Saturday, December 24, 2016

A Proclamation of God’s Incarnation



A Proclamation of God’s Incarnation

Come here all you wounded, all you struck by your mortality, edged toward the grave.
Have you heard? There is a baby wound tight in cloth.
Have you heard? There too is a God, wound tight in human flesh.
As a baby, this cloth keeps him close, holds him like a mother, held tight.

As a God, this flesh of ours unbinds him from the heavens,
Throws him into the uncertainty of all this.
Unwound from the divine weal,
Cast into our needs
--our welfare, a bottomless pit, only filled by an overflowing God.

Day by day,
We tie him tight to this common ken.

Day by day,
This baby grows and gets unbound,
Becoming a man.
Soon enough the godly bursts he shows us are rougher than we’d like to admit,
Yes, all that Advent stuff!
Swords are plowshares
Destruction and hurt banished
Healing and Holy Highways
God with us.
Yes, all that, but not as we expected
Unbinding, the crippled
Preaching, to the possessed
Forgiving, sinners
Joyfully sharing bread, with the hungry.

This is certainly not appreciated by everyone
He has to tie down their verbal traps,
Traps wielded by those who can not see the Kingdom of Heaven
In his kindness
…the weight of mortal flesh and enemies of flesh and of spirit
Take a toll
Tied again soon enough
Bound to be betrayed,
Bound to be denied.

His life unwound before our very eyes
Death on a cross

Bound then, a cloth wound there
There around his wounded body
His corpse

Three days, and unwound again!
Left there.
He unwound the cloth

In this unwinding we,
We wound in his being with us
We wound as well in his wounded side
We wound, bound in Spirit!
Wound in Divinity as he was wound in humanity!
Rewrapped in flesh, bought by our brother!
… Held together again!
Together
Encountering him when we encounter each other!

Don’t get me wrong, it still unwinds from time to time
Still uncertain
Still need, still deep and always present need
Still sinners, the dispossessed, the crippled, the hungry
Still souls too small for the Kingdom’s wrappings
Still hearts broken and needing tighter binding
Still hands holding tight when fists will never do.

Still, still here
Yet, here!
Here where the savior stays
Here, in flesh rewrapped and story already told
Here shot full of consecrated oxytocin, like a new mother
Here at the Father’s side,
He, so in love, that he takes paternity leave from being Creator of the Universe.
Here in this cloth that smells of the baby
Here in the cloth that smells of his overcoming the grave
Here held tight by the Christ Child
Here, wrapped with God.