Four Poems for Advent (Year A)

Every Child Immanuel (Advent 1A) 

Odd, how the promise of later peace 

comes just before annihilation – the tumbling of temple 

into Babylonian dust. 

Odd how the prophet speaks comfort 

as the reckoning beast approaches. 

Odder still, how Matthew writes a writhing, wrecked creation 

as a plummet into hope – there is One-who-will-return, 

who carried creation's violence to a cross, 

wore its wounds in a room filled with fear, 

will return to bear it to a tree of life 

for its healing – for the healing of the nations. 

Why do You wait so long, 

as cities turn to rubble, 

bodies to compost, 

and the powerful fashion crosses 

for another and another generation? 

This is the world. 

If the best the luckiest can do 

is to cover ourselves with unearned advantage, 

and cower into privilege, 

what is to become of the unlucky, 

with no camouflage of privilege, 

no gospel of prosperity? 

On a mountain, the One-who-will-return 

has named them blessed – 

blessed poor, meek, hungry, brokenhearted – 

blessed at the safe injection site, blessed on the bench, 

blessed in the doorway with a matted dog, 

haunting the median with hand-printed sign and rattling cup: 

Blessed one by one by one by one by one – 

blessed and still nothing changes. 

What does this blessing look like, then? 

When is its advent? 

When will we see the new Jerusalem – 

new Kyiv, new Gaza, Juba, Port-au-Prince – 

new World? 

We do this every year, some of us every day. 

We wonder how long; 

we watch from what feels like a safe distance, 

or from behind the wary eyes of those in danger. 

When will we see a Tree blooming 

where ashes were strewn from burnt crosses, 

nourishing fruit, healing leaves, living water, new creation, 

when? The One-who-will-return just says “be ready.” 

(Walk the floor, pack what you need, be ready.) 

A child will be born, and receive her name – 

or his, or theirs, or mine, or yours – 

the family name of every child: Immanuel. 

Trapped? Repent” (Advent 2A) 

Trapped – in bubbles, not amber, 

watching our partisan cable networks, 

talking in code, not language, 

antagonist neighbours, intimate enemies, 

clutching at pixels and jingos to save our lives. 

It was like this before – 

when the one-before-One 

came to say, “Repent”, 

say, “change your minds”, 

say, “shed your bubbles”, 

say, “deep Beauty is so close, so close – 

is just a bubble-skin away.” 

Leave your bubble, wash it off in water! 

Stand in an old – and Ancient – river place, 

in a new – and Ancient – way. 

Re-enter – like Elisha – the land. 

Cross – like Joshua – the river. 

Intend – like Amos – justice. 

And the Snakes? 

The brood of urbane bubble-guardians 

protecting the wash-starved world 

from threats of water? 

The one-before-One tells them, 

“You can flee the broken future, 

and live like washed-off people, 

unbubbled and new-minded!” 

All these things the prophet says 

to all those eager to escape their bubbles, 

to all those eager to subsist in theirs. 

There's no wrong place to start, to expect – 

nor wilderness, nor Galilee, nor even where they live, 

those other-bubble idiots, fools, and foes. 

The deep Beauty waits everywhere to be found, 

an ancient sovereign Love. 

the veil has torn, 

the bubble’s burst 

that hid the Ancient Beauty from us all, 

and hid us from each other. Repent! 

 God’s Strange Vengeance (Advent 3A) 

“Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you." (Isaiah 35.4) 

This lame one dancing homeward 

across a desert landscape 

 fragrant with flowers and hope. 

This fool, who more than once, habitually astray, 

has staggered through brush and burning sand, 

now needs no map, but

simply joins the one who, 

having lived in silence until now, 

now hears and walks the distant song 

that leads the homeless home. 

One comes alongside, singing, 

who never has sung before, 

nor spoke nor even whispered, 

each word-note new as baby-breath 

as new as born-again, 

while light and colours splash, 

through eyes to brain to heart, 

the whole world now a traveler’s dawn, 

a first unblinded vision of 

what is and always was, 

and always will be. 

Empires plot conquest, 

the conquered plot revenge, 

terror waits in ambush, 

cruelty drives power, 

and all feed on grievance. 

Meanwhile, this new household, 

dancing, singing, hearing, seeing, 

togethering homeward in this loved and lovely way 

across the blossoming desert – 

this is God’s vengeance, 

God’s strange vengeance. 

Broken Tongues (Advent 4A) 

Your promises have, somehow, 

been made to sound like threats. 

Their utterance makes me itch, 

allergic to this mother tongue 

distorted by time and power, 

from nourishment to nausea. 

You tell Joseph, “name him ‘Jesus’, 

who will save them from their sins.” 

Time and ambition twist this promise 

from gracious gift to dark transaction: 

a Son’s tormented dying turned to leverage, 

a Kingdom to post-mortem. 

Thus distorted, Your feast becomes

 – poisoned by time and power – 

unrecognized, unpalatable, and toxic, 

while our gut cries out for food 

that will nourish us 

toward healing, into strength. 

It’s not that we don’t need saving: 

We have joined our lives, as You say, 

to the wrong story, 

to “the sin of the world”.

Proud of our fluency in its idiom – 

of power, of death, of fear, of greed, 

we believe this is our language, 

is the language that can bear the weight 

of us, can utter us truthfully to ourselves 

and one another. 

You answer our idolatry; You take away the Story, 

the Language, and the Sin of the world.

You open the mouth of your heart and utter Jesus, 

the newest, deepest Word of our real mother tongue. 

“Call him Jesus. He will save,” 

will teach us verbs – “love, suffer, heal,” 

teach us nouns – “courage, neighbour, trust”: 

language so awkward and strange on our broken tongues 

that we talk like toddlers, 

like the Kingdom-toddlers we must become 

if we are to lay aside the grown-up, 

“sin-of-the-world” language 

that mutes our holy hearts.