Incarnation

Did the baby in his straw in Bethlehem

Finally understand the point of “Us or Them”?

Your kinsman will never throw you out 

into a shed. They’d rather do without

themselves and give you their own bed.

But even strangers will feel some sort of pity

(If only because Mary’s young, and pretty)

 and offer you a spot against the night.

“Do you think she’ll be all right?”

The innkeeper’s wife asks

Before she hurries back to endless tasks.

And does he finally understand that our big brains

Are why our mothers feel their labor pains

Just as he predicted, and love us anyway?

There in the hay

She wraps him up and sings in an angel’s voice.

“Joseph, he’s here! Our baby! Rejoice!

He has your eyes

And your mother’s smile.” As she lies next to him, 

Shielding him from the cold

Does he realize?

Or is he dazzled by the Magi’s gold?

Because really what’s the point of an incarnation if not

To understand what a body is, and what 

Constraints it puts on us and how 

Tiny we are against the world, and brave,

The people that he says he comes to save.

Yes we choose sides - the stranger and the friend

But if you’re going to have to send

Some teenage boy out on Judean fields to tend

Your sheep, how else do you tell

The ones who are in it for the lols

From the ones who’d die to save your lambs from wolves?

Until someone comes up with something new

“Us or them” is what will have to do.

How was he as a child? I think I can chance

a guess. “We piped for you and you did not dance.

We wept and you did not mourn.”

He was born a baby, but how odd

Our games must look seen through the eyes of God.

I hear him answering, “I tried to play!

But the children never liked me anyway.

I was a know-it-all. When I was twelve, I went into the temple

And tried to teach my elders. They were kind.

They recognized a mind

that wanted to learn and had a love for God.

And yes, I get the joke. I’m not that simple.

“But the God they see is petty and makes demands.

You can only enter the temple with clean hands

So you cannot stop to help that stranger

Set upon by a robber band.

The only one who can help is that poor sod 

Who thinks he has already earned the wrath of God.

But I’m not like that at all!

I’m not that small-minded! I’m like my Dad:

When I’d pick up something sharp in the workshop,

He’d say, “Thank you, lad. I needed that”

So kind, and then say, “Here son,

Do this for me” instead of waiting for the damage done, and then the beating.

I want to be like that! I didn’t know!

I didn’t have a dad myself until a short while ago

And now he’s gone. Your lives are so

Short! Help each other while you’re here.

I’ll wait. I have eternity to wait.

“I’ve learned a few things. I won’t make bets with Satan any more.

Who knew how long that story would endure?

And that I’d be the hero?

Will my people forgive me anything I do?

See, you need to forgive each other, too.

Please?” he says.

But as each Sunday scholar knows

That isn’t really how the story goes.

He didn’t come to listen, but to preach.

His loss

If he’d listened, would he have wound up on that cross?

And puzzled? “My God, my God”

So he was crucified

The way that many other people died

And I’ll weep for them as much.

Don’t expect me to make a fuss

For a God who blew his chance to learn from us.