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.