Incarnation Meditation


Here’s a meditation for Christmas or Epiphany from Jonny Baker’s blog (see link below).

Incarnation Meditation

Emmanuel.
God with us.

Through torn sky shepherds spy heaven singing
And through this wound, God falls into hay screaming
Only astrologers scan outer depths to follow this bright trajectory
Burning up in my atmospheres.
Cold vacuums resisting God's re-entry.

Christ.
In very nature God.
Stripped of all vestures of Deity
No glory, no majesty, no power, no knowledge.
Abandoned by heaven.
The almighty, become so small as to be born human.
Receives gifts
The first reminders
Suggestions of an identity.

The saviour of the world.
Born in a 2-bit village, in a cave under the family home.
Ostracised by his ancestors.
His mother shamed.
Ignored by the religious.
Recognised only by farm-hands and foreign astrologers.

We welcomed God in the same way we dispatched him.
Deserted by friends
Rejected by the godly
Abandoned by God
Helpless
Exposed to the elements
And only 2 people to recognise him: a thief and an occupying soldier
The underclass. The foreigner.

In birth Christ was offered 3 gifts.
Gold for a king
Frankincense for a God
And Myrrh for a mortal.

In birth Christ was offered 3 gifts
But in death all gifts were refused.
In death Christ becomes gift.

Where are we this Christmas?
Are we Magi, searching in strange places for signs of God?
Are we offering gifts, unaware of their deeper meanings?
Are we the establishment, trying to shut out what we fear.

We are all of these.
But we are called to become the faithful wanderer.
To become the body of Christ.
Freely accepting gifts.
Living and dying to become gift for others.

— from Jonny Baker’s Worship Tricks website. http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/jonnybaker/worship_tricks/