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. 