S-S is for So Small

Design by Martin Marty

How Small is God?
Not small, the above says. Yet, how small is a zygote (the first cell, a fertilized egg, that in nine months is born a human baby)? When Jesus was a fertile egg, conceived in Mary's virgin womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, a zygote, how small was God? True, the sending Father, the Almighty, and the proceeding life-giving Spirit retained their customary divine bigness. But since Jesus Christ, though not all of God, is all God, then God in Jesus was as small as a zygote. I once saw a Caribbean man in the French Quarter impressively fold himself into a plexiglas cube about two feet on a side. But that the eternal Son, the Life, who is humanity's sole light, can compress himself into a microscopic zygote, may seem too much--or too little. It is too little for some theologies that insist that the fullness of the Son's divinity could not be contained in anything so small, even though that leaves them suggesting that Jesus is only a small part of the Son, a token gesture. But Colossians says that the fullness of deity dwelt bodily in Jesus, without reserve, and was happy to do so.

That is a vulnerable position to be in. Would you go back? Would you or I willingly become again a zygote, or even a babe in arms with no say over what happens to us, totally dependent on others' choices? Not without good reason! One of my favorite Christmas hymns contains this line of marveling faith:

The "How" question's answer must be wonderful, but how much more wonderful the answer to the "why" question? The Lord's "good reason" to become so small is: you. And, amazingly, me. And all the rest of us, large and small, those dead already when he came, and those not yet alive even as you read this, babes and zygotes and all.

In Jesus as zygote or baby, or even as full grown man, God has telescoped himself down to human size for humans, for our benefit, to do good to us. "Largesse" is Old French for "bigness," as in, "that's big of you;" bigness as generous, liberal. God being tiny in Christ is God's largesse. For in this largesse God ensures even his largeness will be for us. Do our obligations to our Creator frighteningly tower over us? Jesus became small to satisfy our obligations for us. See how that changes our per-speck-tive. With confidence in Jesus' cross, what dwarfs us is not giant obligations but gigantic already-paid-for blessings: gifts of love from Creator to creature. Or does the righteousness of God passing judgment on us make us shrink with terror? It should, but only temporarily, until the Son takes all our sins away from us into himself. Now what fills our field of view is no longer God's looming judgment but the mercy of Jesus that is even bigger.