The Infinite Becomes Finite so that the Finite Might Touch the Infinite
A sermon delivered at Grace Episcopal | Sheboygan, Wisconsin on December 28, 2025
I have a daily meditation practice. I have been doing it for a few years now, but I remember when I first started. My thoughts would race everywhere, what I need to do for work, at home, you get the idea. It seemed impossible to sit there and keep the mind from going from one thought to the other. Then one day… while I was sitting there… everything suddenly became peaceful. No racing thoughts, no mind wandering off… complete peacefulness. Then quietly a voice began to enter my thoughts… you are doing it! You are doing it! Woohoo! Ugh… the silence broke.
The key with meditation though is not how long you sit in practice. Its how it begins to seep into your daily life. You suddenly find that the driver that cut you off doesn’t irritate you. That coworker that you find frustrating doesn’t frustrate you anymore. The world view begins to change. I call it moving from meditation to being meditated. A visible change in our world view occurs.
In the readings today, we see that God’s intervention (The Incarnation) creates a visible change in the believer. In the Collect this morning we prayed that the “new light” poured upon us might “shine forth in our lives.” The Gospel reading refers to it as “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” A way to summarize this morning’s Gospel is “The Infinite becomes finite so that the finite might touch the Infinite.” (On a side note: I find it interesting that we celebrate the birth of Christ around the time when we are making a turn seasonally from the long nights of darkness to longer days of light.Possibly a lesson there from Nature.)
This pouring of a new light though isn’t something just theological or philosophical. It is literally a physical, mental, and spiritual change in each of us. Isaiah describes it as:
…my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
It’s a complete makeover. A complete change that you feel and others begin to see. But its not just a lamp that God lights to look at; He lights it so others can see by it. Think about this for a minute. The light that God has placed in you is not just for your benefit. It’s so that light may guide others to God. How powerful is that? How does that change your personal view of God’s light in you?
But I am a person (like some of you) that likes something more tangible. This is all great but what do I do with this? Paul talks about what to do in his letter to the Galatians. He says we are no longer imprisoned by the law (Galatians 3:23). We are freed and no longer need to live under a legalist system of do’s and don’ts. Too often though we find ourselves falling back into such living. It can be so much easier to put everything in a nice neat box of just following the rules. Christ calls us, though, to focus on Him and model his life. To experience the freedom of living that He fulfills. Not to be burdened by the heavy yoke of the law and sin. We sometimes put so much pressure on ourselves to try to live a life that is unattainable and unrealistic. Christ’s calling is simply to follow Him and nothing more. He accepts us where we are at here and now with all the baggage that we bring.
Jesus challenges us, though, to shift our view from the inward such our personal struggles and shortcomings. Shift it outward to your fellow believers, to the community we serve, and to the world at large. Like Jesus, take a humble servant’s heart. We get up every morning, and the first question that should be in our minds and hearts, is “how can I be a servant to others today”? Jesus was the Incarnate of God! By all rights He should have lived His time on earth as a king. But, you see that is the key, He didn’t do that. Instead, He lived His life here as a humble servant.
Let’s do a little exercise. Look at all the thoughts that are going through your head right now. No matter what they are. The people, the activities, all of them….Now ask yourself, how do they change if I approach them with a humble servant’s heart. Do they differ? Do they take on a different dynamic? The view can’t help but change when we approach things from the humble servant’s heart of Christ. Now let’s take this a step further. Think of all those people in your life (esp. The one’s you find…. Well… we will say challenging.) Now think about them from the view of a humble servant. How do things change? How can you bring this into your personal life?
I challenge you to do two things this week:
Enkindle: Through prayer and the Word, stoke the fire of the Spirit within.
Reflect: Look for the “dark corners” of your personal life (the past view of yourself that you are still carrying with you) and community (loneliness, injustice, grief) and carry the light there.
In closing, if no one has ever told you this, let me be the first. You are no longer defined by your past, your shadow, or your “slavery.” You are a “crown of beauty” in the hand of the Lord.Let that sink in for a minute (repeat it). Like Christ, live your life of beauty as a humble servant to others and share the light of God with them.
As Paul said in his letter to the Galatians:
“And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”7So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”
Go forth and live your life as a child and heir of God.
AMEN