Let us pray: O God, on this night of wonders, we encounter you as God-among-us. You are here in the child in the manger. You are there in the hearts of the scared and excited parents,. You are there in the shepherds and angels, the animals, the stars. You are here in here in the darkened corners of this place, and in the light shining down on us from above and in the candle light shining warmly through the dark. You are here in the hushed tones of worship and in the joyful notes of Christmas song. You are here in the milliseconds, minutes maybe even an hour of peace that might be found here. Help us to discover your presence O God, that we might know you, in the still small voice, or the mighty chorus of Gloria. My words are offered up to be your words. Take them and use them. Amen.

In my reflection for the 7 o'clock service I gave a little hint about what I was going to say in this reflection. My reflection title at that service was this: How Small Is Your God? In that reflection I offered to those attending the opportunity to consider that question not as a question meant as a corrective, but as an affirmation for the goodness, power and meaning we can find when we think of God as a child. In other words it wasn't a scolding question, it was instead a deepening question. There is much to learn when we think of God as a child, and while I won't repeat much of what I said in my earlier Christmas Eve reflection, I would like you to consider just for a moment, a few of the things I said there. Have you ever thought of God as a child, except maybe for a fleeting moment on a night like this – Christmas Eve, when stories and sights of mangers might lead us to that perhaps odd imagining. We're used, especially in today's world, to things being big. We are almost pre-occupied with big, but letting our minds dip into smallness – the smallness of a baby, and imagining God in that way can bring perhaps some radical insights. What does it mean when God can only speak God's need by crying? What does it say about relationship when you have to know the baby really well – like mothers and fathers know their baby – in order to understand (and sometimes even then it is difficult) what the baby wants or needs. I think it is a powerful and radical way of thinking about God.

I'll post the reflection from that early service on our church website, in case you want to know more about what I had to say earlier this evening.

In the 7 o'clock service I also made reference to a possible candidate for the phrase of the year – you know that yearly consideration of the additions that are created in colloquial speech to make the English language either more precise or more comical. My candidate for the phrase of the year is: It is what it is. I went on to talk about the “IT” being referred to in that phrase, as it relates to this night and this season in the year. I said then that I thought the “IT” being referred to was both a small “IT” and a big “IT”, and really it wasn't really an “IT” at all because in both cases the “IT” was a reference to God. And as I've already suggested, I went in the small direction earlier this evening. And I said that I would talk about the big “IT” at this service. And as you already know this “IT” is not an “it” at all, but God.

The title for this reflection takes its genesis in a passage that was read or sung about or sung in worship yesterday around the world in Christian Churches celebrating the fourth Sunday of Advent. The passage is called the Magnificat and it tells the story/song/prayer that Mary sang when she learned she was pregnant and when she learned the full significance of her pregnancy and the child she would bear. That magnificat has since been banned in some political environments because it is seen as being too radical, to condemnatory about situations where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and that the rich will get their due as the least powerful rise up. Not exactly a happy statement for the status quo if the status quo is based on an unequal sharing of power and wealth.

You may have noticed that the root word for “magnify” is contained within the name given to that passage, the magnificat. So is the word magnificence. Luke 1: 46 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord.

So, maybe we are not talking about something all that big here either. We magnify things that are small. I'm getting old enough that some small print in books, on food products and other such items could use a little magnification to be legible. Is it different to magnify small print with a magnifying glass in order to be able to read it in and to magnify God in our souls?

I actually think it is a pretty neat thing to have our souls swell. Have you ever had the experience? John Wesley talked about it in terms of his heart. His heart was strangely warmed. I heard on the radio yesterday of a similar situation when a man who was practicing a kind of Zen Bhuddism spoke of walking into a room while the Charlie Brown Christmas animated special was playing and hearing Linus reading the birth narrative from Luke's gospel. It conjured up for me the idea of a Celtic thin-place where the separation between the holy and the earthly are almost touching through a thin veil of separation.

Christmas Eve and Christmas are thin places – for thin places don't have to be bound by geographical boundaries, they can be defined in other ways – like days on a calendar, or the gathering of friends and loved ones, or circumstances that bring us into new and different levels of awareness. Christmas Eve and Christmas are thin places because they are a time when people make a special effort to be in touch with the holy, and that kind of preparation can be conducive to the experience, but like the fellow I heard on the radio yesterday, a thin place can be experienced unexpectedly – perhaps aided by state of mind and life, but not necessarily.

Those moments can happen because of symbolic action or spectacular sight. Can standing out under the shimmering aurora in the middle of Yellowknife Bay be a thin place – absolutely, but so could lunch time on the Saturday before Christmas just outside the food court of a busy city mall.

Having experienced something like what I've heard described by others who have told of their experience of a thin place I can relate to the sense of magnification. The moment is magnified in the time span of our lives. We remember it as more than the moment that it happened. Sometimes we measure the story of our lives by when it happened for us. And it can also feel like a welling up, like a magnifying of our soul within us – like a bread during its rising as the yeast reacts with the gluten and the dough swells to twice its size.

I would like to respectfully suggest that “it is what it is” isn't at all a description of what Mary was talking about in her song of power, upside down-ness, and justice and neither is it a description of what this night means to us. It isn't anything like what it is. It isn't what it is at all. It is something more, it is something big, it is something deep, It is God revealed in the most unlikely of places to the most unlikely of people, in a most unlikely time. And that simple story is magnified and magnified and the story of it brushes against the thin veils of thin places – tempting us, inviting us to feel its magic and power and depth. Are you ready? I don't mean are the stockings hung, the tree decorted, the gifts wrapped, the food prepared. I mean are you ready – is your soul waiting to be filled. Is your heart ready to be strangely warmed? Are you open to the presence of God? Merry Christmas. Amen.