"the thing about flesh is it forces you to cry"

Martin Wroe writes about the body and God. Beware you might find this pretty outrageous - or then again - maybe not at all. The original text can be found at Ship of Fools.


what colour are you God
and what are your vital statistics
what's your body like
any disabilities, distinguishing characteristics
would we spot you in a crowd
transfixed by your looks... or some deformity
do you have five senses like us
or do you make sense of everything

your handshake,
is it firm as a vice or slippery as an eel,
blue eyes or brown,
overweight or undernourished
and your breath,
does it smell of life
or of garlic

if the Word was made flesh
are you flesh of our flesh
bone of our bones
is that you there, meek and mild
meanly wrapped in swaddling clothes
is that you Baby J, Word of the Father
(and Mother, and Sister and Brother)
now in flesh appearing
screaming as you arrive
like the rest of us
screaming at the shock of the new
the shock of the cold and the old and the broken

is that you Baby J
landing abruptly in now
all the way from forever and ever amen
slipping clumsily from between a Virgin's legs
covered in blood and gunge and straw
when moments before you were covered in glory
tied to life by a fragile cord
sucking on a breast as if existence depended on it
what a come down...

still,
at least you had an audience
cows was it, a goat or two
did they look on in awe and wonder
were the cattle lowing musically
or were they a stinking racket
little Lord Jesus no crying he makes
that doesn’t ring true
the thing about flesh is it forces you to cry
to prove you’re alive
who is he in yonder stall
at whose feet the shepherd's fall
maybe they just tripped,
in the dark like the rest of us,
maybe they recognised you up close
knew that was you, in the flesh
maybe they were just baffled by the cosmic night patterns
hypnotized by the funny star

and did the flesh inconvenience, annoy
anger you, like it does
the rest of us, your fleshy inventions
did your nose run green
your skin itch, flake or bruise red
breath catch from asthma
chest tighten in fear
in this murky, stale world

and later on, what did you do about your desires
you know, the carnal ones
when your imagination bypassed your moral compass
and, here’s a thing,
apart from the public movement,
mountains into the sea, water into wine,
where did you go for your private movements
are there supernaturally fertile plants there today
never barren, perpetually productive
with roots for miles, branches into the heavens
or are those divine squatting places
where you felt quite a lot lower than the angels
(wiping your bum with leaves)
like every other place, where folks did their business
no horticultural miracle for eternal memento

and when you were at the end of your considerable wit,
when it was all going wrong
your friends misunderstanding, losing interest, wandering off
when the spirit was willing
but your flesh as weak as ours
did you wonder why
you got into this body business
swapping everywhere in general
for somewhere in particular
flesh is limited, cumbersome,
awkward
can’t be in more than one place or time
did you feel trapped in that frame
resent the restrictions of the corporeal
when you were incarnate
could you recall being outcarnate

and did the flesh also exhilarate and excite
did you run and laugh and kiss
sweat and wrestle and fall in love
and if you longed to be more
were you also grateful to live
on earth

as flesh
one of us
little, weak and helpless
tears and smiles like us he knew
and he feeleth for our sadness
and he shareth in our gladness

how's the old body now
do you wear a halo
or a crown
is it of gold
or of thorns
are there marks on your palms still
blood on the side of your shirt ?
here’s to the body God
for ordinary miracle in skin and blood
putting flesh on the bones of our skeletal lives
embodying a dream of how life might be lived

flesh is all we have
but now you know
that
flesh is not all we are

Christmas column

I wrote this column for Kirkko ja me paper in early December (which is when the deadline for last week's paper was). In the paper there are two mistakes which are corrected here. In the end two blessings had merged into one and not very well (my bad for not triple checking - I did double check). And then the second one which is that if you've red your Bible (I have, though) you know that Joseph married Mary before Jesus was born but I had written husband-to-be! Goodness! This is what happens when the texts of the Sunday are in your mind when you are writing something else which will be in the future. But, oh boy! It seems to me I've made too many plunders these past weeks and I sincerely apologize for all of them.

Have a blessed blessed last week before Christmas! :)

Touch

Blessed are you, almighty God, our light and our salvation,

to you be all glory and praise for ever!

Lord and lover of humankind,

you sent your Son to earth out of compassion and love,

to shine with your eternal light.

We proclaim him Saviour and Lord,

and praise your goodness and mercy.

We join with all creation in praising you, Lord of heaven and earth,

of all that exists, and is yet to be created.

All honour and praise be to you,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

Blessed be God for ever!

The softness of a baby’s skin. The coarseness of the bricks that make the chapel where we worship. The smooth feel of a candle when you light it. The prickling of the needles of a Christmas tree. The cold breeze of a winter’s night and the warm air when you are back inside.

Touch and feel mean so much. Sometimes they mean everything. For a newborn baby the most important thing there is, is that she is held. For anyone in pain be it physical, spiritual or mental the only thing that helps can sometimes be that someone touches you. Deep inside we are the baby we were and we yearn for touch.

God knew this. God knows this. And I see a parallel here with His plan. He gave us His Son. Someone who was as much a human being as every other human being ever has been. And in His Son He acknowledges our need to touch, our need to be touched, our need to see and feel and hear Him.

The essence of Christianity is in incarnation. It is the most absurd, unthinkable, odd and incredible thing to happen. And yet this is what we believe. We believe that God became man.

I keep coming back to that first night when the baby was born. I try to imagine the smells, the sounds of the night, how everything looked, what Mary was feeling and Joseph. I can imagine how the baby felt in her father’s and mother’s arms, I know exactly how a baby smells, I know the awe and happiness his parents must have felt.

What I can’t imagine, and very much wish I could, are the dark brown eyes – or are they blue for all infants? – of the baby looking at his mother and father. That look must have melted their hearts. That look must have brought them to their knees. How can it not have? God’s pure light shining through them combined with the innocence, the newness of a new born.

God’s love is magnificent. God’s love is pure and powerful. God’s love is incredible. And God’s love is a baby boy in a manger two thousand years ago in the middle of the night born to a very young mother and her husband.

Beneath the heart-stirring starlight of that holy night,

was found in a baby the world's Guiding Light

and in the light was a light for all time,

and in the love, a love for all people.

May His light lead your heart to the sweet gift of His love.

Adapted from a greeting card by Kearas

King

Here is yesterday's sermon and I can't think anything else to say about it except that it took quite a bit of work to get it going.

Be ready and keep your lamps burning just like those servants who wait up for their master to return from a wedding feast. As soon as he comes and knocks, they open the door for him. Servants are fortunate if their master finds them awake and ready when he comes! I promise you that he will get ready and have his servants sit down so he can serve them. Those servants are really fortunate if their master finds them ready, even though he comes late at night or early in the morning.

You would surely not let a thief break into your home, if you knew when the thief was coming. So always be ready! You don't know when the Son of Man will come.’

Luke 12: 35-40

Your King comes in glory

Your King comes in glory this is the theme. But then the passage, does it describe the arrival of a great King? There’s a master coming from a wedding party – who as he arrives serves his own servants (or even as other translations say, slaves) and the other picture is that of a thief?

The problem with lectionaries is that passages are taken away from their context. It is of course my job to give you the context but the second problem is the way Bible has come to being. The stories of several people remembering different occasions have been collected to create the gospels. There are contradictions and quite simply gaps in them because stories have been placed to follow each other following a logic we today may find hard to understand.

It may very well be that as Jesus was talking about his second coming he used several different images at the same time to describe how it would be. Like in here the master and his slaves and on the other hand thief but it is also possible that these images came from two different occasions.

Therefore I won’t try to force them together. I think that if – and as I said it is as likely – Jesus gave these two images at the same time he didn’t mean them to be overly interpreted but rather as two different ways of seeing the same thing. Just as if you or I were explaining something to our friend such as how it felt in church last Sunday. Two things that are not connected can be true at the same time like that I felt very much at home and I found myself thinking about how much I like skating. Nothing necessarily to do with each other except that they are both your experiences.

So, then lets look at the two images. You’ll notice I’m concentrating on the King and not on the servants here, quite simply because the theme of waiting from the perspective of those who wait was the theme one Sunday ago. But I will come back to it, too.

Back to this Sunday then, the master has been to a wedding, expects his slaves or servants to be waiting for him, finds them to have done so and then – here’s the twist – he tightens his belt in order to serve his servants. Does this image ring a bell to you? Right. There is the evening, Maundy Thursday evening, when the disciples are to eat together with Jesus and Jesus takes on the job a of a slave and washes their feet.

Last Sunday on it’s turn took as back to Palm Sunday and to the donkey Jesus chose to ride on when he arrived to Jerusalem. Traditionally both these images have been seen to underline how different Jesus was as a king in comparison to the kings of his or any age. But this is where I came to a halt. I don’t live in a kingdom. My point of reference to kings comes from fairy tales and Disney’s kings such as Sleeping Beauty’s worried looking father and the prince’s very funny round father. Do you see my problem?

Not that it is a very big one, though, I do get why the church wants to describe Jesus as the king. Jesus is the king of all of us. He is the ruler of the kingdom of God. He is our king. And his kingship has very little to do with the kings of our world and everything to do with how God is. He is the servant king. Christ is royal and even more importantly holy at the same time as he is willing to offer everything for the sake of mankind. And this is the image we need to remember.

Now then, the other picture or image. A thief, dear me. But in fact here is another parallel to the very last hours of Jesus life on earth. Remember? God’s Son is on the cross and on his both sides there are the thieves. One insults and mocks Jesus and the other one says: “Don’t you fear God? Aren’t you getting the same punishment as this man? We got what was coming to us, but he didn’t do anything wrong.” And then these words “Remember me when you come into power!” To which Jesus replies: “I promise that today you will be with me in paradise”.

Of course, in our passage today, Jesus is talking about the way it will seem like when he arrives - in other words the follow up on what was described in the story of the thieves. He is describing the unexpected nature of the second coming, this time in a much more spectacular way than the first time around.

And here we – finally - come to waiting. As I was thinking about waiting these were the images that came to my mind. Please do not get offended I was only thinking about waiting in general and will then get to the part about waiting for Jesus.

But here’s what I thought:

A dog waiting by the door ready to greet with kisses and hugs.

A child waiting for mommy or daddy to come home and coming running straight to your lap squealing with delight.

Airport, the door to security check opens and your loved one finally comes through.

The amazing moment when the baby is finally in the arms of his/her mother or father.

The long waited Christmas Eve or morning when you were a child.

The day you graduated and then again the very first day of school.

The moment your child takes his first steps.

Birthdays, at first our own and then those we love.

We wait for many things. Many of the most precious moments in life are moments that have to do with the end of waiting for something or someone. They are moments preceded by times of expecting, waiting, getting ready and ultimately about being excited about the imminent arrival of someone or something we value very much.

Whenever Jesus arrives will it be like that for you? Will you be excited, relieved, happy, filled with gratitude and awe? My prayer for you and for myself is that, yes, we will. And you know what, I do think we will. Perfect love takes away all fear. And God is Perfect Love.