of Christmas. In order to save people, God had to become small.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, God showed his power and might in many ways. He created the whole world, caused the Red Sea to part in two, handed down commandments for us to live by, and made the walls of Jericho to collapse. God has offered ample evidence of how powerful God can be, but at Christmas God wanted to show us who God really was. The essence of God is not power, glory, knowledge, or wisdom. The essence of God is love. A broken and violent world did not need more demonstrations of power, glory, and wisdom. The world needed love. In order to show the world what God was really like, God had to become small. God had to leave power and glory behind and become a tiny baby. God had to become vulnerable. And that is true of any relationship, isn’t it? When we dare to say “I love you” we become vulnerable before the other person. So, God became small and vulnerable, so God could get close to us in our brokenness, our messiness, and our neediness. God became one of us, vulnerable not only to rejection, but also to the sin and hazards of the world. Eventually he was broken on a cross. God knew that the only solution to what ails us is love, and God hoped that we would respond with love and become vulnerable to God.

At the time Jesus was born, Caesar Augustus ruled the whole Mediterranean world. Roman Legions were around to enforce his will upon the people. He had the power to move people around like pawns, and compel a young couple like Mary and Joseph to travel 90 miles at the most awkward time to register for the census. Jesus was born into this cruel and totalitarian world, as a victim of its bureaucracy. He was born in a stable far from the centers of power. From a worldly perspective, it was a foolish gesture on God’s part, because this gesture was so easy to ignore. Yet, through the centuries the baby born in Bethlehem has been a sign of God’s love and an invitation to respond in love. God does not want to intimidate us, but to draw close to us. God wants to share everything about us except for sin. Like Henry the Helicopter, God does not need much room; but also like Henry the Helicopter, God can easily be pushed aside, left in an isolated corner of our lives, as we admire all that is big and bold and brash, and speedy.

Sometimes we get frustrated when God does not solve all our problems or punish all our enemies or bring us everything we ask for; but God had a different agenda when he became human. God came to share our pain, our suffering, and our disappointments; to go through everything we go through and then redeem us from all that has harmed us in the Resurrection on Easter morning. We can get frustrated too when we cannot solve another person’s problems or by the problems in our city, our nation, and our world that defy solutions. But that does not mean that we cannot bring some reflection of the wonder of God’s love to the people around us and to a world still hungry for peace on earth and good will to all. Remember Jesus cannot do it all by himself. He is small. He is counting on the big people to do our part.

                                                                                    Fr. Joe